Cauterize
"There is something bleeding to death inside me but I don't know what it is."
— Ingeborg Bachmann
Seventeen now.
Not a child anymore, but technically not yet an adult, either. Sometimes it's confusing, being caught in this in-between, like she's being pulled in two separate directions. The sunny warmth and safety of childhood innocence beckons her, calling sweetly for her return to its webbed cocoon, yet the bright and hot freedom of adulthood bursts like fireworks in the distance, an immediacy to it, like it needs her right now.
There's something incongruous about the way she acts and looks, and the way she feels. None of it matches up.
She can't drink yet—not legally, anyway—and she doesn't have her license, but Mr. J teaches her how to drive over a series of weekends in one of those overnight commuter lots, and sometimes in the parking lot at the mall, at night, when she's bored and he finally succumbs to her begging.
Learning stick shift is hard, but he helps her push through it, even if she thinks he wants to strangle her sometimes, like when she drops the clutch too fast and sends the car to a grinding halt, or when she slams on the brake instead of easing into it—and that one time she accidentally backs into a streetlamp.
These are some of her favorite memories with him, these honey-warm summer nights with the windows rolled down, the hot nighttime wind, all the hours spent in dark, vacant parking lots, joined only by the sliver of pale moon and the buzzing streetlamps, their occasional stuttering flicker. On these nights, it's easy to get high from their sheer proximity; she lives for the moments his big hand comes down over hers on the gear shift, or when his glittering eyes meet hers in the darkness, fire bright with all the things they haven't said. She never knew silence could be so electric. Pale green dashboard light shifting over the hollows of his cheekbones, the Y-shaped scar on his lower lip, sliding over his throat when he lifts his chin, when he swallows. The headiness of their combined scents, sweat and frustration, her thighs glued to the leather seats, Mr. J's jacket strewn across the seat in the back and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, sweat stains darkening the pits.
She can practically taste him on her tongue on these nights, the roof of her mouth burning with how much she wants him. She devours him with her eyes when he isn't looking, all of him—down to the marrow—wanting him so hard it hurts, all that tension coiled so tight in her jaw, her trembling hands. The steering wheel might've bruised beneath her grip if it could've.
Sometimes they finish her lessons with something sweet, an after-hours snack they share in the car. One night it's ice-cream, and as the vanilla stickiness drips all over the cone and onto her fingers, she catches him staring as she laps it up. Their eyes meet in the semi-darkness, something passing between them, some unidentified spark, and then he is reaching over across the console with a suddenness that is almost violent, turning the key in the ignition.
"Time to go," he says, voice pitched low.
She is too scared to look at him after that, afraid of whatever fire she'd accidentally lit inside him.
I do know what I want.
He'd said that to her, almost six months ago now, and then they had never talked about it again. Never broached the topic. Dusted it under the rug where it lay in silent wait, all that terrifying possibility, like some ravenous jungle creature crouched low in the foliage, just waiting for the perfect moment to pounce. It was easier to pretend like it hadn't happened rather than summon her courage and act on what had.
She touches herself on those nights, afterwards, when they get home and part their separate ways. She's a big girl now, doesn't need to sleep in his bed anymore, even if she still desperately wants to. The way she used to come crawling to him with the leftover tendrils of a bad dream clinging to her peripheral, slipping into bed next to him, curling herself inside of his warmth. She liked breathing into his neck, touching his chest with her fingertips—feather-light, so he wouldn't wake—needing to feel the heat emanating off him, needing the reassurance that he was real. That he was right here. That he was hers.
But not anymore. Now that she sleeps alone, she is left with other vices.
It's hard to figure out at first—she's convinced she must be doing something wrong, not stimulating herself right. She's tried watching porn a couple of times, but her face burns so hot with shame she is practically dizzy from it. She can't see past the mechanics of it, of two oiled, naked strangers bent over a slippery couch in some overlarge room that is too echo-y, breasts like balloons about to pop, the cacophony of fake grunts and overzealous moans.
Oh, yes, harder! Fuck me harder!
She buries her phone beneath her pillow in shame. Hopefully Mr. J hadn't heard.
She tries other kinds of porn—women licking each other between their legs, slow, but eager, one woman's legs thrown over the shoulders of the other. It's different. Softer. That does stir something inside her, and she lays on her back and listens to the wet sounds of their mouths and their soft moans as she slips her fingers inside her underwear. But even then she can't manage to bring herself over the edge, only teeter back and forth at the brink of it, a pleasure she can chase but never sustain before it is slipping away, rushing out like the tide.
Is she broken? Is something wrong with her? Maybe she just isn't doing it right.
She worries her bottom lip and flips over onto her belly. She is so pent-up and hot, her room drenched in humidity that even the rickety fan in the open window can't help. Her sheets are sticky with sweat and clings to her legs, and she irritably pushes them off the bed with her feet and slides a hand between her legs again.
She thinks about earlier that night in the car with him. The quiet of the radio, her cheeks flushed from the heat and the exertion of trying to pay attention, gripping the steering wheel tight with both hands. It was the first time he had let her out on the open road, and it was dark—late—not many people out, but she still felt a little nervous.
"Where do you want me to drive?"
His head was leaned back against the headrest, body slouched low in the seat, eyes half lidded. He looked at ease, tired—almost peaceful, she thought. She'd rarely seen him with his guard down like this, his body so unwound.
He turned his head towards her and stared.
"Surprise me."
She took them onto the interstate, not sure where to go, just driving straight since that was easier, through the city, and then veering out of it, across Graham Bridge, until all the lights from the city faded into the distance, twinkling in the rearview mirror. Black and gold. The windows down, hot wind tousling her hair, the sky clearer out here, bigger—not buried underneath so much smog. It felt like driving through outer space, stars on all sides, the passing blur of cars like spinning planets. It was mesmerizing. She never wanted it to stop.
Like this, she could almost imagine they were running away from Gotham, maybe towards some fantastical, undisclosed location, somewhere where Mr. J didn't have to be the Joker, and they could just be happy together. Free. Some place where their story didn't have to end in tragedy.
The memory of his warm hand folding over hers for a moment on the steering wheel, telling her he would drive now, and she takes that memory and warps it, imagines his hand on her thigh instead. Imagines them parked on the side of the road, in the dark. She exhales a puff of air against her pillow, rocking her hips into the mattress, chasing the pressure of fingers, imagining his hand between her legs now, slipping past the elastic of her underwear, teasing, his eyes on her face while he does it, watching her as he slicks his long fingers through her folds, his mouth pressed to her ear, all hot, humid breath, whispering, just look at you—
Her orgasm is fast and bright, and she shouts at the intensity of it, clamping down on nothing, her thighs trembling as it rolls through her. She pants into the pillow as she comes down, boneless—sated—disarmed by the fact that she is capable of bringing herself so much pleasure.
Her face floods with shame after—was she too loud? Did. Mr. J hear?—but in that moment, as she struggles to catch her breath, it doesn't matter.
Her very first orgasm.
It felt so good.
In the following weeks, she starts looking for a job.
Mr. J doesn't like it at first—she knew he wouldn't—but in the end, she got him to cave. Maybe it's because school's let out for the summer, and he knows she'd be bored at home by herself all the time. Either way, she relishes in this new taste of freedom, like the sweet, lemony tang of yellow Starbursts—those are her favorite.
It's a struggle, in the beginning, to find a job that will even bother to look at her application. She doesn't know if it's because she's not eighteen yet, or because she doesn't have any prior work experience—but for a week she doesn't receive any phone calls, and she worries she listed the wrong number.
She puts together a resume for herself using the computer at the library, which she pays fifty cents an hour for. The paper is a dollar per sheet. She fills out some applications online, and then prints out a handful of resumes to take to whatever locations are hiring. Some places like it when you hand in your resume in person, that way they can put a face to the name—at least, that's what some of the anonymous people on Yahoo! Answers had said.
She applies at fast food joints, mostly, a few restaurants, places she feels like she's mostly likely to get hired. Food service seems her most likely bet, usually requiring the least amount of experience. A lot of places aren't hiring anymore, like the cushy retail jobs in the inner city where you can stand behind a register all day and snap your gum, read a magazine. Those were snatched up by other high schoolers who didn't wait until summer to stake their respective claims. She had nobody to blame but herself.
When she finally receives a call for an interview—some burger place, Bobby's, or something—she squeals and runs to tell Mr. J.
"That's great, pumpkin." He ruffles her hair, and even though it should exasperate her because she spent a lot of time on it that morning, she beams up at him and feels proud, for once, like she's proven something.
She chatters about it for the rest of the afternoon, following him around the house, asking him questions she doesn't wait for the answer to before she's barreling onto the next one. She clips his heel more than once as she follows him from room to room, but he doesn't say anything, just lets her talk. She sits on the counter in the bathroom and swings her legs while he shaves, and then she swivels around to put her feet in the bowl of the sink and decides to paint her toenails so they can both do something together, and even then she doesn't stop talking. She pauses only long enough to blow on her bright blue toenails, and then she tells him—a bit sheepishly—she hopes she can make some friends at her new job.
She pauses long enough to glance up at him, catches the way he arches his brow. He looks down at her over the slope of his nose, his razor hovering over his throat.
"I'm not good enough for you anymore, hm?" he teases. At least she thinks he's teasing.
She feels her cheekbones coloring, and she ducks her head, resting her chin on her kneecaps so she can finish painting her pinky toe, but she's less focused than she was before.
"That's not what I meant," she mumbles. "You're my friend," she says after a moment, very quiet. She keeps her head down. "You're my best friend."
He doesn't say anything in response, but she bites her lip and braves a glance up, catches his secret smile in the mirror, meant only for him, before she ducks her head and tries not to blush all the way down to her toes.
Her high fades a little later, and she has to lie down on the couch to take an afternoon nap even though she doesn't want to. Mr. J hovers in her peripheral when she closes her eyes, watching, and she succumbs to sleep even as sunlight streams in through the windows.
She finally gets a call back one morning as she's lying in bed, watching the sunlight filter through the blinds, the way it stretches its long, warm fingers across the bedspread. The carpet. Mr. J is already gone for the day, she heard him get up earlier that morning, banging around in the kitchen as he always does. Sometimes she hears him stand outside her closed door in the mornings, and every time she thinks, please come in, but he never does, and she watches his shadow disappear from underneath the door a minute later before she drifts back to sleep.
Her cellphone hums next to her head, and she eagerly rolls over to answer it.
"Hello?" she says, and then clears her throat and says it again, less croaky this time.
"Is this Taylor Border?"
"Borden," she corrects. Sometimes her lowercase Ns look more like lowercase Rs. She really needs to work on that. "That's me." She bites her lip, holding her breath in anticipation as she waits for the voice on the other end.
"Yeah, this is Doug, from Bobby's Shake Shack."
She nods, even though he can't see it, sitting up straighter in bed. "Yes, sir." She remembers him. She had reached out and shook his hand when they'd met. He had seemed surprised by that, and it made her feel grown up and special, that she had just reached out and offered her hand like that. Very professional. Very adult-ish.
"Yeah, I was just calling about your interview on Tuesday, we, um—well, we decided to go with someone else, so we just wanted to let you know."
Taylor frowns into the phone. Someone—someone else? Her hearts clogs somewhere up in her throat, blocking her airway, and for a long beat she can't say anything. Can't breathe.
"You still there?"
"Y—yes," she manages. She swallows down her beating heart, exhales into the receiver. Tears prickle at her eyes, but she fights them off.
"Well—"
"I'm sorry, I just—can I ask why?"
This probably isn't professional, but she doesn't understand. She thought the interview had gone so well. What had she done wrong? Was it something she'd said? Was it what she was wearing?
She hears Doug let out a puff of air into the phone, can imagine him awkwardly scrubbing a hand over the sweat beading at the back of his thick neck, having to explain to some kid why she wasn't good enough or whatever, wondering about how to deliver a blow, but softly.
"Listen, you seem like a great kid, but we really can't hire people who aren't clean. Legally I'm—"
Taylor's back goes ramrod straight. "What do you mean 'clean'?"
Doug pauses. "The drug test. You came back positive—"
Taylor's heart threatens to burst straight out of her chest. "Positive for what?" She knows she keeps interrupting him, and it's rude, but she's so confused. She doesn't take drugs. She's never taken drugs. Clearly there's been some mistake—
"Uh, Benzos?" He says it like a question. "Couple of other things, I think." He coughs. Sounds uncomfortable. She can imagine his eyes darting around his little square office, the waterlogged walls, the exposed pipes on the ceiling. Stained carpet. The health inspector certificates in their dusty plastic frames mounted on the wall. The uncomfortable metal folding chair she had sat in when he'd gestured her into the cramped office for her interview. Eyes desperately searching, looking for points of escape. A viable exit.
"I—I don't know understand," she says, and the tears are coming now, she can hear the ugly warble in her voice starting to take shape, but she tries hard to fight it. "I don't take those," she explains, "I've never taken drugs in my life."
God, they must hear that all the time.
It's silent on the other end. She sniffles into the phone, wiping her nose with the back of her arm. She's pathetic.
"Listen," Doug says, and he sounds uneasy, "is there someone who could be giving those things to you without you knowing? There was quite a concoction in there, we don't usually see someone your age with that much stuff…."
Taylor's heart ricochets violently, like it's sitting up on hands and knees, beating on the walls of her ribcage. She wets her lips. "I—I don't know." But she does know. She knows exactly who could be giving her those things—even while her hindbrain hurries to reject the idea, eager to provide some other explanation.
He wouldn't. He wouldn't.
"Th—thank you for calling," she stutters, breathing fast. "I have to go."
"I think maybe—"
She hangs up. She doesn't need to know what he thinks. She pushes off the rest of her covers, horrified beyond comprehension. This can't be real. He wouldn't do that… right?
He wouldn't, but he has, and all evidence points glaringly to nothing but that one ugly truth.
But… how? When? How long has this been going on for? Is it recent, or has he always dosed her a little here, a little there?
And more than that—why? To what end? What was the point? Did he do this on purpose, knowing the moment she pissed in that cup, that it was over? That they'd tell her no? Did he really not want her to get a job that badly?
She stomps into the kitchen, tears streaking her cheeks, and flings open the cupboards like a woman gone mad. For the cabinets she can't reach, she pulls one of the barstools around the L-shape of the counter, the metal legs scraping against the floor like a war cry. She stands on it as she loots through dusty upper cabinets—especially the two above the fridge that nobody ever uses, but there's nothing. She doesn't know what she expected to find. He wouldn't hide it somewhere where she could potentially find it. He wouldn't risk it.
She's not… she's fucking not going to cry about this.
She spends the better part of the day worrying holes in the carpet, pacing in the living room, and then her bedroom, mind turning a mile a minute as her brain tries to concoct some explanation for this, some justifiable reason for why he would do this, but she comes up empty every time.
She wants to know exactly what he gave her, and she wants to know why.
He lied to me.
Her heart leaks something viscous and black at this admission, something pungent and metallic, like the way a cavity tastes and smells when it's drilled out, a sourness that coats her tongue. Her teeth. Her gums. She wants to vomit, but nothing will come, not even when she heaves uselessly over the toilet. Her body has nothing more to give.
By the time he returns home, Taylor's tears have long-since dried, and she is the picture of tranquility. She's cooked dinner. Cleaned up the house. She set the coffee table with their food—their makeshift dining table for when they don't feel like sitting at the counter.
Mr. J's brows shoot into his hairline, just for a moment, and then he surprises her by coming up behind her at the sink, wrapping the length of her ponytail around his hand until he holds it curled in his fist, gently tugging her to him. His chest is solid and warm at her back.
"What's all this for?"
His voice pitched low like that makes her spine curl, and she has to swallow down her thudding heart. She'll never be used to the affect he has on her, the way her body naturally seems to respond to him, like she was predestined to want him. Like she was made specifically for him, like her singular purpose is to ignite under his specific touch.
"Just thought I would do something nice." She smiles a little, craning her neck to look up at him, and she hopes he can't tell that it doesn't reach her eyes.
He hums, unwinds her hair from his hand so he can cup the back of her neck. Cradle her spine. "What would I do without you?" he murmurs.
It's a good question. One she's never asked before. What would he do without her?
She's not going to tell him that she knows. Better to play the defensive, to watch his every move like a hawk—and she does.
It's frightening, having this knowledge, knowing something about him that he doesn't know. It feels… dangerous. She thinks about all the times she used to buy those little six-packs of sodas—an occasional treat for herself—and how the caps weren't always as tight as she thought they should be after she'd pulled one out of the fridge. Or sometimes how the water Mr. J brought for her was a little salty, and how she always blamed it on the pipes. It was water from the sink, after all, and it was an old house. She didn't exactly expect it to taste like water from a natural spring.
All the times she had fallen asleep during class, and then come home and napped again. What a struggle it was to keep her eyes open sometimes, how it felt like she was at war with her own body. How sometimes she had so much energy she thought she would burst through the roof, shoot straight off into outer space. Or when she couldn't stop running her mouth, driving Mr. J crazy with all her incessant chatter, how she couldn't stop eating, wanting, crying, lusting, touching. How she had operated on such extremes for the past two years of her life, since Nathan. Up, and then down, up… and then down, down, down, and up again, her body doing things she couldn't explain, her brain struggling to process, to keep up.
Was it all him? Had it always been because of him? Because of whatever he was drugging her with?
Her life had always been tumultuous; the frequency with which she was ushered from one foster home to the next, forced to change schools, and the stress and fear that came with living under an abusive or neglectful roof was enough to make anyone's head spin, let alone a little girl who'd spent her entire life in the foster system—but even then, there was a pattern, a certain level of regularity to her days, her moods. She didn't feel like she was going to spin in circles one moment and then collapse on the floor in a fit of exhaustion in the next.
A few nights later, when she's curled up in bed after another fruitless day of waiting for phone calls that never come, she notices the glass of water on her nightstand.
Before, she wouldn't have spared it a second thought, happily downing it, thinking that she'd poured herself a glass and then forgotten to drink it. Lukewarm water is better, anyway. Sometimes when it's cold it makes her stomach cramp.
Now, though, she stares at the glass with narrowed eyes. She gets out of bed and dumps the water in the bathroom sink, watches the drain gurgle it down. She checks the bottom of the glass for any leftover particles, any hint of residue, but there is none.
Doesn't matter. She already knows the truth.
It happens more and more frequently, the glasses of water sitting around—on her nightstand, the coffee table, the counter—water she knows she didn't pour. She dumps all of them down the sink when he isn't around. It escalates when Mr. J brings home takeout one night, and she knows she can't refuse—she never refuses food. It'd look too suspicious.
Her hands shake when she sits down on the couch, so she tucks them underneath her thighs, biting her lip as Mr. J dumps the plastic bag onto the coffee table and plops down onto the couch next to her. A Styrofoam box for him and for her; he likes General Tso's, she likes sweet and sour. He sets hers down in front of her and starts to dig into his own, popping open the lid, pulling it into his lap—
"Wait!" she blurts.
He raises his brows. Looks at her.
"Let's switch," she says. She pulls her hands out from beneath her thighs, looking at him imploringly. She doesn't know what she's going to do if he refuses—confront him? And does she really want to give up her hand so readily?—but in her haste it was the only thing to do.
It feels like he stares at her forever, like he's reading her mind and knows exactly what this is about. She tries not to shrivel under his dark gaze. But after a long moment, his face splits into lopsided grin.
"Stealing my food?" He tsks at her.
Her face heats up. "I just feel like trying something different."
To her surprise, he acquiesces, sliding their Styrofoam containers around, and she thinks, lucky save, and tries not to look too relieved. As she settles back into the couch, Mr. J drums his fingers against the lid of his box.
"Forks," he drawls.
She frowns and glances into the empty plastic bag on the coffee table—the people at the restaurant must've forgotten to include them. She bites her bottom lip and looks up at him, and she understands. He wants her to get them.
Under normal circumstances, she'd be happy to. She practically jumps at the opportunity to please him, like an overeager puppy, and it occurs to her then how often she does things without needing to be asked—how he knows this about her. He never volunteers himself for a task, because he knows she will respond to it first, without prompting. To respond any differently would be out of character at this point. Suspicious.
As much as she doesn't want to leave him alone with her food, she has no choice.
She gets up, goes to the kitchen as nonchalantly as possible, craning her neck behind her just once to glance at him, but he's unmoving on the couch, watching her. The forks are in the drawer next to the fridge, so she has to turn her back to him to get them, and the countertop blocks her view of him anyway from this angle. She slams the drawer shut a little louder than intended when she's done, trying to hurry, and then she's scurrying back into the living room to join him.
It doesn't look like he's moved an inch since she got up, but she knows he's fast, so she still can't be sure. She settles into the couch. Picks a movie for them to watch. She usually takes this opportunity to snuggle up next to him, lay her head on his shoulder if he'll let her. Instead she curls her legs underneath her and tentatively reaches for her food. Nothing looks amiss—not that she'd be able to spot if it was anyway. She doesn't really know what to look for. Still, she chews slowly, tasting every morsel, trying to decipher any usual flavors, but there's nothing.
She lies in bed later that night and stares at the ceiling, hypervigilant of her heartbeat, her breathing, but all she is conscious of is the sharpened claws of anxiety.
When Mr. J stands outside her closed door the next morning, she stares at it from under the safety of her covers and thinks, don't come in, and, like an answered prayer, he doesn't.
Her heart clenches when he walks away, traitorous, and deep down she knows that isn't what she wanted.
That isn't what she wanted at all.
Two weeks later, she lands a job.
It's a diner in midtown, and it's only part time, because all the full time positions were taken, but she needs the cash, and for now it will do. It's all she's got.
She stumbles into the diner off Marin Street in an effort to escape the blistering heat. She's spent the better half of the afternoon pounding the pavement, checking in on all the places she'd applied to, politely inquiring about the statuses of her applications; she'd read online that that was a good thing to do. Showed initiative. Drive. Or something like that. She hoped it didn't make her seem desperate.
But all anyone ever said when she asked was that they were no longer hiring, so she left with her head bowed, chin to chest, and tried not to let herself feel too dejected. She'd just have to go back to the library and print out more applications. Keep trying.
The diner was somewhere she'd been with Mr. J once before. It wasn't in the best area of town, but places like these were always safer for Mr. J—easier for him to keep his head down, stay low. People wouldn't recognize him out here, not in a place where he'd blend so easily.
She likes this diner though, with its checkered floors, everything chrome and shiny and apple red. The plump barstools that line the counter, the old-timey memorabilia plastered to the walls, the pin-up girl posters, the old license plates, weathered copies of TIME and newspapers from decades that exist now mostly in memory. The glow of neon signs in the shape of ice-cream cones and cheeseburgers, and the beautiful, sleek-looking jukebox. There is a curious mix of the old and the new, everything shiny and a little dusty at the same time. She likes the electric green ribbon of neon lights that line the edges of the ceiling, the digital glow they cast, especially at night, when the lights are all dimmed.
The place is bustling with activity when she shoulders in, the bell over the door announcing her arrival, though the sound is lost to the clamoring crowd of people just as desperate to escape the afternoon sun as she is. She'll just get a milkshake or something to cool down, and then she'll go home, she decides. But when she pulls open the glass door, she catches sight of the crooked 'HELP WANTED' sign plastered in the window, and she allows herself to feel a spark of hope.
Her 'interview' consists of following a tall, red-headed waitress around the diner, her curls piled high on top of her head, a few spirals escaping from her black scrunchie and sticking to the back of her neck, slick with sweat. She's got a tattoo of a black star on the back of her neck, too, just a little one, the size of a two thumbprints, with three smaller stars curled like a backwards 'C' next to it. Her wrists are thick with an assortment of colorful bracelets which jingle as she walks. Taylor has a hard time keeping up with her as she swirls around the diner, picking up empty glasses and plates and stacking them expertly in the crook of her arm as she goes, shooting rapid-fire questions at Taylor all the while. Have you ever worked in a restaurant before? Ever worked a register? Can you carry heavy trays? Can you work until close? Weekends?
She follows the waitress through a pair of swinging doors and into a sweaty, humid kitchen. It's like being transported into another world. She is rattled by the jarring clang of pots and pans, the chug of the dishwasher, the rapid chop-chop-chop of a knife coming down against a wooden cutting board, the pop and sizzle of bacon and French fries, the clink of plates as they are deposited on the metal counter, ready for delivery. She can only blink at the frenzied blur of activity and try not to get in anybody's way.
"I'm taking my five!" the waitress yells, barely heard above the clatter.
She dumps off her collection of dishes and Taylor follows her through another set of doors, into a small, cramped room housing a set of lockers. A coat rack and a mini fridge. A small, dingy couch. Then their feet are pounding on mossy carpet, down a narrow, wood-paneled hallway lined with plaques and framed certificates, a couple of faded pictures that have been yellowed by time, two people shaking hands outside a sparkly clean diner, maybe when it first opened or something.
The waitress barrels through the door to the right, into a cramped office. It's hot in here. No windows. She nods for Taylor to take a seat as she stomps behind the desk and takes her own seat, reaching into the top drawer and pulling out a pack of Marlboro's, lighting one between her cupped hands and then pushing an errant curl off her forehead with the back of her forearm. She finally pauses long enough to look at Taylor, probably for the first time since Taylor had approached her at the counter with a timid, "Excuse me, ma'am?"
"Jesus, you're young," she says. She pushes the drawer closed, sucks in an urgent lungful of nicotine, like she is taking a deep breath of air after surfacing from a long, underwater excursion. She cranes her neck to expel the smoke away from Taylor, but keeps her eyes on her. They are a pretty, bright green—like cat eyes, she thinks—rimmed with mascara that is probably a couple days old. Her brows are sharp, penciled in, but they suit her. She has thin lines around her mouth and creased between her brows, and Taylor knows she's the kind of person who laughs a lot but is angry a lot, too, perhaps in equal measure. She has a long, oval-shaped face, and the freckles there are faint, canopied beneath a coat of powder that is too light for her skin tone. She's tan and sinewy, and the sleeves of her top are pushed up to reveal her shoulders, the freckles there like starbursts, happy and bright. Taylor has a hard time not staring at the paint splatter of freckles between the deep plunge of her breasts, all soft and pushed together, jiggling in her blouse every time she moves. She awkwardly looks away.
"So, um—"
"Can you start tomorrow?" the woman asks. She is already rummaging around in one of the lower drawers, sifting through a stack of papers. Her lips are clamped down around the cigarette, lodged in the corner of her mouth. "God fucking dammit," she says, to no one in particular.
Taylor presses her lips together. Waits.
"Here," she says, slapping down a thin stack of paper, sloppily stapled together at the corner. "If you fill these out, you can start tomorrow. Does two PM work?"
Taylor blinks at the proffered item, and then looks up to meet her expectant gaze. This is all happening so fast. A quick, fleeting glance at her name tag—she hadn't noticed it until now—reveals that her name is Ruby. Somehow, it fits.
"You—you don't want to ask me anymore questions? Or like… do a drug test?" She is nervous asking. That is exactly what she doesn't want. She has no idea how long the stuff Mr. J had given her could stay in her system. Was it days? Weeks?
Ruby snorts. "Sweetheart, no offense, but you look like you've never even seen drugs." She pushes the papers further across the desk. "I can tell you're clean," she continues. "You're one of those goody two-shoes types." The end of her cigarette glows bright between her long fingers when she inhales. Her nails are painted fire engine red, but are starting to chip. "I have a third eye about these things."
Taylor nods, secretly relieved. She isn't going to argue with that. "I can start tomorrow," she replies.
Ruby smiles, baring straight, cigarette-stained teeth. "Good," she says. She dusts non-existent ash off the black apron tied around her waist, draped over a pleated mini skirt. "I only work on the weekends—better tips—but I'll set you up with Peggy tomorrow to show you the ropes. We really just need a hostess, someone to seat people during the busy hours. Think you can handle that?"
Taylor nods, eyes wide.
Ruby gestures to the papers on the desk for a final time and slides her a pen, which rolls across the wooden desk and onto the floor before Taylor can catch it. She reaches down to pick it up as Ruby is speaking.
"Go ahead and fill those out," she says, taking another drag, head tilted back, her eyes hovering over the edge of the desk, lingering on Taylor as she's bent over towards the floor.
Taylor doesn't need to be told twice. She retrieves the pen and scoots her chair a little closer to the edge of the desk so she can work on a flat surface, feels the weight of Ruby's gaze on her the whole time. Her cheeks flush beneath the woman's intense scrutiny, but she keeps her head bowed, scribbling as fast as she can. Her handwriting looks like shit because she's hurrying, but hopefully it's still legible. She isn't sure if she should put her real address—maybe Mr. J wouldn't like that. She scrawls down a fake one instead, beads of sweat sliding between her shoulder blades and the small valley of her breasts.
"You'll be a fast learner," Ruby murmurs as Taylor's pen scratches against the paper. "I can tell."
When Taylor finishes, Ruby stamps out her cigarette on the corner of the desk and stands to file the paper away in a gray filing cabinet tucked along the wall.
Taylor takes the opportunity to study her while she's occupied, her eyes trailing from head to toe and back again, and she is startled to realize that there is something about the woman that kind of reminds her of Mr. J. Maybe it's her inability to sit completely still, or the way her eyes glitter with the promise of something dangerous, something venomous. Maybe the way she looks at Taylor, like she knows a secret that Taylor doesn't. Either way, Ruby is like a firestorm—bright hot and fierce, smothering you inside a blanket of roaring flames before you even have a chance to shelter yourself from the onslaught. She is smoldering with her red hair and matching nails, her slightly crooked grin. The energy she radiates is fever hot. Manic. It's not unlike Mr. J at all.
Taylor swallows down her disquiet, feeling almost a little winded just from the exertion of watching her talk and move and breathe. It's a lot to take in, but she thinks she likes her.
The filing cabinet lets out a metallic, screeching whine when the drawer is forced open, and Ruby pauses a second later, her brows drawing together.
"Diamond District," she muses, eyeing the address Taylor had put down. Her eyes slide towards Taylor's. "Nice area… kind of far from home though, yeah?"
There's something almost vaguely threatening in her voice, hidden beneath a saccharine sheen, but Taylor swallows. Nods. It's where Emily lives—where rich people live. She doesn't know why she put that address. Maybe that was a mistake.
Ruby cocks her head, staring, her forearms propped along the edge of the filing cabinet. Taylor can see the lean muscles in her biceps when they're braced like that.
Ruby seems to smirk a little, her eyes glittering. "Do mommy and daddy know you're here?"
Taylor feels a prickle of annoyance at that—like she's a lost child or something. Like she doesn't belong in a place like this. She sits up a little straighter. Pushes her shoulders back.
"My parents know where I am," she says, maybe a little snobbish. It's weird saying 'my parents' out loud, but her voice is clear cut. Sharp.
Ruby hums in reply.
Whether or not she buys the lie, Taylor isn't sure, but she snaps the filing cabinet shut a moment later. And then she is smiling, all traces of previous tension dispelled. She touches the back of Taylor's chair, hip cocked, and for some reason the hairs on the back of Taylor's neck prickle. She bites her lip and inclines her head, her eyes sliding up to meet Ruby's.
"Let's get you a uniform. I gotta get back on the floor."
Ruby was right about one thing—she is a fast learner.
Her job is menial—easy—but she already really likes it. She trains for three days; three wonderful, stressful, overwhelming days, forced to digest a whirlwind of information: names to remember, seating arrangements, policies, instructions, tasks, but on the fourth day they set her loose. She stands ramrod straight at the podium, bouncing on her heels a little anytime she sees customers approach. She is chirpy and bright when she assists them to their booth, lays down their laminated menus on the slightly-sticky table and gives them their napkin-wrapped utensils. They clink when she sets them down. She gets them ice water with lemon to start, and tells them their server will be right there in just a minute.
It's fun, mostly. She likes it. The most exciting part is just being out of the house—and she likes people-watching, too, when she can get away with it. She's already witnessed a breakup, several drunken fights, and what she thinks might've been a gang meeting, but she isn't one-hundred percent sure about the last one.
It's a little more stressful on the weekends—sometimes they have to make people wait for an open table, and that makes her feel anxious, the way people look at her sometimes, like she's personally responsible for the fact that they can't be seated right away. Like she's doing it on purpose.
Her coworkers are fine. Peggy is nice. Single mom, three kids. She's a little older than Ruby, but somehow less weathered, a lot softer around the edges. She's sweet but kind of quiet, like she's got a million different things on her mind, but she's approachable, and she never makes Taylor feel bad when she has to ask a question. She has night classes at GCC—Gotham Community College—and is doing her prerequisites. She wants to be a nurse. Taylor thinks Gotham is probably a shitty place to be a nurse. Peggy is a hard worker though, and she always finds ways to keep busy, even when it's slow. She tells Taylor there's always work to be done as long as you're willing to do it. She shows Taylor how to refill the napkin dispensers, and keep the ketchup bottles full, the salt and pepper shakers, how to wrap the silverware in their little napkin blankets. Taylor sweeps a lot, too, clearing out the debris beneath a table after a customer leaves, around the hostess's stand, and the rubber-bottomed carpet by the entrance. When things are really slow, she mops. Tidies up the bathrooms. The men's bathrooms are the worst, and the urinals lined along the wall somehow always make her blush.
She gets along with everybody for the most part. The kitchen staff in the back is all men—except for a Russian lady who speaks very broken English. She mostly does food prep. Her features are crisscrossed with hard lines, like she came out of the womb scowling and her face got stuck that way; Taylor has never seen her smile, not once, and she tries to stay out of the older woman's way. Luckily, she's not in the kitchen that much, so it's not hard to do.
The waitresses are all nice, and they seem to like her. It's a hodgepodge of older women and college dropouts who are working two other jobs on top of this one. They usually come in a little late for their shifts, and they head straight to the bathroom to change out of the uniform from their other job before hitting the ground running. Taylor tries to help them out when she can. Sometimes she'll bring the food out to the table if they're busy with another customer, or get their check ready for them if she knows what they've ordered. She likes paying attention to that stuff.
Hank—her boss—is the owner of the place, but Taylor hasn't met him yet. She's never even seen him. When she asks about him, Peggy tells her to keep her distance, but then backtracks when Taylor asks why.
"Just—he's fine, honey, really." She's refilling the napkin dispensers at the counter with the sort of practiced ease of someone who's done it a million times. Taylor is sitting on one of the barstools with her legs crossed, her chin in her hand, watching. "It's just better if you stay out of his way." She smiles at Taylor in that kind of sad, motherly way that women sometimes do, like they're afraid you're too little or too naïve to understand the world's terrible, nasty secrets. But Taylor already knows nastiness. She's seen it by the fistful. She's been forced to kneel at its mercy more times than she can count.
"Why can't you just tell me?"
Peggy seems surprised by her insistence, but she smooths out her frown and adopts a look of easy passivity. Her gaze lands on something behind Taylor.
"You have a customer," she says, gently, and Taylor's eyes widen as she untangles her legs and hurries to the hostess's stand to greet them. She hadn't even heard them come in. She tucks two menus under her arm and leads the couple to their table, but not before making a mental note to ask Ruby about Hank later. Sounds like there's a story in there, and she wants to know what it is.
Taylor's hours are all over the place, but she doesn't really mind. Sometimes it's so slow she only works for four hours before they cash her out early and tell her to go home, and other time she works ten-hour shifts because they're swamped and need the extra help. They pay her under the table, too—she likes that. No cashing checks at the bank or having to wait till the end of the week for a paycheck. She stashes her money under her mattress just like she used to. Old habits and all that.
She picks up extra shifts when she can—just because it's nice to be out of the house and around people. With school out for the summer, there's not a lot to do, and she isn't going to sit around at home all day and pine for Mr. J, especially not after her discovery. She still doesn't know what to think about that. She needs time to process. To think. The job makes it easier to keep her distance, and right now she likes that.
She's a couple weeks in now. The initial summer rush has died down some, and she's getting used to some of the regulars that come around, memorizing their routines, their orders, which ones always leave the best tips.
It's a Tuesday, so it's a little slow. Midafternoon, so the dinner rush won't be for another couple of hours. Plenty of time to mill around and try to find stuff to do.
Peggy is working today, and has spent the better part of the morning tucked in one of the barstools at the end of the counter, curled up with her textbook, tapping her highlighter against her chin. She has an exam coming up. She'd looked harried when she came into work earlier that morning, like she hadn't slept all night, and Taylor didn't miss the familiar ring of purple around her neck, faint, because she'd dusted over it with a thick layer of powder. She watched Peggy slip into the bathroom every so often and come out with a fresh layer, loose, tan-colored talc sprinkled over the front of her shirt like powdered sugar. Taylor doesn't ask about it, but she thinks she overheard Peggy talking to one of the other girls about an ex-husband or something. Taylor feels bad for her, so she doesn't press, and she tries not to bother her. She waits on her tables so Peggy doesn't have to, and the older woman glances up from time to time to offer a feeble smile, her gratitude etched in her tired eyes, and Taylor nods in understanding. She's happy to help.
When things die down even further, she decides to tackle the shelves underneath the counter—far enough away from Peggy so as not to disturb her—and starts unloading all the extra plates and cups and extra supplies from below. It's probably been years since someone wiped down these shelves, and she's determined to tackle the thick blanket of dust that's accumulated.
She's almost finished when she spots one last item, tucked all the way inside a far, hard to reach corner. She's able to heave the cardboard box onto the counter, pokes her head inside. It's a bunch of garland and tinsel, some red bows. Decorations for the holidays.
"That doesn't go there."
Taylor startles at the deep voice. She spins around, hands bracketed against the counter behind her. Her eyes slide up a long torso to meet a pair of honey-brown eyes. The faintest hint of a smirk.
She wrings her hands, nervous, for some reason. "I know, I was just—"
"You're new," he says. The man—definitely a man, he's older than her for sure, although she's not sure by how much—is wearing black jeans and t-shirt, a stained, white apron knotted at the back of his neck. He looks her up and down, crossing his arms over his broad chest, and she can't help but flush under his scrutiny. His eyes are curious. Bright. He's one of the kitchen guys, she thinks. The dishwasher. She's never talked to him before.
She nods. Swallows.
"I'm Ben." He says it like she'd asked.
"Um, I'm Taylor," she offers, even though it's on her nametag.
"I know who you are."
She thinks she says something back, maybe oh okay, or nice to meet you, but her voice is lost to the sound of ringing in her own ears. She bites down on her lower lip and stares. Everything about him is big, and standing so close to him allows her the opportunity to drink in his features: his overlarge nose, his wide, full mouth, the scatter of dark freckles and misplaced moles, the crinkle around his eyes. A head of thick black hair and side-swept bangs. A goatee and thin mustache. A bulbous Adam's apple. It's like looking at a painting, or one of those statues in museums—a bust—all his features so prominently defined, like they'd been chiseled that way. He's oddly attractive, handsome in a way that's almost kind of puzzling.
He towers over her, long-limbed and gangly, yet his broad chest is unmistakable, she can tell from the way his shirt stretches across his chest, how his biceps fill in the sleeves. She notes his thick arms and big hands. Long fingers. His body is all there, but the way he holds himself is curious, as if he hasn't moved into his own body quite just yet, like he isn't entirely comfortable with the changes his body have made. It's as if his body had somehow managed to move on without him before he'd had a chance to catch up to it.
When he uncrosses his arms and wipes his hands off on his jeans, it occurs to her that he might be a little nervous, too. Weird.
"Well, I should—"
"Here, let me help you with that." He nods towards the box on the counter and takes a step forward. "I saw you struggling with it earlier. Looks heavy." He picks it up before she can protest, and she watches his eyebrows raise, his lips twisting in amusement. "Or maybe not," he chuckles. He makes a point of staring at her arms. He surprises her when he shifts to cradle the box to his chest with one arm, and then reaches out to gently pinch the thin skin beneath her upper arm. "You got any muscle in there at all?" he teases, and then looks a little embarrassed that he had done that.
She pulls back. She wants to be offended—she should be offended—but she can't help but feel charmed by the warm laughter in his eyes, his goofy attempt at flirting—if that's what this is. She kind of hopes it is.
"I'm stronger than I look," she retorts, and it comes out haughtier than she expected.
His eyebrows shoot up again, and he draws his free hand back as if to say, well, pardon me then. "You must hit the gym hard, huh?" He leans forward, all serious business. When he eyes her up and down—for a second time—she tries not to squirm. "What's a little thing like you bench press? Three pounds?"
She lets out a sound of righteous indignation, trying to be angry, but a smile tugs at her mouth a moment later, one she can't hide. He smiles, too.
She doesn't know how long they stand there grinning at each other, but eventually Ben clears his throat and lifts the box up a little higher.
"So, uh—"
"Oh!" she starts. "Let me finish real quick. I was just wiping down the shelves." She spins around and kneels, ducking beneath the counter and stretching into the far, hard to reach corner to wipe free the dust.
When she stands back up, Ben is staring at her. She watches his throat bob when he swallows, his knuckles white where he clutches the edges of the box. She flushes a little, feeling embarrassed for some reason—why is he looking at her like that?—and scoots out of his way so he can slide the box back into its rightful place.
When he stands, he catches his head on one of the low-hanging light fixtures.
"Ow… fuck," he says, rubbing the back of his head.
Taylor giggles, unable to help herself, and when he turns to look at her, she presses her lips together and tries to hide her smile behind the palm of her hand.
"Sorry," she mumbles, but her eyes betray her.
"Guess I deserved that."
She nods, biting her lip, and Ben looks sheepish as he rubs the back of his head.
He shuffles back to the kitchen after that, a little bashful—maybe humbled, too— and mumbles something about seeing her around. She bites her lip and watches him go.
Later on the in the week, when it's slow, Taylor picks a booth by the front windows—close to the hostess's stand—and slides into the booth with a bucket of loose silverware. She likes to sit here and roll the silverware into napkins when it gets slow. Sunlight streams in through the windows, falling across the table in warm stripes, and it catches on the silver tops of the salt and pepper shakers and the metal stand holding the placard of desserts.
One of the waitresses—Olivia, who Taylor doesn't know that well—feeds a couple of quarters into the jukebox, and something soft is playing, Put Your Heard on My Shoulder by Paul Anka, she thinks.
She sips on Pepsi through a straw while she works, taking precious care in folding the napkins just right. She's done it a hundred times by now, but she doesn't like for it to look sloppy.
"Ah, our powerlifter hard at work."
She looks up, surprised. Ben is squinting down at her, the sun shining directly in his eyes, turning them golden brown.
"How's your head?" she retorts.
Ben grins, doesn't wait for an invitation as he slides himself into the seat across from her, all 6'3" of him, his knees knocking into hers for a moment.
"You know, I was going to help you with the silverware, but now you can forget it."
She laughs. He reaches into the bucket for a fork, and she keeps her head bowed as she lifts her eyes—just slight—to watch as he runs the tines along the palm of his hand, tracing the lines there.
"So, you live around here?" he asks.
She looks up to find him staring at her.
"Um, yeah," she swallows, suddenly thinking about her lie, the fake address scribbled on the sheet that is currently tucked in the filing cabinet in the back office. She hadn't thought about it before, but what if they try to send her mail to that address or something? "How about you?"
"I'm in Old Town," he says, like this is a major pain in his ass. He lets out a huff of air between pursed lips, scattering the bangs on his forehead. "You in school?"
"Just graduated," she says, a hint of pride in her voice. The silverware clinks quietly together as she tucks it into the napkins with methodical precision. "You?"
Ben chuckles, looking almost embarrassed as he surveys the empty diner, looking anywhere but at her. "Nah."
She cocks her head at him. "How old are you?" she asks.
"Twenty-six."
"Oh. That's cool," she assures. She doesn't want him to think she's uncomfortable about the fact that he's so much older. She doesn't care about that. She just wants him to like her. "Are you in college?" she prompts.
"Was. I dropped out after a year. Did the Army thing, too. Wasn't for me."
Her eyes widen. "Did you ever, like, have to go to the Middle East?"
Ben snorts. "Farthest I ever went was Fort Benning. Hot as fuck down there."
Taylor blushes at the expletive, keeps her eyes down. Mr. J doesn't talk like that. She watches the silverware glimmer in the sunlight. Smooth and shiny.
"So why here?" Ben asks, gesturing around the empty diner with a lazy sweep of his arm; he's got moles scattered there, too. "What brings a lady such as yourself to our fine, reputable establishment?"
He puts on a tone of exaggerated nobility, and Taylor chuckles as she sets down a triad of silverware. "I applied to a billion places," she says, thinking back to her myriad of unanswered applications. "This is the only one that would take me," she shrugs.
Ben studies her for what feels like a long time. "Well, you're lucky you got in." His voice is deep—low—almost hypnotic in the quiet of the diner. It's so different from the often nasal quality of Mr. J's speech. "Ruby must've really liked you."
"She seemed kind of desperate," she says, honestly.
Ben smirks at her. "Well, we're always hiring fresh meat."
Taylor frowns at him. She can't tell if he's teasing her again or not. "Fresh meat?"
"Shit." Ben looks up suddenly, somewhere behind her, maybe catching the clock on the wall. He tosses the fork back into the bucket with all the other clean silverware—but not before making a show of licking the tines, his long, broad tongue flattening on the underside. Taylor is transfixed as he does it. Afterwards, he winks at her, and Taylor can only blink at him. "Gotta go."
Ben leaves just as suddenly as he had come, but a second later he is circling back, kneeling onto the booth behind her and leaning over the back of her seat. His breath is warm on her ear.
"Keep up with the weights, powerlifter. Maybe one of these days I'll let you spot me at the gym."
"Don't let any light fixtures hit you on your way to the kitchen," she throws coolly over her shoulder.
Ben slips away, and she turns in her seat to catch him grinning to himself.
She turns back around, and she can't help it—she's grinning, too.
When she glances back into the bucket of silverware, she gingerly plucks out the fork he'd licked. He's funny—but that was definitely gross.
Their relationship progresses over the next several weeks, as summer melts slowly on. Time is weird in the summer—strange, she thinks—sometimes moving so impossibly slow it's as if autumn will never come. One summer day bleeding into the next, and the next, ad infinitum, but then by August, the clock turns harried, frantic, and summer blasts to the finish line as if pulled there by centrifugal force.
Things between them start out slowly at first, Ben meandering out of the kitchen during the midafternoon and nighttime lulls to talk—killing time—trailing at her heels like an oversized puppy, hungry for her attention, for some reason, which she is always happy to give. She likes having his attention—maybe because no one's ever paid her this much attention. No one except Mr. J.
Ben watches her fold silverware—Taylor sitting in her usual booth so she can keep an eye on the hostess's stand—or occupies one of the barstools while she refills the napkin dispensers, the glass ketchup bottles, the salt and pepper shakers. His chin in his hand while she spritzes the windows or wipes down the counters or mops the floors. Sometimes he comes out and helps her bus tables when it's really busy. They even have a little system worked out. He loads the dishes into the bucket propped against his hip, and she quickly wipes down the tables, rearranges the salt and pepper and the maple syrup, sets everything up for the next guest. They work well together that way.
Ben is, in a word, awkward—but it's paired with such an unhealthy dose of sheer ego that it weirdly balances itself out. Some days she doesn't know what to make of his erratic behavior, the way he practically bounces off the walls one minute with an energy and vivacity that is unparalleled in nature, and then in the next minute is sulking and miserable, lumbering around the diner with all the force of a storm cloud just waiting to burst; she's since then learned that initiating contact during these times is like asking to be struck by lightning.
He's volatile—different from the volatility she's come to expect from Mr. J—with a temper that often borders on infantile. But he's easy to calm down after he's had a smoke, or punched his locker. Sometimes he overturns a few chairs in the breakroom, or slams a few pots and pans around in the giant metal sink, or goes out back to howl his frustrations at the sky at the top of his lungs, hands fisted in his hair like he's going to rip it out. Sometimes she hears an enraged fuck! from the kitchen, and she knows it's him. She smiles apologetically at the customers at the counter and makes a point of staying out of the kitchen until he's calmed down.
But Ben is sweet, too. For all of his bravado, there's something almost virginal about him, too, an over-eagerness that seems to betray the fact that he's never gotten his dick wet, but Taylor can't be sure. Like, sometimes it's the way he stares at her chest, like he's caught in some kind of trance, and she has to tap him on the arm to bring him out of it. His face heats up in embarrassment afterwards, which makes her embarrassed, and then they both have to look at anything else but each other until the moment passes. And he touches her a lot, too, and sometimes it's like he has no concept of personal space; always standing too close, finding ways to press himself up against her, practically connected at her hip when they're sitting next to each other. She catches him staring at her legs, too, and her ass, and there probably isn't a body part of hers that he hasn't ogled, but she doesn't really mind it because it makes her feel wanted. And she really, really wants Ben to want her, even if she doesn't fully understand why.
He's manic, and funny, and messy, and huge, and being around him is like basking in the sun, if the sun weren't millions of miles away and was instead right in front of your face. The attention he feeds her makes her toes curl though, and they both seem to want whatever the other has to offer in equal measure.
Sometimes she joins him out back by the dumpsters when he takes a smoke break, and she sits on the stack of waterlogged wooden pallets, legs dangling above the pavement, while he leans against the brick building opposite her and watches her through swirls of smoke.
They talk constantly, and lapses of silence are rare. She likes talking to him. It's easy—different than it is with Mr. J, who usually just listens and only interjects occasionally. With Ben, it's like they can't get their words out fast enough, both of them tripping over the enormity of everything there is to say. They hang off each other's words, waiting impatiently for the other to finish so they can elbow in with their own thoughts and opinions. Ben asks her a lot of questions about her life, full of genuine curiosity, and she finds herself opening up to him in a way she hasn't opened up with anyone else before. She blossoms in his hand like a flower, and he provides her with the patience and attentiveness to do so. For the first time in a long time, there's no shame tethered to her honesty, and she tells him things about her past that's she never told anyone—things she's always felt too embarrassed or too afraid to say out loud. But Ben doesn't judge her, just quietly nods his head, brows furrowed like he knows exactly where she's coming from, and it makes Taylor's heart swell with something she's never felt before. She feels heard. Understood.
They talk about the orphanage, and her foster families, the giant question mark that is her parents. She wonders aloud what they might've been like, if they're still alive, and why they didn't want her, and Ben says fuck them for abandoning you and you deserve better, and Taylor shrugs halfheartedly, unsure about it, even though there's something about Ben's words that warms her from the inside out, maybe the fact that his sentiment is so full of passionate, self-righteous anger; just another demonstration of the ways in which he cares for her.
He tells her things about his own life, too. His failed attempts at community college—he'd studied to be an electrician—the Army, his futile efforts to guide his little sister down a different path than the fate that had befallen their mother, who had overdosed six years ago. His dad, an alcoholic, had been out of the picture since he was a kid, good fucking riddance. Ben is very emphatic—cogent in the way he describes his upbringing, his life—like bad things just keep happening to him which he has no agency over. He is the victim in every single story, and nothing is ever his fault. Taylor's heart bleeds for him. It did seem like life had handed him a particularly awful deck of cards. Whenever he finishes telling her about some terrible thing that had happened to him, he always lightens the mood afterwards by cuffing her on the cheek and telling her that meeting her made all the bad stuff worth it. She always ducks her head and blushes, happy but also flattered that she clearly means so much to him.
After a while, Ben takes to walking her to the bus stop at night. She waits for him out back after her shift ends since it usually takes him a while to finish all the dishes, and then they walk the half mile it takes to get to the bus stop. They sit underneath the plastic overhanging together, talking in the dark, the city a blur of white and gold around them, the night air warm like candlelight, the pavement still hot from the earlier assault of the sun. He entertains her with anecdotes of the day and spot-on impressions of their coworkers, and she laughs until her cheeks are sore and flushed with heat. When the hiss of brakes alerts them of the bus's arrival and they go to stand, Ben scoops her off her feet from behind, and she lets out a sharp peal of laughter, urging him to let her go. When he whispers, "What if I don't?", heat unfurls somewhere in her lower belly, so delicious and hot that she can barely think straight. He's a little sweaty, the stench of bleach and fried food and nicotine clinging to his clothes, but she thinks she likes the way his arms feel around her.
She waves to him from the window once she's seated, and Ben jogs after the bus as it pulls away, yells something to her that she can't hear, but she deciphers the word "powerlifter" from the shape of his mouth, and she knocks on her head with her fist and spits her tongue out at him.
One day at work, Ben is particularly quiet, and Taylor thinks something is wrong, her brows furrowing together in her concern, but during their lunch break—which they almost always take at the same time now—he grabs her wrist and pulls her out back.
"I was trying to hold off until tonight to show you, but I can't wait any longer."
"What is it?"
Ben urges her through the back door and they spill out into the alley, where a splash of yellow sunlight slicks the brick wall of the laundromat next door, like spilled paint. He gestures with both hands to the car parked there, grinning so hard she's afraid his face will split in half from the strain.
"Oh, my god!" she squeals. "You bought a car?"
"Bet your ass I did." He looks unbelievably proud, standing there like he built the thing himself. "It's an utter piece of crap," he says, "but it's got a sun roof."
"Wow."
Taylor edges closer, excited for him as she peers inside. It's got leather interior. That's nice, she thinks.
Ben watches her, leaning up against the passenger door and crossing his arms. "Wanna go for a ride?"
Taylor blinks up at him. "Right now?"
He laughs. "Not now. Later—tonight."
"Oh." She's not sure if Mr. J would like that—in fact, she knows Mr. J wouldn't like that. It screams 'bad idea'… but it thrills her to imagine going somewhere with Ben. Just the two of them. Maybe Mr. J doesn't have to know. He's usually not home when she gets back from work anyway.
She tugs her lower lip into her mouth, thinking, and after a moment, she meets Ben's eyes, smiling.
"Let's do it."
She vibrates for the rest of the day, excited for later that night. When it finally happens, she's surging with electricity as she slides into his car after their shifts have ended. It was a long day, made all the longer by her impatience. He holds open the door for her as she gets inside—Mr. J does that sometimes—but it feels different when Ben does it. Everything feels different with Ben.
He walks around to the driver's side, tosses his apron in the backseat and closes his door. Turns the key.
"Been saving up for a car for so fucking long."
"I just learned to drive," she chirps, proud, sitting up straight in her seat. She hasn't been able to share this accomplishment with anyone other than Mr. J. "I don't have a car though, unless I borrow mister—I mean, my uncle's—but I don't think he'd let me."
She buckles her seatbelt and looks over at him, but Ben doesn't seem to be listening to her, too busy adjusting the dials on the dashboard.
"I'm gonna install a nice bass system, too, you know? Something that makes the windows shake."
She wrinkles her nose at the idea but doesn't say anything.
"Now I can drop you off at home after work," he says, matter-of-fact. "Where did you say you live again?"
Taylor bites her lip. That's definitely not a good idea.
"Ben, you really don't have to do that…"
"No, I want to. You shouldn't ride the bus so late at night anyway. I'm surprised your uncle lets you do that."
She doesn't argue. Maybe she can get him to drop her off a few blocks from the house or something. It'd be nice getting to spend more time with him after work.
He pulls out of the mostly-empty parking lot, slipping into dark, wet streets. It had rained all day, the sky overcast and slate gray from sun up to sun down, but it had brought in a nice lunch crowd and a pretty good dinner crowd, too, people looking to escape the rain. There's only a light drizzle now, the air a little cooler, not as taut and high-strung with humidity. Lightning flashes intermittently in the distance, but there's no thunder. The air conditioning makes goose bumps pimple over her bare legs and thighs, and she tries to pull her skirt a little lower.
They talk as usual, filling up the silence as Ben shifts gears, eases into the feeling of driving a car he's not totally familiar with yet. He just bought it yesterday.
"Maybe I can finally get out of this fucking place," he mutters, mostly to himself, but she doesn't miss the bitterness colored in his voice.
"You don't like it here?"
"You do?" He casts her a sidelong glance, one hand braced on the wheel at six o'clock. "Even after all the shit you've been through with foster parents and the orphanage? Don't you want to leave? Get out of this shithole?"
Taylor stares down into her lap. She's never thought about it. She's never thought about leaving Mr. J, striking it out on her own. What would she do? Where would she go? Gotham is her home—it's all she knows.
"I guess I haven't really thought about it," she says, honest and sheepish. Why does everyone else seem like they've got everything all figured out except for her?
"Maybe I'll move out west. Live in California, you know? Learn to surf or whatever. You ever been?"
She shakes her head. California sounds nice. Maybe. Palm trees and stuff. San Francisco and L.A. Celebrities. Redwoods. She doesn't really know that much about it.
"You could come with me," Ben says after a moment, downshifting into another gear, looking at her out of the corner of his eye. "Be a movie star out there."
She replies with a sound of indignation. "Seriously?"
"Yeah, you've like, got that look about you." He scrubs a hand over his mouth, like he's deep in thought. "I mean, obviously you're shy, but I bet you could be great if you really tried, maybe win an Oscar or something."
Taylor flushes all the way down to her toes. Ben is so effusive with his praise sometimes that it's practically blinding in its radiance. She reaches down to grip the sides her seat, feeling weightless, like she might float away if she doesn't anchor herself.
"And, hey, if that doesn't work out," Ben glances at her, "you can always go Arnold Schwarzenegger on everyone's asses. Join the wrestling circuit. Impress them with all that muscle."
Taylor rolls her eyes, biting back a grin. "You're never going to let me live that down, are you?"
"Only because it embarrasses you so much." He grins. "And you're cute when you blush."
This comment only serves to make her redden even further. God, is this something she'll ever grow out of?
They're on some back road now, and Taylor isn't exactly sure where they are or where they're going, only that it's really dark without any streetlamps. She hadn't even noticed them fade away until now. The yellow headlights attempt to patch through the darkness, but the mixture of steam and fog rising from the pavement is thick, enveloping the exterior of the car in a ghostly blanket. It's kind of creepy out here. Quiet.
She catches sight of some drooping powerlines, and trees on either side of the road. Lots of trees.
"Hey, Ben—" she starts, nervous.
He's wearing a shit-eating grin, ignoring her. "Come on, show me the muscles." He's reaching across the console for her upper arm, and Taylor shifts away from him, her eyes darting to the road. It's barely visible through the fog now, and he's driving really fast.
"Ben—"
"No, come on, just flex them once. Don't hold out on me now—"
"Ben—BEN!" she screams. The road in front of them curves sharply, and Ben swears, swerving the wheel, but it's too late.
The car careens off the road with a speed that's terrifying, and there's no time to think, no time to process anything but the fear that seizes her lungs, paralyzing her in the long, drawn-out seconds it takes for the car to crash violently through the woods. Taylor is yanked forward, held back partially by the seatbelt, but her head still collides with the window, or maybe the dashboard, and then there is nothing else but darkness.
To be continued in Part ll…
Author's Notes: Okay, I hate that I couldn't give you guys what I promised you in the author's notes of the last chapter—but this chapter completely ran away from me, and, once again, I found myself having to split the chapter in half due to length. Chapter seven will be well worth the wait, if you can stick around for it.
If you haven't received them yet, review replies for the previous chapter(s) are forthcoming. Thank you all so much for reading, each and every one of your reviews is invaluable to me, I cannot stress that enough. Recently I've heard from several readers who've stated they've felt nervous about reviewing in the past—please don't be. I want to take this time to assure you guys that every single review is so incredibly important to me, even if you feel like you don't have much to say. I'm here, writing this story, because of you guys.
Also, I don't bite—unless you like that kind of thing.