Old Wounds: Little Battles Part 32

I nodded.

"Fine. It's cool if I'm blunt, right?"

I nodded.

"Are you sure?"

Now she was making me even more nervous about the whole thing, but I nodded again.

"I'd rather not hold hands at school because it invites people into my business, and I don't like that. I wasn't going to hold your hand for long, so it's cool that you let go, but it sucks that you stopped holding it because someone was looking, and not because you were finished holding my hand. I wish you didn't care what people thought about you." She paused. "Why do you? They're just a.s.sholes trying to make themselves feel better about being a.s.sholes."

She didn't wait for an answer.

"And back to the hand-holding, I was just trying to rea.s.sure you. We're not going to kiss in front of people, because I don't think it's necessary. We're not going to go to dances and s.h.i.+t, because I don't like that stuff. I'll be your girlfriend, Elliott, and if you need me to do any of those things, I will. But you'll have to tell me, because I'm as new at this as you are."

I was confused. Perhaps what she said was simple, but I still had no idea what was expected of me.

She sighed and answered the ridiculous questions in my mind. "Nothing has to change."

"B-b-but you're m-m-my g-girlfriend now."

"I don't understand. Can't we just, you know, be? Can't we just be Elliott and Sophie like always, and keep everything else to ourselves?"

I wanted to say yes. To tell her that I wanted to be her boyfriend and that it was okay if we just kept it to ourselves, but my mouth wouldn't work.

"You were so much more confident last night at my work, but now that we're at school, you've gone all quiet and shy. Just say 'screw you' to these people and let's go in. It's cold."

I wished I could've understood this terror that seized me. I didn't want her to think that I was being this way because of anything she'd done, but I couldn't get my feet to move or my mouth to speak. I wondered how long Sophie would put up with me as a boyfriend when I not only couldn't give her all the physical love she wanted, but I couldn't even walk into a building with her now that she'd called me her boyfriend.

"Look, Elliott, you don't have to be my boyfriend at all."

The terror bubbled over into total panic. "I w-w-w-w-want to b-b-b-be your..."

She smiled widely. "Good."

There was no doubt about it, I liked Sophie. Her smile calmed me.

"We'll take out the t.i.tles, okay? You don't have to be my 'boyfriend', you're my...Elliott and I'm your Sophie."

When she wasn't high, Sophie was a pretty reasonable person. The logic of me just being her Elliott and her just being my Sophie was so simple, but it was so pure and it made sense to me. She didn't even have to explain it. I felt calmer almost right away.

"O-o-okay."

Her eyes sparkled a little and the wide smile gave way to a soft one that equally calmed and warmed me. She squeezed my hands gently. I suspected that she was being extra careful because the cuts were no longer covered in bandages. Not to mention my still-healing fingers.

"Just to be clear about it so no one has to worry, we're going into that school and you're going to do what Elliott does, and be who Elliott is, and I'm going to do what Sophie does, and be whoever the h.e.l.l Sophie is, and when we come back together for Study Hall and at lunch, we'll be Elliott and Sophie, individually together, right?"

I nodded as my mind worked over what she'd said. We could just be ourselves, only together, and nothing really had to change. I would know that she was my girlfriend and that I was her boyfriend, but no one else had to.

I breathed deeply. "Thank you, SSSophie."

Her smile slipped. There was a crease in her brow as she nibbled on her bottom lip. "Whatever," she said, her voice barely loud enough to be distinguishable. "Can we go in now?"

As far as I could tell, she was doing fine without getting high, but it seemed that her new mechanism to get through the day was to sleep through it. All Sophie did during Study Hall and lunch was sleep, and Jane mentioned Sophie being tired in Photography. I would think that she might have some issues going to sleep around so many people and without a closed and locked door, but all she did was scoot her chair closer to mine and rest her head on her arms.

She slept through Horticulture. It wasn't hard to see that Mr. Reese was annoyed by it.

Sophie came over after school. No one but Stephen was home again, relieving me of any obligation to speak. I was still only speaking to her.

She made meatloaf and potatoes. Well, she made me make the potatoes. She said I would've been responsible for the meatloaf if my hands hadn't been in the shape that they were. She made me watch her make it, though. She said I needed to learn how to take care of myself, and she was right. I knew how to clean because my father insisted upon it, but I had never been responsible for cooking.

The panic I had felt earlier in the day had lessened steadily and now, eating dinner with her on the floor of my room, it was completely gone. She was right. We didn't have to be any different now that she was my girlfriend. I could still just be me and for some reason, she seemed to like me that way.

Tuesday was the first weekday morning in a long time that I wasn't awakened by David's booming voice and constant pounding on the door. I rolled over and blinked at the clock.

It was half-past eight. I was late for school, but more importantly, late to pick up Sophie. How had David allowed this to happen? He was always very careful about being punctual.

After pulling on a t-s.h.i.+rt and tugging down the legs of my black pajama pants, I stumbled out of my room and down the stairs to find Jane and David eating cereal at the kitchen table. I glanced at the clock on the microwave and it still said that it was after eight-thirty. I went straight for the coffee, my confusion growing.

"W-w-what's g-g-g..."

"Snow day!" David said loudly before shoving more cereal into his mouth. "We're going sledding." He narrowed his eyes and pointed his spoon at me. "And you're going too."

"You should call Sophie," Jane suggested.

I wondered, if left on her own, whether Sophie would even be awake right now. Before I could ponder too much, the phone rang and Jane picked it up. My head snapped up as soon as she said Sophie's name.

Even though she had called me, talking to Sophie on the phone was strange and awkward. I hated using the phone. She asked me to come over because the buses weren't running, and she had no way to get here.

She wanted to spend her entire free day with me.

Then I got nervous, and I couldn't say anything without sounding like a complete idiot. Sophie reminded me that there was nothing different about today and we were just hanging out.

She called me her Elliott again before hanging up.

I wondered when she had gotten so intuitive, because she seemed to know exactly when I needed calming, and what calmed me.

In one short hour, I was with Sophie and we were out in her yard, playing in the snow. It was beautiful. She was beautiful in it, all bundled up in her black coat and brown hat and gloves. I worried about her only being in jeans and boots made for fas.h.i.+on, but as she played in the snow with me, she didn't seem too bothered. Her nose was red, as were her cheeks, and her smile was bright and warm.

I showed her how to make a good s...o...b..ll in case we did meet up with David and needed to engage in a battle. It was only after I got smacked in the face with one that I realized she was probably better at the whole thing than I was. I wound up flat on my back, scrubbing the melted snow off my face.

She stood above me. "Sorry, Elliott, I..." and then stopped as I wrapped a hand around her ankle and gently yanked until she was lying next to me.

She adjusted herself so that she was on her side, propped up by her right arm. Her hair spilled out of her hat and over her shoulders, and was speckled with white flakes. She wore a smile that I'd never seen her show anyone else.

I loved her smile.

If I were truly honest with myself, I would recognize that I loved her, but that thought was too much. It would only serve to make me nervous and spastic around her. Things were already complicated between us, and for me to honestly admit to her or myself that I loved her, would do nothing but make everything more awkward.

I was not unaware that the women in my life had a habit of going away. Jane hadn't yet, but it was only a matter of time before she chose to follow Trent to wherever he'd go.

Sophie grazed her hand over my forehead where she pushed aside a lock of my hair. I was thankful not to have an aversion to being touched on my face like she did. I wanted to slowly break her of that, but she clung to it, and I realized it might never be something that was comfortable for her.

Sophie had been hurt, and as much as I wanted us to be normal and do normal things together like other people, I knew it would never be that way. I was ruined and she was broken, and no matter how hard we tried to forget it, those simple facts would always be present in our lives.

The real matter of importance though, was that I wanted us to be broken and ruined together.

She rubbed the spot between my brows. "This crease should leave. You always look like you're trying to work something out in your head."

"I am a-always w-w-working things out in my hhhhead."

She dropped her eyes and focused on my lips. It made me nervous.

"Have you ever been kissed in the snow?" I shook my head. "I haven't either. Do you want to be? Kissed in the snow that is," she finished, with more shyness in her voice than I'd ever heard before.

Of course I wanted to kiss her in the snow, but this was her way of asking permission, since during our last conversation about it, I'd said that I needed to take things slowly. When not under the influence of drugs, Sophie was not only perceptive, but also respectful and kind.

When I didn't respond, she looked away. I was so tired of the awkwardness between us. I wanted my soul to be st.i.tched to hers so that we could already know each other's mind.

"Y-yes."

The smile reappeared, not that I saw it for long since she wasted no time in kissing me.

The thing about Sophie was that she had a hard time controlling herself. She hadn't just smoked pot that day I found her in the parking lot, but had taken a drug that messed her up so badly she didn't know where she was. And she couldn't just kiss me without it turning into her sitting on top of me and trying to take it further.

Thankfully, the junction of her legs was on my stomach and not my groin. I was equally thankful for the cold that helped impede my body's natural reaction to her.

I had been kissing her back, but I forced myself to stop.

It took a moment for her to realize, but when she did, she sat up, still on top of me. Her breathing was quick. "d.a.m.n," she whispered before locking eyes with me. She shook her head. "Sorry." She licked her lips and I worried that they would become chapped.

Sophie got off of me and I sat up. I hated that our connection could be so easily lost, so I grabbed her hands and drew her close to me. I could have been overcome with fear, but the logical side of my brain told me that Sophie liked me. She was here with me, and she continued to show her vulnerability to me.

She'd given up drugs and I knew, at least in part, it was because of me. My next series of goals should include keeping her interested despite my many shortcomings. I knew that I would have to disclose many of them soon.

"I llllike k-k-kissing you," I told her again.

Although she smiled, she turned her head. "I'm cold. Do you want to go warm up?"

I nodded and soon we were back inside her house where she set about making an early lunch.

As we worked together to make soup, I stayed as close to her as I could. I was so proud of her. I knew it couldn't have been easy to stop using drugs when it was all she'd had for so long. People went to rehab for doing fewer drugs than I'd known Sophie to do, but she'd given them up herself. I kissed the top of her head in a natural act of comfort, even though I had never done that before.

"How can you quote Bible verses like that?"

My breath caught. Sophie stepped away from me, taking my hand and pulling me to the center of the kitchen where she sat down and brought me with her. Once I was seated across from her on the floor, she buried her hand in my hair and immediately I felt calm and secure.

It was odd.

"I hhhhhad t-t-to kn-know them."

"Why?"

I shook my head, not wanting to explain at all. "I d-d-d-don't w-w-want to talk about the B-B-B-Bible, SSSSSophie."

I watched her carefully. I knew that one day she was going to call my bluff on everything.

"Tom gave me this stuffed animal once," she began. She was on her knees, slightly closer to me as I sat cross-legged. She was so good at s.h.i.+fting conversations abruptly. I was thankful for it today. "I named him Seor Fluff-N-Stuff."

"W-w-what did he look like?"

"It was a dog with a sombrero. Helen made me burn it."

Such sadness washed out of her and over me in that moment. I knew that Sophie didn't trust her father, but it was fairly plain that she loved him. I thought about her e-mail and the meals I'd shared with them both. He called her "Soph" most of the time. He'd said "Yo, Soph" a lot.

Yo Soph.

It was her e-mail and her screen name when we used the instant messaging system. It might have been her first and last names shortened and reversed, but it wasn't. It was a tribute to her father. She loved him. I didn't know what it was like to love your father, but I knew she did, and I was sad that she felt like she couldn't express it.

Her mother abusing the love she had for him must have scarred her deeply. I didn't blame her for not wanting to care.

"W-w-why w-was she sssso m-mean?"

"How should I know?" Although her words were harsh, her tone was not. "It's not like the woman told me why she did all those horrible things. She never explained why she seemed to hate me when all I tried to do was make her happy."

Sophie stood up and went back to the stove. "I hate not being high."

I watched her stir the soup again, her movements conveying her anger. I could understand her frustration over not being able to be whatever it was her mother wanted. No matter what I did for my father, I was never able to measure up. What I had to offer him was never enough, and I was always wrong.

I had tried to be G.o.d's child of light in a house of darkness.

As we ate the soup, I pushed those thoughts away. Afterward, I sat on her bed in her room. She was right next to me, her head still resting against my shoulder. I was surprised to see that there was a piece of paper tacked up on her once-bare blue walls. It was just a copy of her work schedule, but it was something that tied her to this place.

It bothered me that her mother had burned the gift from her father, or rather, made Sophie burn it. I wondered how many things were lost to her like that. I never had many possessions until Stephen came into my life, so I didn't know exactly how I would have felt about that kind of loss. If I were to lose the only picture I had of my mother, my last and only connection to her, I would feel horrible.

I didn't look at the picture much. I hadn't pulled it out of that drawer for months before Sophie asked to see it. Sometimes when I thought about my mother, I couldn't remember exactly what she looked like, so the picture helped to draw it out of my memory.

Sophie had left the door open, simply because we were alone in the house. Her breathing had hollowed out and her body was heavy against me. I was overjoyed that she could get a little sleep. She'd been looking so tired for quite some time now.

There was noise downstairs as the front door opened and I realized that it must have been Mr. Young coming home for lunch. Fear gripped me because he would come upstairs and find me with Sophie in her bed. He called her name and I had to fight against everything in me to keep my body calm. As much as her father frightened me, I didn't want to wake her up.

I heard her father's footsteps on the stairs, and I focused on keeping my breathing even. I hadn't done anything wrong, and I wasn't looking to take advantage of his daughter. She had fallen asleep on me, and that was all. It shouldn't be a punishable offense. He would come up and see me, and if he got angry, I would apologize and leave. Even if he was really angry, Sophie was around and I didn't think Mr. Young was the type of man who would hurt someone in front of his daughter.

I forced my eyes to stay open, even though I wanted to squeeze them shut. Would it have been better or worse for him to think both of us were sleeping, or just her? We were both above the covers, dressed, and obviously not doing anything...punishable.

I worried just the same, but I kept telling myself not to panic. I could hold myself together.

When he appeared at her door, he looked inside, and I could see all the emotions that flashed across his face before he looked directly at me, and I continued to fight the urge to panic completely. I didn't want Sophie to wake.