Page 8 of Crow

While I spoon tasteless oatmeal into my mouth and swallow down an egg with no seasoning whatsoever, my brain battles against what Crow said last night. I need more time to think about it, but his words shook something loose inside of me. It feels jagged and broken, like it’s cutting me apart and I’m bleeding out invisibly. He makes me want the one thing I know I can’t have.

Freedom.

My whole life is reliant on my parents. I don’t want to lose them, but is it right that they should dictate everything? I’m an adult now, surely I should have a choice in what I do?

I raise my head slowly. My dad’s eyes meet mine across the table. My parents sit together there. I’m always on the other side, marooned like I’m not truly a part of them.

I get my red hair from my dad’s side. His might be a mousy brown, but it was sandy when he was younger. It was my grandpa that had the strawberry hair. I barely remember him, but what I do recall makes me cold. He had the same pale gray eyes as my dad.

My dad clears his throat as if my looking up is the sign he’s been waiting for. He cuts off anything I was about to say and smiles at me proudly. “I’ve made arrangements with the church so that you can clean again. You’ll quit that job at the diner immediately.”

My spoon clatters against my bowl loudly, which makes my mom jerk in her chair like it was a bomb going off right next to her and not a harmless utensil.

“I like my job,” I say cautiously, aware that I almost never talk back to my parents.

Believe me, if you had a mother who constantly told you to respect your father as the head of the household, and a father who repeatedly reminded you to respect both parents as the Bible dictates, you’d put up and shut up too. There’s only so many times a person can hear the same lecture before they either adjust their behavior accordingly, or go insane.

My dad scowls. He doesn’t do that anywhere but in the house, where others can’t see. “I put myself out there and made it seem like I’m playing favorites for my own family. You’re not going to embarrass me like this.”

“Maybe I can do both. Arrange my shifts around—”

“I’ve heard things about that place,” he states woodenly, cutting me off. “There are bikers and criminals who go there late at night. Do you think I’d let any daughter of mine associate with loose women with even looser morals, and men who have chosen to eschew a law abiding existence?”

“These aren’t good Christian people,” my mom echoes, her plain face pinched with worry.

In her mind, I’m probably one step away from getting up on stage and taking off all my clothes to wrap myself around a pole after giving blowies in a backroom. My parents would faint straight away with horror if they even knew I knew a word like blowie.

Like I said, I keep my private thoughts private. I went to public school and attended two years of college. Even without all the smutty books I sneak, I’m no longer as sheltered as they’d like to believe.

They’re not entirely wrong about the diner. I’ve learned more there in a month than I have in all my life. Case in point—the word blowie. I heard one of the club women offering it to one of the men round the back when I went to take out the garbage mid-shift last week.

“Criminals are in jail,” I point out meekly.

“Not in this town,” my dad grumbles. “They pay off the police. They run Hart as they see fit. You’ll come work at the church and that’s final.”

Something rises up in me, vile and scorching hot. Normally, I would swallow it back and meekly acquiesce, but I feel anything butnormalright now. With Crow’s dark eyes swimming in my brain, I feel bold. I shiver as I think about the way they fixated on me and softened just slightly, like he liked what he saw.

He seemed nervous, as if I scared him somehow. He was just as awkward as me. I’ve never seen him utter a word to anyone in all the time that he’s been in the diner. I don’t know what prompted me to speak to him last night, but I didn’t expect that we’d actually have a real conversation. He looked like hewas fighting with himself about it the whole time. I found that strangely endearing.

All while pretending I wasn’t having an internal meltdown at how good he smelled, like leather and gas and cedar, or how I wasn’t unnerved by his raw masculinity. I hope that he couldn’t tell that I wanted to touch some of that ink he had on display, to learn the contours and texture of his skin. Do tattoos change it? I wanted to trace that scar that ran down his face and keep going, brushing over his lips, his nose, his throat, learning his hard, masculine plains.

I wanted to trace the whole outline of his profile with my fingers.

With my mouth.

“I need to give two weeks’ notice.” My voice is reed thin when I want it to be strong.

I imagine Crow standing in the corner of the room, fierce and intimidating, and so oddly beautiful in his own unique way. He’d stare me down again. Hold me completely in his thrall. He’d silently urge me on, give me strength. If he could see me now, bowing my head and trembling, his faith in me would be shattered.

He’d be so disappointed in me. He’d think I was pathetic.

“You don’t owe a place like that anything,” my dad states, pushing his chair back and gathering up his dishes. “You’re starting this afternoon, after the service.”

Something inside of me snaps and I shoot to my feet, but it’s clear my dad has already made up his mind. He doesn’t even turn around.

It’s a cardinal sin in my family to leave food uneaten, but I don’t finish my breakfast. I don’t even clear my dishes away. I run down the hall, past my room and straight into the bathroom. The house is a small bungalow, nondescript and old fashioned. My dad doesn’t believe in showy displays of wealth, so while he’s kept up the house and my mom keeps the yard as neat and tidy as she does the inside, the house hasn’t seen a remodel since the nineties.

There’s a main bathroom and a small half bath off my parents’ room. The other bedroom besides mine is the guestroom, and my dad has a home office in the basement. People often come over here to speak with my dad during the week, but he always receives them in the living room.

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