Robin Wasserman - Sloth

Now the house really was empty. The windows had been dark and the driveway empty for weeks, until one day, Reed arrived to discover that the windows had been boarded up and a large FOR SALE sign planted in the absurdly well-manicured front lawn. But Reed kept coming back. He didn’t have anything left of Kaia except his swiftly fading memories. He dreaded the day he forgot how her pale cheeks reddened when she laughed, or the hoarse sound in her voice when she’d just woken up; the house helped him remember.

“Don’t I get some?” Kaia asks, grabbing his hand before he can bring the joint to his lips.

“You don’t smoke,” Reed reminds her.

“I know,” she says, snatching it away and tossing it to the ground. “And neither should you. It makes you sound like an idiot. “

“Doesn’t take much,” he mutters.

“Shut up.”

“What?”

“Clueless smile?” She grazes her fingers across his lips. “Hot. Self deprecation? Not. “

They are lying on a blanket in front of the old Grace mines. It has become “their place,” a phrase neither of them will say out loud because, as Kaia often points out, this is not 1951 and they are not teenyboppers in love. But nonetheless, it is their place; ever since Reed brought her here for the first time, he has been unable to think of it as anything else. He has been coming here since he was a kid, biking out along the deserted stretch of highway long before he had his driver’s license, enjoying the sense of freedom and power that came from getting away from the safe and the familiar and getting by on his own. But now when he comes on his own, as he still does, something feels off. The cavernous warehouses, the decaying machinery, and the welcome darkness of the mines themselves are no longer enough. He misses Kaia; it has been only a couple weeks since they toppled to the happier side of the love-hate fence, but already he has gotten used to having her around.

Today they skipped school and drove out here instead. They lay next to each other, staring up at the sky, swapping the occasional insult and listening to each other breathe. He doesn’t know what he’s doing with her-rich, stuck-up, spoiled, beautiful. And she’s made it clear that she doesn’t know what she’s doing with him. Neither of them care.

“Don’t try to reform me,” he warns her. “It won’t take.”

She rolls over onto her side, propping herself up to look at him. Her fingers toy with the curls falling over his forehead, and a smile plays at the corners of her lip. “Don’t worry,” she assures him. “You’re good just the way you are.”

“And how’s that?”

“Hmmm… dirty. “ She rubs his chest, where a long, dark grease stain stretches across his shirt. “Smelly. “ She buries her face in his neck and breathes in deeply. “Grungy. “ She pulls his hands toward her face and kisses the tips of his fingers, ignoring the dirt lodged under each nail. “Mine. “

He grabs her around the waist and rolls her over on top of him, lifting his head up to meet her lips. They kiss with their eyes open, and he can see himself reflected in her pupils. Her weight flattens him against the ground and he lets his head fall back as she spreads his arms out and entwines her fingers in his.

They stop kissing after only a few minutes, but she continues to lie on him, resting her head on his chest.

“Happy?” he asks, because he knows she never is.

“Shhh. I’m listening. “

“To what?”

“Your heartbeat,” she whispers. They are both still. Then she laughs. “Did I just say that? What the hell are you doing to me?” She sighs and tries to roll off of him, but he wraps his arms around her and holds her in place.

“Turning you into a sap,” he teases. “I like it. “

“Don’t try to reform me,” she tells him. “It won’t take.”

“Don’t worry,” he says, echoing her words as she echoed his. “You’re good just the way you are.”

Too late, he forgets how she hates compliments from him, even in jest.

“It’s getting cold,” she says, and he can feel her muscles tense. “I’m getting out of here. “

“Don’t,” he tells her. “Stay.”

She breathes deeply, and as her chest expands, it pushes against his, forcing their breathing to fall into the same rhythm. “I don’t know what we’re doing here,” she says, touching the side of his face.

“Who cares?” he asks, laying his hand over hers. “Don’t go.”

She kisses him, hard, her tongue prying his lips open and slipping in, her hands gathering the light cotton blanket into tight fists. This time she closes her eyes, but he keeps his open. He can’t stop watching her, as if part of him harbors the childlike belief that if he closes his eyes, she might actually disappear.

He looked up at the sound of a siren-it blipped once, like a horn blast, as if to alert him that he was totally screwed, without waking the neighbors. (Not that there were any.) The flashing lights of the approaching car cast a yellowish-orange tinge over everything as Reed scrambled to stow his pot deep in the glove compartment and popped a breath mint, not that it would be of much help. Everything about him reeked of stoner, and even though he’d had his last joint an hour or two ago and was as alert as he ever got these days, if the cops wanted to bust him, they would. It’s not like they hadn’t done it before.

The car pulled onto the shoulder just behind his, and a figure stepped out. As he approached, Reed was surprised to note that it wasn’t Sal or Eddie, the two beat cops who loved nothing more than handing out parking tickets and hassling “street punks,” aka anyone under the age of eighteen who didn’t dress like they were auditioning for an Abercrombie ad. Sal and Eddie had, until recently, been actual street punks-or, as close as Grace got to urban blight-until their shoplifting had gotten them banned from pretty much every store on Main Street and a number of drunken brawls had had the same effect on their barhopping days. They’d joined the police force for the thrill of running red lights; the guns were just a bonus.

This cop, an overweight guy in his mid-forties with a mustache and an eye-twitch, tapped on Reed’s window. “Whatever you’re up to, forget about it,” he snapped, once Reed had rolled the window down. “Just get out of here.”

That wasn’t a cop uniform, Reed suddenly realized. It was gray, not navy blue, and a narrow label above the shirt pocket read CAPSTONE SECURITY. “What’s it to you?” he asked. Sucking up to authority figures was bad enough; sucking up to a paunchy rent-a-cop who probably had a stash of his own hidden in the cruiser next to his mail-ordered Taser gun? Not gonna happen.

“Gimme a break, kid.” The guy leaned against the truck, casually letting his jacket fall open to reveal the holster strapped underneath. It wasn’t holding a Taser gun. “You think I’m out here in Crapville, USA, for my health? They pay plenty to run punks like you off the property- so I’m telling you. Get.”

“No one lives here anymore,” Reed pointed out.

“Don’t mean no one owns it.” He glanced up at the deserted mansion and scowled. “And the guy who does is plenty pissed off. There’ve been some break-ins-but I don’t suppose you’d know anything about that, eh?”

Reed just stared blankly at him.

“Yeah. Of course not. But now I’m here, and I’ve got my instructions.”

“Yeah?”

“No lurkers. No prowlers. No squatters. No punks.” He squinted into the truck and stared pointedly at a glass pipe that had rolled onto the floor. “I don’t care which one you are. Just get going and don’t come back.”