The Reckless Oath We Made(9)

“Gentry will take me.” They pronounced it Gent-ree. He pronounced it Gen-tree.

“I wanna go,” Vicky said.

“You’re not going.”

“Mom!”

“Take your sister,” Miranda said.

“I fucking hate you, zit face,” Marla said to Vicky. Then she turned to Gentry, who still hadn’t finished eating in between all his other errands, and said, “Take me to the mall.”

“There’s this word you maybe haven’t heard of,” I said. “Please.”

“Fuck you, Lady Thunderthighs.”

“Oh, ow. My feelings.”

“Spew not thy venom on Lady Zhorzha,” Gentry said.

“Spew not thy venom,” Marla said in that shitty teenage voice.

“We should start buying lottery tickets, Marla,” I said. “If we win, I can get lipo on my thighs and you can get a plastic surgeon to fix your ugly nose.”

“Fuck you!” Marla started crying, but I didn’t feel even a little bit bad.

“You think you’re so much better than us,” Miranda said. “Just like Gentry. You’ve been looking down at us since you walked in here.”

I was a guest in her house, and on another day, I would’ve kept my mouth shut and made nice. My whole existence since I left home at sixteen was built on being polite to strangers, but I’d reached the end of the line that day. I stood up and put my backpack on.

“I don’t think I’m better than you. I am better than you,” I said. Then I felt bad. “I’m really sorry, Gentry.”

“Well, fuck you,” Brand said. “You’re nobody special, you bitch.”

“Nay, I may not,” Gentry had said to the person he sometimes talked to on his left. He clenched his hand into a fist. “Truly they aren queds, but they aren my kin.”

“Oh my god, Little Lord Fauntleroy and his invisible friend,” Miranda said.

His own mother said that, and the rest of them laughed.

When I walked out, Gentry followed me. We stood in the street, him scratching the back of his neck with both hands. I didn’t know him that well, but I knew that meant he was upset.

“It’s okay,” I said. “You don’t need to worry about me. I can get the bus home.” Anywhere was better than there. Even a homeless shelter. It wouldn’t have been the first time I stayed in one.

“Nay, my lady.”

He walked over and opened the passenger door on his truck for me. I don’t even remember discussing it, just that Gentry drove us to a motel. I wasn’t sure what it would mean for us to get a motel room together, because that stupid kiss was still hanging over me. Whatever happened, I decided, that was up to him. Once we were in the room, he knelt in front of me where I sat on the edge of the bed.

He took my hand—the first time he’d ever touched me—and he didn’t seem too sure about how to hold it. I expected his hand to be sweaty. Nervous. But it was dry and steady.

“Lady Zhorzha, canst thou forgive me? I am shamed that my family was uncourteous to thee.”

“It’s okay. You don’t get to choose your family.” I squeezed his hand, to let him know I didn’t take it personally, and maybe as an invitation to something else. He squeezed back for a second, and then he let go and stood up.

“I must leave thee,” he said. “For I serve the Duke of Bombardier this night. I shall see thee in the morn.”

He went and I stayed. Somewhere around one A.M., LaReigne called me, not to tell me I could come home, but to tell me Loudon had kicked her out and what should she do?

In the morning, when Gentry had come back, there I was with Marcus and LaReigne, camped out in a motel room he’d paid for. Even while I was trying to let Gentry off the hook, I was dragging him in deeper. Like I was quicksand, too.

It scared me, because of how awful his family was, and how he put up with it. My lady, thy servant started to look like an invitation to use him, and I was afraid I wasn’t good enough to resist that temptation. I knew I had to walk away after I borrowed a thousand bucks from him to pay the deposit on an apartment for LaReigne, Marcus, and me. I had mooched off so many people over the years, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it to him.

That was why I agreed to do the Trinidad run for Asher the first time. Money from waiting tables got spent as fast as I could make it, but I walked away from that first run with two thousand in cash. After Toby dropped me off, I sat out on the apartment building’s steps, waiting for Gentry to show up, like he did most mornings. I hadn’t talked to him since I borrowed the money, and I figured that would be the last time. I walked over to his truck and, when he rolled down the window, handed him the thousand dollars. I thanked him and said goodbye. Then I went inside.

Two minutes later, he knocked on the apartment door, and handed me the cash back.

“’Twas a present, my lady,” he said.

I never tried to give him the money again. I used it to buy the piece-of-shit car that was still getting me from one lousy waitressing job to another.

After that, I thought he would go his way, and I’d go mine. We’d never had a relationship or anything, but apparently we had something, because he kept coming around. He never tried to talk to me, but he kept driving by the apartment and the restaurants where I worked. For a while, I worked at this Cantonese place, and Gentry started coming in and ordering food to go. Sometimes for a bunch of people—his shitty family, I guessed—but usually just for himself. After I left that job and went to work at a Mediterranean place, he started getting food from there. No matter where I went, he eventually showed up and got takeout.