Freeks(7)

“You made the right call.”

He shut the bedroom door behind me, instantly muffling the noise of the party. The voices were almost silent, but the thumping bass from Run-D.M.C. still made it through the walls.

“Why don’t I put on music?” Gabe suggested. “But at a much more reasonable decibel.”

I slipped off my jacket and tossed it on his bed, while he rummaged through his cassettes. “Sure.”

“Do you like U2?” Gabe asked as he adjusted the volume.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I haven’t heard that much by them.”

While he played around with his stereo, I walked around, admiring his room.

The sense of permanence I felt in this room was something I would never feel in my trailer. No faux paneling. No crank-operated skylights that leaked whenever it rained. This was a home, and I couldn’t help but feel a twinge of envy. Not necessarily of Gabe, but just of being able to have a life like this, of having a home that didn’t change location every week.

“So,” Gabe said when he finished adjusting his stereo, and music played softly.

I stood at the far wall and looked back at him over my shoulder.

His mouth was open slightly, and he stared at me with the strangest expression on his face. I waited a moment for him to say something, but when he didn’t, I began to feel self-conscious and rubbed at my arms left bare from my sleeveless lace top.

“What?” I asked finally.

“Nothing.” An embarrassed smile broke out on his face, and he shook his head.

I sat down on the bed, and he waited a beat before sitting beside me. “Have you lived here a long time?”

“Not really. I was actually born here, but we moved away for a while. We just came back this past summer.” He motioned around us. “This is actually the family home, like, my grandparents owned it, and their parents before them, and on and on.”

“I thought I hadn’t detected a Southern accent,” I commented.

“No, I grew up in upstate New York. My mom has a strong accent, but the rest of us don’t.”

“So are you glad to be back down here?” I asked.

“I don’t know. If I’m being honest, I didn’t really wanna come back. I was supposed to be starting college this past fall, and I had everything all planned.”

“How did you end up here?”

“My mom’s brother died, and he left us the house and everything. Since it’s the family estate, my mom refused to sell it, and she insisted that I postpone all my plans for higher education and come back here. Selena was more than happy to drop out, but I’d been looking forward to NYU.”

“That seems like a weird thing for a parent to insist,” I said. “I don’t have any experience with higher education, but I thought that parents usually pushed for you to go.”

“Yeah, my mom can be strange sometimes.” He shook his head. “What about you?”

“I’m mostly just passing through.” I evaded the question as best I could. Things always went much better when people didn’t know I lived with a traveling carnival.

He leaned back, and I felt his eyes searching me again. “So, what are you, some kind of vagabond?”

“What?” I laughed to cover up how caught off-guard I felt. “Why do you ask that?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You implied that you’re traveling soon, and you kinda look bohemian.”

“How do bohemians look?” I asked.

“Like you?” he asked, then shrugged. “I don’t know. I think it’s the earrings.”

My earrings were dangling feathers, and I touched one. “The feathers? Madonna has an earring like this.”

He looked down and pointed to my arms. “What about those? Do they mean anything?”

All down my left forearm, I had tattoos of little black paw prints leaving a trail from my inner elbow down to my wrist. I touched them when Gabe leaned over to get a better look. He was so close, I could smell the mousse in his hair, clean and fresh.

“Not really. I just thought it’d be cool.”

“They are pretty cool,” Gabe agreed.

He reached out to touch them, and the light umber skin of his hand was nearly as dark as my own. His fingers trailed across my skin, sending small tingles down my arm everywhere he touched.

Then he stopped and leaned back to look up at me. His eyes were mesmerizing, but it was his mouth that really caught me. His lips seemed to have this permanent smile at the edges, even when he wasn’t really grinning, like he knew some kind of private joke.

His eyes weren’t enchanting because of the rich color, but because of the wicked glimmer to them. Somehow, even when I was outside and too far away to really see, I’d noticed that gleam—a promise of something a little sinful and dangerous—that made my heart pound loudly. As he looked at me now, I felt my pulse quicken and heat flush my skin.

That’s what I’d thought I should’ve feared when I was downstairs, but in truth, it was that glint of something else that had actually brought me here.

“Do you have any more tattoos?” he asked.

“A couple. But they’re hidden under my clothes.”

He smiled crookedly. “Maybe I can see them some other time then.”