Athazagoraphobia

Chapter Five

"Isa."

I sighed. "What?"

"How in the fuck are we going to be out of state for well over mere hours and not trigger suspicion from my family?" Vincent put his gun against the door, letting his guard down with Keith away, before refilling the flask on his belt with some no-name brand out of my cabinet.

"Easy, just tell Caw."

"Oh good, perfect plan! First, I fuck you, and then we leave North Carolina for a week! No suspicions! The fights are gonna disqualify me." He took a swig and then spit it out in my dish tub, scrunching his nose at the flavor, "Look, if my parents even suspect I'm having an affair, they will lose their shit. I mean, lose their shit. Ma didn't raise a whore."

His ma absolutely did raise a whore, but I digressed. "Well, do you wanna go over there and clear things up?"

"Oh, absolutely not. Never in a billion years. My father already thinks I'm a homosexual-"

"You have a kid. Like, a biological child." I had no idea what expression I was making, but it was definitely exaggerated.

"Didn't say his logic was sound, now did I?" His thumb was pressed firmly against his temple as a show of stress. "He thinks Cara's got an affinity for women, and I the opposite."

I pinched the bridge of my nose in solidarity and went over to put a record into my gramophone. "Okay, okay... how're we going to navigate this? We need to schedule, and let the folks know. What's the story we give?"

"Fucking sightseeing? I don't know. What's in Oregon? Don't know anyone here who would have a travel pamphlet."

"To be honest, I've only ever seen pages for Pinehurst, and that's in-state. We can go check out the train station this afternoon if that's up your alley."

He kept digging through my cabinet and held the label of one bottle up super close to his eye. "Oh shit, where'd you get this?" I didn't see what he grabbed before it was all in his flask and he had started taking hits off it, "No, yeah, I'm down for the train station. I just have to get changed into church clothes so the pigs think I'm rich and don't harass me as much."

"Okay, well, you know you've got some stuff in the guest room that you never picked up a while back, so you can dig through those if you'd like." I waved my hand, still thumbing through my records. He gestured with his drink and nodded, heading into my guest room.

"Hey, what time is it?" I heard through the door.

I glanced at the pocket watch he left near my lamp. "Quarter past seven."

"All right." I sat in silence for several minutes and only noticed he was back in my living room when the door clicked behind him. The man wore all black constantly, so he had no issues with color clashes — in fact, he looked more dapper than I ever would. "Church enough?" he asked.

I tried to examine his clothes in detail. Silk cravat, wrapped high-neck collar, double-breasted vest, the works, but my focus was mostly on the fact that his hair was down. It was usually in a tight waist-length braid, but it tumbled from a middle part down to his mid-thigh. "Okay, don't get me wrong-"

"It was coming loose and I needed to redo it anyway. No reason." He pulled it back and wrapped it into a bun, which seemed almost laborious.

"It'll take you to noon to finish braiding all that."

"Unless you want to learn a prayer in a language I know you don't speak, I have to do it myself. Patience, Isa." He put an open hair pin between his teeth before using it to keep the top part of his braid up. Why was every little thing he did so sexy?