Page 12 of Reckless Liar

He studied me with his hazel eyes, appraising me. I wiped my tears with the back of my hand.

“I don’t want to think about the bad stuff, you know? I don’t want to be angry at him,” I said, sniffling.

Xander picked up my hand, still wet with my tears, never taking his eyes off mine, and pressed his lips to my palm. His mouth against my skin seared hot. My fingers moved to cup his face. His stubble was rough against my fingertips and my pinky grazed his jaw, skimming his skin. His eyes darkened and my heart beat hard in my chest.

Pulling away, he gazed at my face, his look serious. “I know you don’t.” He curled my hand into a fist and dropped it between us. He stepped around me and into the kitchen, leaving me on the back porch.

That space in my chest was cracking slowly. Taking a shaky breath, I dug my nails into my palm, scoring the skin where his lips had been. Whether it was to hold on to the feeling or make it go away, I didn’t know.

Chapter five

“You look so cute in red.” -Tracy Penrose to Ana, their sophomore year of high school.

Werealizedhalfwaythroughloading that we should’ve gotten a bigger truck. What looked like it would take two trips to transport was going to be more like five.

Through the years we lived in the duplex, we’d accrued a plethora of what could only be called junk. We filled garbage bags full of cords that had no electronics to charge, screws, nails, and bolts of various sizes. We tossed out half-burned candles, flavored syrups given as a Christmas gift we never opened, decorative pillows I hated but never had the heart to tell my mother.

There was only one exception to our purge. When we came across some of Max’s stuff, I would set it aside, telling myself I’d go through it later.

Without a word from me, Xander had taken over the Max collection, boxing everything that was Max’s, sight unseen. Into the boxes went old car magazines, beer signs, the ceramic ‘vase’ he made in pottery class, and books of baseball cards.

I wasn’t sure I’d be ready to go through his stuff. I knew I’d have to, eventually. Xander had kept the boxes in the upstairs room. With my move downstairs, I never had to see Max’s shirts hanging in the closet or his shoes haphazardly resting against the wall.

The place was certainly smaller than the duplex. The kitchen was so narrow, if we opened the oven no one could pass through the space unimpeded. Through the window in the living room there was a partial view of the Olympic Mountains, but our bedrooms looked out on the parking lot. Definitely a downgrade from Freedom Bay.

Most of our furniture was in a clump in the middle of the living room. While it drove me crazy to see all our things in such disarray, I was covered in a thick layer of dust and sweat. My legs felt like lead and my arms were jelly. I had a bruise on my hip from where the coffee table had slipped from my arms and the corner jabbed me. There was a gash on my leg from a wayward dining room chair, countless scratches on my hands from the boxes, three broken nails, and what I suspected was a bald patch from where my ponytail got caught on a nail while trying to pull a bookshelf from the wall. As much as I wanted to organize things, I was dead on my feet and desperately needed a shower.

I’d packed away my bathroom things in one of many countless boxes that were piled in the middle of the room. So, I used the travel toiletry kit I kept in my gym bag which got about as much use as my idealistic gym membership. The full bottle was screwed on tight and as I used my teeth to get the lid open, I squirted shampoo into my mouth. Rinsing my mouth out twice, I knew I’d be tasting soap for a week. The water pressure was lighter than the duplex, but I figured that was the price of living in a building with ten connected homes.

When I got out of the shower, I took the travel-sized toothpaste and my electric toothbrush, the only thing I had on the counter. I brushed my teeth, rinsed, brushed again, rinsed, brushed again, rinsed.

When I came out of the bathroom, Xander was sitting at the breakfast bar, a line of Styrofoam boxes in front of him. “I got us some Los Cazadores. I hope that’s okay?”

“Obviously,” I sat down next to him, reaching across to grab a tortilla out of the box, “God, I’m so hungry. Who knew moving would take so much out of me?”

“I did. Remember, we did this not that long ago. We didn’t really live in the duplex that long.” He handed me the Verde sauce and I took it.

“Yeah, but I don’t remember it being this bad.” I stuffed a chip in my mouth, chewing as I put my taco together.

“Maybe it wasn’t quite this hard.” He walked to the fridge and took out two beers, handing one to me. “Of course, you didn’t really help with all the moving stuff the last time. You left that for me and Max.”

I slapped a hand to my heart in feigned shock. “Hey, I had college. I was starting nursing school. I had a lot going on.”

He put his hands up in a defensive pose. “I’m just saying. We did the heavy lifting. You came behind us organizing and color coding everything.”

“Remember how when we moved in, we only had three plates? We had to hand wash them for each meal.” I grinned at the memory.

He laughed. “That’s right. And we used a toolbox as our TV stand.” He leaned back on the stool, pushing the front legs off the ground so he was balancing on the back legs.

“Max and I slept on an air mattress for months, before we bought that mattress for a hundred bucks at that discount store.” I laughed as I brought the beer up to my mouth.

“That was shady.”

“Right? Looking back, we could’ve gotten bed bugs or something. That mattress had to be used. Why would we get it so cheap?” I laid my head on my arms on the countertop. “Ugh, I don’t want to drive back to the duplex tonight. Would it be bad if I crashed on the couch here? I’m sure I can track down a spare blanket somewhere.”

“You think I’m going to judge you for sleeping on the couch?”

“No, I know. It’s not how I pictured my first night in our new place, but I didn’t plan on the actual moving to take so much time. I thought I’d have time to move my bedroom set here, not leave it at the duplex with half the boxes.”

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