after
twenty-two
He isn't to be found when I reemerged—clothed.
Not till I leaned out the front door to see him walking out of Mr. DeRosa's front door.
"You're kidding," I call, crossing my arms.
His gaze finds me, a thermos of coffee in his hand.
"You still live there?"
"Hal left it to me," he replies heavily.
"You were supposed to leave."
Anaca reaches behind him, gripping the base of his spine with a pinched look on his face. "Never decided to, I guess."
"So... are you the contractor?"
He nods, offering me the thermos. "Your dad happened to call a buddy of mine to do the work."
I am reluctant to take the coffee, and he opens it, pouring a bit into the cap before offering it to me once more. I wouldn't have taken it, if I hadn't gotten a whiff of it in the breeze. Same mix of whatever it is he brews. Liquid crack.
"I offered to do it for cost," he continues, stepping around me to go back inside. "And he hired me."
"Why?" I trail behind him, refusing to let him off that easy. Anaca goes into the kitchen, resumes pulling nails from the studs where the cabinets once were.
"Why not?" he murmurs. "I'm next door and I could do it. My buddy couldn't start till this month, and I could start right away."
"Why, Anay?" leaves my lips a little more hopeless than I wanted it to.
He shifts, his eyes falling over his shoulder at the moniker I had given him so long ago. His form reoccupying the tense nature he had when we startled one another.
"I..." he shuts his eyes for a moment. "I felt like I owed your family."
"My family?" I gape.
He drops the hammer on the table and turns.
He has that look on his face.
The look of guilt creeping into every crevasse. Guilt that was never his. At least not the reason he feels it. I could think of a few other things he should feel guilty about.
"And you."
"For what?" I speak pointedly. "What great injustice did Anaca Moriarty commit against my family?"
"Woody," he pleads.
"No," I don't back down. "Tell me," I step to the edge of the table, setting the thermos cap down. "Look me in the eye and tell me."
It's always the eyes. They tell you everything if you know how to listen.
I almost wish those had changed.
But alas, they are still pale blue. Illuminating everything they look at.
"You want to finish this house?"
He gives me one slow nod.
"Then tell me," I say. "And we'll never speak of it again."
Pain flickers across his face, the deep-rooted emotional kind. I can tell that much. I just haven't quite mastered the why.
"I should be in prison," he nearly coughs. "For what I did. I was the adult, and I knew better. Nothing was your fault."
"Tell. Me," I let each word fall on its own.
YOU ARE READING
𝐅𝐢𝐥𝐭𝐡𝐲 𝐇𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐬
Romantizm"You were never supposed to be hers," I sob. "You were mine. You were always supposed to be mine, Anay." I tug my fists to my chest. "Since I was fourteen years old..." my voice cracks, stomaching the truth, of what's always been there. "You've been...
