Beautiful Girl by Fleur Philips

Author:Fleur Philips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-04-04T00:00:00+00:00

-15-

Two hours pass before Sam decides to rummage through Steve’s refrigerator in hopes of finding something to make for dinner. None of us said much after Steve left. Joe apologized to Sam. Sam told him not to. I stood there as the two men tried to find the appropriate words, and then I realized they’d already said everything they could say to each other in the years since Sam’s mother’s death. It was Steve and Joe who needed to talk now, but clearly that wasn’t going to happen. I thought about Mom, how I’ve never talked to her, how I can’t talk to her, and I felt a sharp stabbing in my chest when it hit me that maybe I’d never be able to. Ever. Joe had turned around then and walked back into the guest bedroom.

We each took a shower, all three of us sharing the one clean towel Sam found in the hall closet. Sam let me go first. The shower was small, but the water pressure strong and the temperature hot. I stood under the shower head for what felt like an hour letting the stream run down my neck and back and legs, taking with it to the drain the sweat and blood from the day.

Mom hit me. She actually hit me.

I washed my hair, using my fingers to comb through it. From a pile of clean laundry on Steve’s bed, Sam found sweatpants and T-shirts for all of us to wear until our clothes were finished being washed and dried.

Sam pulls a pack of frozen veggies from the freezer. In the pantry, he finds an unopened bag of spaghetti and a jar of marinara sauce. I prepare the pasta while he empties the sauce and vegetables into a pan. While we eat, Joe’s fingers shake. In the refrigerator, he finds a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, but Sam grabs it away from him when he turns around with it gripped in his hand. Joe’s lower lip quivers and his mouth forms into a thin, tight line. I know he wants to snap at Sam, but he doesn’t. If I weren’t sitting here, I think he would. He walks to the table and takes his plate, then returns to the kitchen where he rinses it off before placing it in the dish rack. Without looking at us, he walks back into the guest bedroom and closes the door.

Sam puts the beer back into the refrigerator. We clear our plates and put everything away, and while he builds a fire, I push the coffee table to the side and lay the two sleeping bags Steve gave us across the rug on the floor. The budding fire spits and crackles, then kicks to life. Sam fans it one more time before sitting next to me on the sofa. Shadows and light dance across his face, his eyes appearing black in the sharp darkness of the living room.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says. “I’ve been waiting for a reason to bring Joe up here.

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