Read My Lips: Restricted Version

RML: Chapter 2 (R)

Chapter Two

Linc heard a muted crack and smelled something faintly salty, and he rolled over to wrap his arms around Macie, smiling because she was cracking peanuts in bed again.  But instead of soft sheets and feather pillows, he felt the dampness of earth and the lump of tree roots under him.  Not in bed...not with Macie...never with Macie ever again.  

Shaking the residue of blurriness from his brain, he raised up on his elbows, looking around.  To his right, Egaeus munched on the new spring grass, calmly and normally.  But on his left, a girl sat against a tree -- his tree, not more than six inches from him -- reading and spitting sunflower shells on the ground.  For a moment, he thought he was still dreaming.  His uninvited guest was younger than Macie, yet the girl looked remarkably a lot like the love of his life.  The same sable hair, the same dainty nose, the same oval face.  Even the same sparkling blue eyes.  But Macie wouldn't be caught anywhere with a book in her hand.  She had rarely stood still long enough to read the menu at MacDonald's.

Linc blinked at the girl and the way her long curls folded along her shoulders, and instantly recounted the Lord Byron poem, “...the lovely girl of Cadiz...As along her bosom steal In lengthen’d flow her raven tresses, You’d swear each clustering lock could feel, And curl’d to give her neck caresses...”  Only, the Spanish beauty in the poem did not have eyes the same blue as the sky.  

Linc snorted and jerked his shoulders, bringing her attention back to him.  Now, he was comparing wedding guests to heroines in nineteenth century poetry.  Time to lay off the drinking for a while.  Next thing he’d know, he’d be picking wildflowers and making little necklaces out of them, while spouting sonnets from Shakespeare.

The intruder -- maybe twenty-five years of age and too young for him to be thinking poetic thoughts about in any case -- flicked her eyes at him again, smiled faintly, and silently offered him some seeds from a small package.  She sat cross-legged next to him, her feet tucked under a white, lacey skirt and topped off with a thin pink sweater.  Her white canvas shoes had been kicked off, and tiny pink toenails peeked out from under her skirt.  Shaking his head at the seeds, he sat upright, shoved his feet into his boots and questioned her, "Who are you?  Why are you here?  What time is it?"

She leaned forward, curled her forehead a bit, watching him closely as he spoke, and in an oddly accented voice, said, "Amber.  Almost four."

Linc waited...and waited, but instead of supplying more information, her pansy-blue eyes stared patiently back.

Okay.  So she wasn't the chattiest of females.  Good.  Right now, his temples throbbed too heavily to care.  He groaned, pressed a dirty palm to his head and said, “Never mind.”  She shrugged aloofly and returned to her reading, but she kept peeking at him from the corner of her eye, waiting to see if he’d say anything else, he assumed, but he really didn’t care to have a conversations with someone who encroached on his special spot.  Shooting Egaeus -- who was supposed to watching over him -- a glare, he muttered, “I should have named you Judas.”

Egaeus stamped his hoof, shook his mane and resumed eating.  Linc grimaced.  “What?  You’ve got nothing to say for yourself? You could have warned me or something.”  Egaeus lifted his soulful dark eyes to look at him and glance at the girl next to him.  Then the damn horse rolled those dark eyes and showed Linc his rump.  That made Linc chuckle a little.  He always thought Egaeus understood more than the average horse.

Linc noticed that the girl had crept around to watch him and Egaeus converse, and he was brought back to the problem at hand.  A stranger under his tree, invading his privacy.  He’d made love to Macie the first time under this tree...on a blue quilt his grandmother made.  Right now, it’d be wonderful if this strangely quiet girl just left him alone.

“What are you doing here?” he asked, running a hand over his face to clear the rest of the sleep away.  She didn’t answer, so he glared at her.  She stared back...calmly.  Eerily calm.  Creepy calm.  Made his skin crawl calm.  “What are you doing here?” he asked again, slowly in case she was stupid or something and waved at the immediate area to make it clear what he was asking.  

She lifted the book in her hand to point at the page she was currently reading and to show him what she was doing there.  Okay, so she wasn’t stupid.  Anyone who could decipher Emily Bronte’s “No Coward Soul Is Mine” couldn’t be--

Wait a damn minute!

Linc snatched the book out of her hands.  “Aaay!” she yelled at him in her weird accent, punching him in the arm, but he only flipped to the cover and saw the familiar creases lining his book.

“This is mine!” he yelled back at her, waving it in her face.  She reared back on her heels, and planted her fists on her hips.  Inhaling deeply and pursing her lips, she jerked her head in a sharp, single nod but did not say anything else.  Linc noticed that her blue eyes flashed brightly and rapidly scanned every inch of his face, reading him in much the same way she’d been reading the book.  

“You stole this!” he went on.  She nodded again, this time a little less assuredly, but Linc had to admire her brand of courage.  “Why?!”

She blinked, then shrugged, and then glanced away, pulling on a blade of grass.  Linc felt his temper get up.  She might have some gall to admit she’d stolen the book from his house, but this...this...this child didn’t even have the manners to speak up for herself, not make an excuse or an apology or...or...at least she could do was explain!

“Why?!” he tried again in a hotter tone, but she wasn’t looking at him and continued to ignore him...so he grabbed her shoulders angrily and forced her to look at him and answer him.  "Answer me, dammit!"

He wasn’t sure how it happened, but suddenly, her palms flattened on his chest, his back hit the dirt behind him, and a bare foot, pink toenails and all, lodged itself against his throat as she stood furiously over him, pinning him to the ground.  Of course, the wind chose that moment to blow her skirt around, and he got a clear view of something he probably shouldn’t.  Pink panties, too.  Nice legs.

But that didn’t catch his attention for long.  The girl started talking to him.  He couldn’t comprehend much more than a few words because the madder she got, the faster she talked and the worse her words were slurred and harder to understand.  Besides, the foot on his throat was starting to cut off oxygen to his brain, and the rush of sound in his ears hindered him in that way, too.  But he did notice one thing.  Halfway through her furious spill, she huffed with exasperation and started jabbing her hands together, and away from each other, and from side to side, and up and down, making swirling patterns and jerky shapes and smacking sounds, her fingers wiggling and flashing faster than he could fathom.  And it came to him...why she’d been acting weird for the past five minutes and ignored him the way she'd been doing.

Shit.  She was deaf.  He just yelled at and assaulted a deaf chick.  If his momma found out about this...

He tried to raise his hand up to move her foot so he could apologize, but it only pressed harder into his larynx when he touched her, so he slowly moved his hands away, palms up and harmless looking.  She stopped her signing to glare harder at him.  When she finally decided he wasn’t going to hurt her, she huffed at him again, stuck her tongue out at him, and stomped over to grab her shoes.

Linc sat up, rubbing his throat.  “I’m sorry,” he rasped out.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t looking at him again, and she obviously couldn’t hear him.  He stupidly reached out to touch her shoulder, but then he found himself back on his back again with her foot against his throat.  The girl had some serious ninja skills.  

With her blue eyes narrowing dangerously, she jabbed a finger at him, waved her right hand across her face, touched it to the palm of her left hand, and then brought it up to her forehead in a clear sign of something significant, her lips mouthing silent words.  She repeated the actions two more times, the movements growing sharper and crosser each time.  And then she beat her forehead with her fist.  Linc could only stare at her.  She was obviously trying to say something, and it most likely had something to do with him touching her again, but he honestly didn’t understand.

She let him go again, only this time, she backed way, keeping her eyes on him, and he pointedly faced her and said, “I’m sorry,” one more time, hoping she’d understand what he was saying by the look on his face.  Her frown tightened, but she reluctantly nodded at him.  Making a fist, sticking out her thumb and pinky, she moved it back and forth, saying, “Me, too,” in her heavy, untrained voice.

“Sorry, me, too” she said clearly enough for Linc to grasp, rubbing her closed fist around her chest.  “For book,” she clarified, pointing at the item in question now laying abandoned on the ground.  Apparently, she was not sorry she sent him sprawling in the dirt twice, but he had to admit that she shouldn’t be.

Linc sighed and bent to retrieve it.  It was idiotic of him to go rabid on her over a silly book, but he’d not had to share anything in a long while, so he wasn’t used to it.  Still...she could have asked.

Turning the paperback over in his palms, he sighed again.  Not many people knew about his obsession for dark stories and poetry.  Wil knew he liked to read to calm his mind and occupy his time, but not the particulars and genres.  Most people he was social with would laugh themselves out of their boots if they found out.  Abruptly he held collection of stories and poetry  out to her, startling her, and she stepped back a few feet.  He didn’t really know how to speak to the deaf.  Did she read lips?  Or just the intentions on his face?  With a gentle nudge, he permitted her to take it from him, but she didn’t budge.

“Here,” he said, not sure if she understood or not.  “Since you stole it, you can put it back where you got it.”

The girl snorted in her throat and rolled her eyes, reminding him of Egaeus.  Yeah, she understood just fine.  “What did you say your name was?” he asked.

Cocking her head at an angle, she stared at him for a second, and then flicked her hand down from her forehead, asking, “Why?” in her unique voice.

Linc shrugged, tossing the book to her feet.  “I’m just curious.”

She licked her lips.  “Amber.”

“Amber?”

She confirmed with another hesitant nod.

“Are you friends with Sally and Wil?”

“No,” she answered, shaking her head.  "Sister, Chloe, Daniel, new job, help me--”

L inc stepped closer.  He'd never been around a deaf person, never really knew one could talk.  But even then, her incomplete ramblings seemed odd to him.  "I'm not following--"

She pursed her lips, expelled a short breath.  “Chloe, my sister, she help me, I -- I here...”  Throwing her hands up with frustration, she flushed a pretty pink and flicked her hands at him again to finish her spotty tale.  Halfway through this complicated visual explanation, Linc shook his head and captured her hands.

“I’m sorry. I don’t understand,’ he said, grasping her fingers solidly.  She had very soft skin, especially since he was used to work-roughed palms.  She stopped and blinked and tugged out of his hold, putting her hands behind her back.  And she blushed again.  Linc almost smiled at that.  Her blue eyes began to glow as they skipped around his face, landing on his lips.  She licked hers again.

That’s when he noticed just how pretty she was.  Just as pretty as Macie had been, only differently.  Amber’s longer dark hair had more curl, a wilder, freer quality to it.  And her face had a splattering of freckles across it.  And she wore the same perfume that Macie had, which was really starting to confuse his brain and his body.  Also, now that her lips were wet from her tongue, they glistened with a delicate pink color, like the sweater that molded to her slender curves and the pink of her toenails.  Linc had never been very fond of the color pink, but he was discovering some intriguing qualities to it now.  

Wonder if pink has a taste...she’d taste like that...

Clearing his throat and getting his mind off of pink, he prodded, “Your sister?  Chloe, right?”

Amber’s head moved in a slow, minuscule nod, but her gaze never left his lips.  It was kind of making Linc self-conscious.  Did he have cake frosting on him?  Or was she just as fascinated with his mouth as he was with hers?  Maybe she just didn’t want to miss anything he said.  Yeah, he’d go with that explanation.  He didn’t want to think more about her mouth than necessary.

He remembered a bridesmaid named Chloe, one of Sally’s friends...or the friend of her niece, or something like that.  The one with the baby that never seemed to stop crying.  “So, you’re just here with your sister?” he asked, and then decided to tease her just to see what would happen.  “Tagged along for the free food and booze and to steal books out of people’s houses?”

Her blue eyes gleamed dangerously out from behind mere slits of her eyelids.  “No!” she shouted and hit the side of her temple with the pinky end of her fist, mouthing a word he figured out very quickly, Asshole.

Linc tossed his head back and laughed.  “Yes,” he agreed, “I’m an asshole.”

She stuck her hands at her hips with indignation.  She thought he was making fun of her.  He laughed harder.  She stamped her foot like a child and huffed.  She wore some kind of leather pouch on her hip, attached to a belt that slanted along her middle, enhancing her slender waist.  He’d never seen anything like it before.  Her white skirt swirled around her ankles and the pink knit of her sweater stretched tight across her curvy chest.  She looked like a pissed-off rag doll, only without the pigtails.  Then, of course, he imagined her with pigtails, and Linc couldn’t help it.  He kept laughing at her, only he wasn’t laughing at her in the sense of being mean. She was just so cute.  

Her palms hit his chest again, but he was ready for her this time.  He grabbed her arms above the elbows and jerked her into his chest.  “Don’t do that again,” he murmured, looking sternly down into her face.  “If you want me on my back, all you have to do is ask, Sugar.”

Her pretty mouth gaped, and an unsettling urgency gripped him in the throat.

Don’t kiss her...don’t kiss her...

Linc shoved her away from him, furious with himself for thinking of kissing her.  He didn’t know who the hell she really was, and the only woman he preferred to kiss wasn’t alive any more.  Amber stumbled as he released her, her eyes like splashes of cobalt set in her porcelain face...accusing eyes, hurt eyes, just a little bit turned-on eyes.  He couldn’t stand to look into them anymore.  He turned on his heel and headed back up to the wedding party.  The girl was barely legal and he almost kissed her, and she had looked at him that way.  It was a good thing he’d never see her again after this day.  

I’m an asshole, alright.  A stupid, hung-over asshole.  Macie never crossed his mind as he considered kissing Amber’s pink lips.  An unfaithful, immoral asshole.