Thank you to the moon and back for such kindness. I hope this chapter finds you some enjoyment. As usual, mistakes are mine and I'm sorry for them.
Chapter 4
She didn't know what she had done wrong but obviously she had done something.
Kenneth's aloof behavior last night made Elizabeth feel reluctant to head downstairs to make some breakfast before school out of fear he would already be awake. She found she could not bare the thought of having to see him this morning, particularly after what had happened last night. She felt sick with a hammering heart just by the thought of having to face seeing him.
She couldn't fathom what had happened last night, or just what his reasons were behind it.
No matter how many times she tried to search for a logical reason in her mind that would explain his sudden change of behavior while they had danced, she could not find any whatsoever.
She did suspect that maybe she had offended him, that she had wounded some fragile, precious manly pride, in joking about his age and making a comment about it. If so, she hadn't expected him to take it so solemnly. In truth, Elizabeth did not feel the age of thirty-eight was anywhere near what she personally considered as old. Old, to her, was a person in their eighties or nineties.
She had always believed, perhaps naively, that adults were different, that they communicated far differently than what other kids her age did. They had completely different codes and ways of communication and were less likely to play mind-games. Adults were more direct and if they were bothered by something, they said it straightaway with complete honesty and maturity. Or so she had blindly assumed.
If she had in fact injured his ego, he could have simply been straightforward and told her that last night so that she could get the chance to clarify her beliefs on age straight to his face, therefore automatically rectifying any beef he felt he had with her due to her half-serious comment.
All Elizabeth knew was that she didn't feel like apologizing to him. She wasn't going to apologize when she didn't even know what it was that she was apologizing for in the first place.
When Red woke at six in the morning, he felt immediately wide-awake and alert. His sleeping patterns over the years had become so vastly unpredictable and disordered. He knew that now that he was awake, he had no hope in hell of falling back to sleep again so he didn't bother trying.
It would have only been a waste of his time, and a time-waster, he was not. Instead, he got up, making the bed as neatly as possible. Then he got changed into a pair of jeans and a blue business shirt, taking his time in buttoning it up. After tucking the tail of his shirt neatly into his jeans, he sat, tying up his shoe laces before sliding his silver Rolex watch on over the wrist of his left hand. After that habitual little regimen was done, he lifted a hand to comb his fingers through his hair, then stood.
To make himself feel more energetic and less foggy-brained, he trod downstairs to the kitchen to make a hot cup of coffee. No one was awake at this hour, or so it had seemed. The house was still and serene; the only sounds to be heard were the birds chirping from outside pleasantly and the light pitter pattering of rain on the roof.
No doubt his old friend Sam was still fast asleep in his room. As for Lizzy, well... he chose deliberately not to mull on anything concerning her from this point onward.
He was unsatisfied with the brand of coffee Sam had in the canister; It was cheap and generic, with a bland taste. Maxwell House. As good as the last drop, the slogan preached on the back of the can. When he stirred in his milk and sipped at it curiously, he hummed in distaste, judging otherwise.
As good as the last drop, his ass.
"I'd rather drink an entire jug of lighter fluid," he muttered under his breath to himself, cringing with appall at the aftertaste.
He much preferred Brazilian coffee, if he had to be truthful. With their coffee and the way they blended it with such obvious love and care so that it tasted so consistently smooth, so robust and bursting with rich flavor, Maxwell House coffee lacked in comparison. But alas, there were some things that you just had to grin and bare.
Sam had done him a great kindness in allowing him to stay at his house for a good week or two. It was not his place to be so picky.
Making do with what he had to, Red pulled back a chair at the kitchen table, sitting down with a heavy sigh as he sat the mug of coffee next to his elbow. He brought a hand up to rub the side of his face with his fingers as he turned the mug around to see what the graphic on the mug was. The picture was faded and scratched by now, but he could still make out its impression. Best daughter in the world, it read. He had a fair idea on just whom the mug belonged to, and just his luck, it was Lizzy's.
No matter how hard he tried, he could not seem to get past the sheer shame of what had happened last evening with her. He had always suspected the type of man that he was- a terrible, terrible disgrace of a man- and that did not ring any truer for him than it did now. The way he had thought about Lizzy just by merely dancing with her, the way it felt to hold his hand up against her hip... If Sam became aware, Red had no doubts whatsoever in his mind that his friend would sodomize him with a stick.
But he had made a firm vow to himself that from this point forward, he would be mindful to keep his distance. There would be no more asking her to share a dance with him, no more... anything. He would be respectful and keep his distance. He would refrain from asking her questions to learn more about her now that she had grown into the young woman she was now becoming. It was only fair, to both Sam and to her, that he did.
The only feasible solution he found for outgrowing these impractical feelings he had felt for her was to ignore her as much as humanly possible, even if it meant being hugely unpleasant to her and standoffish. These feelings, these sudden and instant, lewd and overtly sexual thoughts... they simply could not go on.
Footsteps encroached into the kitchen, disrupting the silent splendor he had been experiencing.
He felt his pulse scatter as he sat up straighter with his back against the chair, keeping his head down and his eyes fixed resolutely on the brown liquid in the mug as either Lizzy or Sam entered the kitchen. For some reason he was unaware of, he immediately suspected it was Lizzy that was now awake. And, as it turned out, his guess had been so unfortunately correct.
"Morning," she muttered in a careless way, as if she did not recall the previous evenings events where in which they had danced together.
"Yes, good morning to you too, Lizzy," he forced himself to say stiffly, with not quite having the heart to be unnecessarily rude despite knowing it would have made it easier for himself in the long run. He huffed quietly at himself for his lack of willpower as he moved the muscles of his lower jaw around, side to side.
He had feared that he had been so transparent with her last night, that the way he was thinking about her had been so palpable that she could somehow sense it off him like a ghastly odor that refused to go away.
Apparently he had stressed over nothing because, as he forced himself to turn his head to look at her, she appeared just as careless and unfussed as her tone had implied. He had been working himself up so hard to disregard her mere presence in the room and yet, just like that, like moths to a flame, his gaze was instantly drawn to her.
She was already dressed and ready for the day, wearing tight denim jeans, Converse sneakers, and a pretty ruffled blue blouse. It shamed him that he took an instinctive evaluation of how tight and well the light blue denim jeans seemed to fit to the shape of her ample derriere.
"Damn it." He stared at the back of her head, her hair, as she looked out through the curtains. "It's raining outside and I'm supposed to walk."
Before he even realized it he was speaking, immediately foiling his plans to give the girl a wide berth. "Seeing as I really have nothing better to do with my time this morning, I could always give you a lift to school if you'd like?"
When Elizabeth had gotten inside the front yard after school yesterday, she hadn't seen another car outside in their driveway. She brought her eyes away from the window with hesitance, her face seeming to redden as she made herself look back at him. "Do you even drive? I'm pretty sure I haven't seen your car parked outside in the driveway?"
"I haven't driven a car in years," he admitted, eager to do it now, though he knew, deep down inside, that the idea of spending time alone with Lizzy was partly a main contributing factor to that. So much for being mindful to keep a respectful distance. "But surely it couldn't be that hard to pick up again. I'm assuming its similar to drawing. You just keep the car between the lines at all times."
The sound of her laughter made his heart surge and he clenched his eyes shut tight, scolding himself as he brought the rim of his mug up to his lips. He really needed to get a firm grasp on himself.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure driving a car isn't as simple as that."
Elizabeth felt various emotions overtake her as she stared at the back of Kenneth's head from where he sat at the kitchen table. It was a small favor, but a kind one. She had feared that somehow she had done something wrong last night, something to turn him off after he had left so abruptly. But, with the way he was acting now, apparently she had only just been paranoid. He wasn't avoiding her at the very least, while sending her confusing adult mixed messages. But it became discernible to her that he was avoiding looking at her.
"Thank you, though; I'd really appreciate it if you could."
"You are more than welcome, Lizzy." He did not turn his head or lift it to look at her again and she noticed he seemed overly preoccupied with the cup he was holding between his hands suddenly. She knew what that cup was herself; Sam had given her it on her twelfth birthday, though she had not used it for hot drinks in quite some time. "Just go gather your things and then we'll leave so that you can make it to school on time."
"You don't know how much it would mean to me. I...I just don't exactly want to be soaking wet by the time I get to my first class."
Red had been halfway through swallowing down a mouthful of his coffee as she said the harmless, yet in his eyes, daringly provocative words.
The liquid went down the wrong way through what he was assuming was his windpipe, and he coughed and spluttered uncouthly. He felt his skin burn up in temperature, as though he were a man-made furnace, when he heard her move behind him.
She started patting him around his back with her hand in a soothing way, enough that he could feel the warmth of her hand through the cotton of his shirt, alternating between light thumps with the heel of her hand, then in the very next second some caressing rubs; as one does to offer their assistance when someone appears to be choking. He hadn't felt more embarrassed in his entire life than he had in that moment. How he was acting in front of her, it was absolutely ludicrous.
"Thank you, Lizzy, for your concern but I really am fine," he choked out desperately, wanting her to stop touching him with her hand.
It felt too good, too... relaxing to the point where she was starting to have affect in other places of his body. It was only a mere miracle that the lower half of his body was concealed under the table. His pants had began to feel horrendously restrictive. Jiggling his knees beneath the table and knocking them together did nothing to assuage it.
When she left the room and he heard her stomp up the stairs hurriedly to gather her things, he hung his head, hitting his forehead against the hard wood of the table repetitively until the feelings went away. The stinging sensation in the center of his forehead each time he battered it against the hard pine wood distracted him and began to make him forget. By the time Lizzy had returned downstairs to the kitchen holding her textbooks behind her curled arms, only then did he feel enough normalcy and strength to attempt to stand.
"Oh, don't forget. Here's dad's keys." Thinking quick, he caught them as she chucked them to him and as they went out the front door, Red paused by her father's rusting red old Ford Pontiac in the slick and wet driveway, his fingers slipping every time he tried to use the key to unlock it.
His hands were sweaty and it was something he did not like.
And here's another chapter. Thank you so much for being so kind, it really humbles me. I am still nervous about this as I don't know if its right to write it but I do hope you like. :D