Broken Girl(27)

“Shane, you know I don’t do surprises. Not like that.”

“Well, come on, just this one time let me surprise my friend Complicated Rose with something unexpected. I’ve followed your lead, kept your rules, let me just have this one little thing. Let me take you some place that is very special to me.”

He hopped off the washing machine, shuffled in front of me and wedged himself between my knees. His hands burned hot through my jeans as his fingers curled around my waist. It wasn’t uncommon that he’d find ways to touch me that told me he wanted more.

I pushed him back and pulled my legs up crisscross, resting my elbows on my knees. I looked down at my fingernails; they looked so naked without polish.

“I don’t know. Where is it? What time would we be back? It’s a Friday, and well, what am I going to tell Sybil? I . . . I . . . I just don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” I pulled my thumb up to my mouth and started chewing on my cuticle.

I knew I looked crazy to him, but he’d never get it. I couldn’t do a relationship. I couldn’t even kinda go there. We’d already spent way too much time together as friends, now he wanted to take me somewhere special to him without me knowing where it was? Hell no, that wasn’t gonna work for me, not for the prostitute who couldn’t throw a rock in the Tenderloin without hitting one of her tricks . . . okay, that was a little dramatic, but still.

“Rose, I’m not going to steal you away for the weekend. God knows the crazy hours you keep doing whatever it is that you do. I just wanted to take you over to the East Bay so we can go hiking, that’s all,” he groaned.

“Hiking? Do I look like a girl who hikes?” I said trying to lighten the mood and change the energy that ramped up between us.

“Yeah, I think you do! You look like a girl who should say yes to hiking with her best-guy-friend. Especially since he promises to have her back before her carriage turns into a pumpkin.” His eyelids closed half way in a lazy blink before his mouth broke into a sexy smile as he crossed his heart with his fingers pressed against his black T-shirt. If he only knew, if I’d let him into my head . . . he’d see the struggle I have had with having him as a friend.

“Fine, I can’t believe I’m going to agree to this . . . I’ll go hiking with you tomorrow. Where do you want to meet?”

“I was thinking I’d pick you up at your place.”

“Shaaaane,” I moaned.

“Rooooose,” he replied.

“Why are you being so . . . persistent?”

“Why are you being so . . . complicated?”

“Because my life is complicated and we already established that the first time we met.”

“And you know I like to get my way, we’ve already established that. So, instead of being so complicated, why don’t you compromise and let me pick you up? I’ll tell you what, let’s make a deal. Let’s say . . . I won’t even get out of the car. I will honk three times, keep the motor running and wait for you to get in. I won’t even open the car door for you. Now, if that isn’t compromising I don’t know what is.”

“It’s you being persistent, that’s what it is.”

“So, is that a yes?” he asked lowering his head to meet my eyes. I glanced at him, popped him in the chest before I nodded my head.

Damn, I knew agreeing to this would open a whole different can of worms. Before this moment, Shane and I really just kept all the life drama outside of the laundromat pretty much on the down low. Minimal information about our childhood, work and where we lived was the best way to manage my lie. An unspoken rule I enforced that seemed to work for both of us . . . well, for me at least, up until now.

A couple of Thursdays ago Shane asked me what I did for a living. I guess the cloudy, unclear, broad answers I brushed across the piece of shit canvas just weren’t cutting it for him anymore. I knew it was a matter of time before he’d push back at me to know why I couldn’t ever hang out with him after five o’clock at night. My whole life, I had to lie. My. Whole. Life . . . I had to do what I had to do to make it in the world. Who I was, what I was doing and how I liked to be treated were all made up scenarios. Lying had become second nature to me; I did it so much that I started to believe it wasn’t a lie if they ate the shit up. So, when the subject of what I did for a living came up between Shane and me, I lied. I told him that I took online classes two nights a week and the other five nights I took care of people in their homes. It was the perfect excuse to justify my crazy hours. What person in their right mind who met me outside of paying me for a f*ck would accept what I did for a living? Was it fair? Not really, but what part of life was fair? Honestly, it ate away at the back of my mind, lying to Shane; but I had to keep my reality in that place where I didn’t let anyone see, the one place that held my deepest secrets. No matter how much I prepared myself for his reaction I had no doubt in my mind that he’d never want to see me again. When I thought of him finding out that I was a prostitute . . . well, I just had to prepare myself, so when it did happen, it wouldn’t hurt so bad. Unfortunately, even the deepest sting of abandonment still didn’t stop me from wanting to be near him and if I had to lie to have a sliver of him, so be it.

Forty-five minutes, the time it took to dry my clothes, that was how long he babbled about Joaquin Miller Park. He was like a teenage boy who finally kissed the girl of his dreams. His eyes had a spark, a gleam that ignited his whole demeanor. His arms and hands, spastically flew as he talked about the beautiful trails with their bay views. The more he talked about it the more my stomach twisted into knots. I wanted to be excited about hanging out with him tomorrow, but there was dread brewing in my gut.