“What those girls noticed.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and starting swiping at it. “I am being honest, you look beautiful to me, but you do look different. What happened at that party where you blacked out?” he asked.
Then he showed me a picture of myself from early in the summer. I was drunk, yelling, plastic cup in the air. I was in full makeup, cleavage out, hair hot-rolled into waves. My lip curled before I could stop myself.
“No one did anything to me. That is the truth. And even if they did, why would you want his name?”
“So I can beat the shit out of him.”
I tore my eyes off his phone screen to stare at him. He sounded serious. He looked serious. Tightly wound, the caged tiger, ready to attack the minute the gate was raised. “I don’t need you to do that, but even if I did, aren’t you on probation or something? And why were you in prison anyway?”
“For beating the shit out of someone.”
My jaw dropped. It made sense. I mean, if it wasn’t drugs or driving under the influence, what would it be? I didn’t think he was the kind for stealing. It just didn’t match the behavior I had seen. But fighting? It wasn’t that hard to picture. A five-month sentence seemed harsh for assault, though it wasn’t like I really had any clue about sentencing and the justice system. Maybe I had been avoiding asking because while I wanted to respect his privacy I also just didn’t want to have to face the fact that Phoenix had done something wrong. I wanted to hold onto the belief that like Tyler, he had been wrongfully imprisoned in some way, despite what Tyler himself had hinted at.
My pause where I processed that information grew too long, and he gave a sound of exasperation.
“Don’t worry, I only beat the shit out of people who deserve it.”
“Who deserved it?” I asked in a quiet voice, wondering if anyone ever truly deserved it.
“My mom’s piece-of-shit boyfriend, who just happens to be a drug dealer. Some of his inventory went missing and he decided my mother took it. I caught him with a knife, carving up her stomach while he . . .”
I was horrified, and my face must have reflected that.
Phoenix cut his words off, shaking his head. His lips were pursed. “Never mind. But he deserved it for that and for all the times he hit her before that. And I’m not even sorry for it. I’d do it again if the circumstances were the same.”
I saw that he meant it. All for a woman who hadn’t bothered to tell him where she was moving while he was in prison for defending her. So I just nodded, because I had no idea what to say. I didn’t understand that world and I didn’t know what it would feel like to watch your mother being abused or how instinctive it would be to use violence to stop violence. I did think that it was the right thing to do to stop someone hurting another person, that in a situation where nothing was right, it was more wrong to walk away and pretend it wasn’t happening.
A knife carving up her stomach. Good God.
Phoenix pushed his tray away. “I should probably just go.”
“Why?” That upset me. I didn’t want him to walk away with anything awkward between us. I wasn’t even sure how I felt, but I knew I didn’t have any right to judge something I didn’t know anything about.
“Because . . .” He looked away and shook his head.
“Why?” I repeated, both of our lunches totally abandoned.
“Because I like you.” Phoenix turned back and met my gaze. “And I won’t be good for you.”
My throat tightened. “I think maybe you think I’m a better person than I am.”
But Phoenix shifted his chair closer to me so we were sitting next to each other, and he took my hand. “Robin.”
“Yes?”
“I’m no good for you. And you’re probably no good for me. But we’re going to do this anyway, aren’t we?”
I nodded, because looking into his dark eyes there wasn’t any other answer. I couldn’t walk away from him, and I couldn’t let him walk away from me. “Yes. We are.”
“I thought so,” he murmured, and he kissed me in the food court, a quick brush of his lips over mine.
My skin tingled, and I sighed.
Oh yeah, we were definitely going to do this.
It was the only thing I’d been sure of all summer.
When the truth was that an ordinary life with an ordinary family hadn’t just made me ordinary, it had made me naive. Because in that moment, I genuinely thought that Phoenix’s background, his anger, my secret, didn’t matter at all.
It did.
Chapter Seven
Phoenix
The very minute I knew I was done for? When Robin asked me if I loved Angel. Because when a girl asks that, she wants to know if there is room in your heart for her. I knew that not only was there room for Robin, she could probably work her way through it until she was in every single crevice, spreading like octopus ink across the ocean floor. I got in to octopuses in fourth grade, checking out every book I could at the library about them and featuring them in all my reports and art projects. The teacher wrote a note to my mother about my obsessive behavior, which I never gave her. But I remember thinking, what is so wrong with digging octopus? They have eight legs and suckers and spew ink, is it any wonder I was fascinated?
But there is a fine line our world dictates between an appropriate and healthy interest in something and obsession. If you express too little interest in anything in particular, you’re lazy, a slacker, lacking in hobbies and liable to fall in with the wrong crowd. If you show too much interest, then clearly you’re obsessive-compulsive, unnatural.
I had already been fixating on Robin, I knew that. But when she made it clear that she was interested in having me fall in love with her, or that she wanted to know if the possibility was there, I knew that I had moved into octopus territory. I wanted to know everything there was to know about her—I wanted to see her all the time, touch her, smell her, unlock the mysteries of her body.
There would be disapproval from somewhere—maybe everywhere—but I didn’t give a shit.
I walked her to her class after she mostly didn’t eat her lunch, holding her hand, which felt small and delicate in mine, ignoring everyone who glanced at us. “So what are you studying?” I asked her. “Art?”
“No. Art isn’t practical. Graphic design. It’s a way to be sort of creative and actually make a living.”
“That makes sense.” Still, I had a hard time picturing her in an office or whatever. I thought of her head bent over the kitchen table or her sketching in the park. That was when she seemed happy. “Did you ever wonder why you were born with a talent if you can’t fully use it? I mean, we can’t all be Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, so why are we born with this burn to draw?”
“Maybe because we’re people and we’re flawed.” She glanced up at me, her hair tumbling around her face wildly as we walked down the path, students rushing past us on bikes. “For every ten thousand people who have that talent, only one will fully realize their potential.”
Sad but true. I didn’t know anyone who had reached their full potential. Most gave up long before that when the daily grind beat the crap out of them. “Life has a way of doing that. I mean, look at you and me. Neither one of us can pursue studying art. We have to be practical.”
“Yeah. I used to want to run off to Italy or France and study the masters or at the very least have the courage to set up a stall in New Orleans or some place like that and sell my paintings. The starving artist’s life. But I’m too . . . I don’t know. Afraid, I guess. Plain and simple.”
“It’s harder to let go of fear when you have something to lose. Being fearless is easier if you have nothing to risk.” In my case, I had absolutely nothing to lose. But I’d never had particularly grand ambitions. “I suppose I could just as easily be homeless in New Orleans as I can be here, so if I really wanted to do something like that I could, if I could figure out how to get there.”