Page 14 of Freak
Mel didn’t answer. When she handed him a glass and he didn’t take it, she turned and saw a peculiar smile on his face.
She felt her cheeks rising as she smiled in response; as an empath, she often reflexively echoed the expression of people she was interacting with. “What?” she asked and lifted the glass at him.
He took it and began wiping it with the towel. “I guess I never thought about it like that, and I guess I never saw you get so ... passionate”—the word broke in half, and he cleared his throat—“before.” He set the glass on a shelf in the cupboard at his shoulder.
Not for the first time on this unsettling evening, Abigail felt some hurt and wasn’t quite sure why. She was usually deeply attuned to her own spirit and understood her feelings and their roots well, but her psyche was throwing up barriers each time Mel said or did something that caught her wrong.
While they stood together at the sink, while he looked down at her with a curious frown playing between his thick, dark eyebrows, was not the time for self-exploration, so she pushed her hurt to the side and focused on the content of his statement.
“There’s lots I care about, Mel, and I feel it all deeply.”
The confusion cleared from his face, and something softer took its place. He set his hand on her shoulder. The heat from his palm seeped through her dress and into her skin, cascading warmth over her torso, around her heart. Oh, she was definitely feeling too much for him.
Of course that was the source of those little mental blocks as well—a bit of anxiety over this feeling she hadn’t had in years. This feeling she’d thought she didn’t want. This feeling she probably shouldn’t want. Maybe her impulse to pull back from Mel had been correct: she didn’t know how to keep her balance as only his friend, now that she’d realized her deeper feeling.
“I know, Abs,” Mel said. “I think that’s my favorite thing about you, how much you care. I just meant you sounded a little angry, and I guess I’ve never seen you angry. Not even when they tore everything up out there.”
Turning back to her chore, Abigail took a small sidestep, pulling from Mel’s touch. As she drew another glass from the soapy water and began to wipe it clean, she said, “I get angry, hon. I’m a human being, you know. With the full complement of human emotions. But I’m not angry about this. ‘Arrogant’ isn’t an insult. It’s a simple adjective. I suppose it’s a naturally critical adjective, but telling somebody they could do better isn’t aninsult. Insults are meant to hurt. Criticism should be meant to help.”
Taking the glass from her, he grinned. “I see your point. But most folks I know mean criticism to hurt, and most take it like an insult.”
“And I think that’s real sad. People trying to hurt and hate instead of making things better and being better themselves.”
Again, he didn’t reply. Again, Abigail looked over and up at him. Again, he regarded her with frowning curiosity.
Again, she asked, “What?”
He shook off the frown. “You’re one in a million, Abigail Freeman. They broke the mold.”
He meant it as a compliment. She knew that with perfect clarity. He was telling her she was special, unique ... adjectives she had been called as insults as well, with just the right twist of intonation to turn a positive word on its head.
Exactly what they’d been talking about.
But none of that nonsense bothered her! She knew who she was, was comfortable in her skin, loved herself— more than that, shelikedherself. Silly insults and attacks bounced off her because she understood them to be borne of ignorance and insecurity. As a whole, people found comfort in conformity, and those who chose other ways of being implicitly, and often explicitly, criticized conformity. She understood and therefore didn’t let the arrows slung her way pierce her.
Moreover, Mel liked her. They had forged a friendship. It was getting a little complicated on her part, but that didn’t mean he was trying to make her feel anything but good. He’d meant his words as a compliment. He was telling her he found her impressive. She knew that with crystal clarity.
So why had she heard ‘freak’?
