Page 61 of The First Kind of Love
I’m terrible at hiding the growl that rumbles through my chest. “Don’t answer it.”
“It might be important.”
She quickly jumps to her feet, yanks the sheets off the bed so she can fashion a makeshift toga to cover her body, and mouths an apology to me before disappearing into the bathroom. The door slams shut loudly, and even though most of the walls here seem to be wafer-thin, her hushed tone doesn’t make it easy to eavesdrop. I know it’s morally wrong, okay? But I need to know that everything is alright.
So, I lie on my back in a starfish position with nothing to cover my aching dick, and I stare up at the ceiling like a complete idiot. The conversation must be tense given how long Shiloh’s on the phone, and with what little Icanhear, the nature of the call is serious. Muffled shouts, frantic pacing.
“But I don’t understand. I was really counting on this,” she mumbles.
My gut clenches, and bile surges up my throat when I try to swallow.
What is she talking about? Does this have to do with work?
Then, like the firing of a gun in a remote forest, pealing through the silence and the pine trees and the rustle of a thousand wings, the talking stops. The pacing stops. Everything is unnervingly still, so much so that I don’t even want to risk moving. I wait a few beats to see if she emerges, but she never does.
I know I’ll probably have my genitals mutilated if I open that door, but I don’t care. I need to see her. I need to understand what’s going on.
Moving at the speed of light, I pull my boxers on and tread carefully, easing the partition open only to find Shiloh sitting on the closed toilet, her head in her hands and tiny sniffles pouring from her small frame.
“Hey, hey. Shi, hey.” I rush to her side and squat in between her legs, running my hand up and down her thigh—whetherit’s to console me or her, I don’t know. “Talk to me. I’m right here.”
Trembles unmoor her veneer of steadiness, the permanence of a frown reshaping her mouth. The cry that spills from her isn’t the same as the one I heard minutes ago. This one is guttural, dredged from deep within her soul, and it sounds like the wail of a wounded animal begging to be put out of its misery. I never knew I could feel something so viscerally. Seeing her like this makes me sick to my stomach.
When she eventually drops her arms, her eyes are overrun with burst capillaries, and tears stain her beautiful face—ones I wasn’t there to brush away. They soak into her now-pale skin, and no matter how quickly I try to catch them, they reappear at double the speed and quantity.
“The bank denied my family’s business for a loan.”
“What loan?”
“M-my parents. They used up all their savings and nest egg to pay for my college degree. Now the shop is having a hard t-time. We only have a couple of months left to pay rent and make payroll, or we’ll…we’ll go out of business.”
Oh my God. The signs were all there, especially after our heart to heart that night. Why wasn’t she honest with me from the beginning? I can’t imagine how much stress she’s under right now, and I fucking proposed that she go on a vacation.
“Oh, Sunshine,” I coo sympathetically.
Shiloh’s unbreakable focus remains on the bathroom tiles, and the purple bags underscoring her eyes stand out starker than before. It’s like I’m finally seeing what’s behind her fortified defenses—the other half of her that she’s hidden out of shame.
“It’s my fault.Allof this is my fault. My parents gave up everything to get me through college, and now I can’t even save our business.”
Each sob has a fumbling dismount off her tongue, echoingoff the walls in shrill droves. I don’t know how to comfort her. I don’t know what I could possibly say to make this situation better.
I’m surprised when I even manage to form a facsimile of some commiserative response. “It isn’t your fault. You know that, right? You’ve done everything in your power to keep your family’s business afloat.”
When she finally raises her head, her gaze is as sharp as a rifle’s scope, an imaginary red dot aimed right between my brows with every intention of taking the kill. “No, Fulton. Doing everything in my power to keep my family’s business afloat would mean that I stayed with them in Riverside instead of running away with you to fucking Cabo,” she hisses.
Ouch.
My knee-jerk response is to say something stupid along the lines of “You don’t mean that,” but I know that wouldn’t be productive in mending the situation. She’s already upset. It doesn’t matter whatIfeel right now.
“Let me help. Let me cover the expenses,” I blurt out, hope a timid thing that keeps evading my desperate clutches, slipping through my fingers each time I overextend myself to try and reach it.
She flinches away from me, rising to a stance so she can limit physical contact with me as much as possible, and I think it would’ve hurt more if she’d just outright slapped me. “I’m not some charity case,” she growls.
“I know. Fuck, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant?—”
While the tears still bubble in her eyes, the drizzle is lighter now, and they snake down her features like rain droplets filling shoe-carved gulleys in sodden concrete.
“I don’t want your money. This is my problem, and I have to figure it out on my own. The last time I accepted help, my parents lost all their savings because I wanted a stupid business degree.”
