(Unedited) Chapter Two of Tall, Tatted and Tempting

If you missed chapter one, you can find it here.

Logan

Black shit runs down from her eyes, and I wipe it away with my thumbs, and then drag my thumbs across my jeans. She’s crying. But I don’t know why. I want to ask her, but I’ve already said too much.

I haven’t talked since I was thirteen.  That was eight years ago. I tried for a while, but even with my hearing aids, it was hard to hear myself. After the kid on the playground teased me about my speech, I shut my mouth and never spoke again. I learned to read lips really fast. Of course, I miss some things. But I can keep up. Most of the time.

I’m not keeping up right now. “Why the tears?” I ask, as she takes a bite of her pie. She sniffs her tears back, and she smiles at me and shrugs.  This time, it’s her who won’t talk.

Hell, if pie will make her cry, I wonder what something truly romantic would do to her.  This is a girl that deserves flowers and candy. And all the good shit I can’t afford. But she likes to talk to me. I can tell that much, so she’s not with me simply because I wouldn’t give her bag back.

She asks me a question, but her mouth is full of pie, so I wait a minute for her to swallow. She gulps, smiles shyly at me and says, “Were you born deaf?” She points to my ear.

I point to my ear and then my cheek, showing her the sign for deaf.  I shake my head.

“How old were you when it happened?” Her brows scrunch together, and she’s so damn cute I want to kiss her.

I make a three and flick it at her.

“Three?” she asks.

I shake my head and do it again. She still doesn’t get it. So, I put one finger in front of the three and she says, “Thirteen?”

I nod.

“What happened when you were thirteen?”

“High fever one night,” I say, wiping my brow like I’m sweating, hoping she’ll understand.

She opens her mouth to ask me another question, but I hold up a finger.  I motion back and forth between the two of us, telling her it’s my turn.

I can’t figure out how to mime this one so that she’ll understand, so I say very carefully, “Where are you from?”

She shakes her head and says, “No.”

I put my hands together as though in prayer.

She laughs and says, “No,” again. I don’t doubt she’s serious. She’s not telling me. I have a feeling I could drop to my knees and beg her and she still wouldn’t tell me.

“So, Kit from nowhere,” I say. “Thanks for having dinner with me.”

“How do I say thank you?” she asks. “Show me.”

She looks at me, her eyes bright with excitement. I show her the sign and she repeats it. “Thank you,” she says. And my heart expands. Then she looks at her bag beside me and says, “I should go.”

I nod and stand up, and then I put my backpack on, and throw her bag over my shoulder.

“I’ll take that,” she says as she picks up her guitar case.

But I throw some bills on the table and wave at Annie, the waitress. She throws me a kiss.  Kit is following me, but Annie doesn’t throw her a kiss.  I laugh at the thought of it. Annie loves me. And she’s known my family since before our mom died and our dad left.

I stop when we get out to the street and light a cigarette.  Kit scrunches up her nose, but I do it anyway. I take one drag from it, show it to her, pinch the fire off the end, letting the embers fall to the ground, and throw it in a nearby trash can. What a waste. But I can tell she doesn’t like it. My brothers don’t like it either. At least now they’re in good company.

She holds her hand out for her bag, and I position her under a street light so I can see her mouth.

“Where do you live?” I ask. “I’ll walk you home.”

She looks confused for a minute. She glances up and down the street. Cars are rushing by and she’s looking at me like she’s suddenly lost.

“I live around the block,” she says. “Give me my bag.” This time, she stomps that black boot of hers and gives me a rotten look. She shakes her hand at me like that’ll matter.

I lean close to her, because I’m kind of scared someone I know will see me talking to her. My brothers would be hurt if they thought I could talk and just chose not to. I let them think it’s a skill I unlearned, instead. “You can’t walk home alone. It’s not safe.”

She glares at me. “I’m not taking you home with me, you perv,” she says, and she tries to take the bag from me. But I don’t let her. She’s tiny. And I’m not. I win. She balls up her fist, and I know I’m in trouble.

I lean close to her. “I don’t want to sleep with you,” I say. “I just want to make sure you get home safe.” I hold up my hands like I’m surrendering. I draw a cross in the center of my chest like she did before and say, “Promise.”

It’s pretty late. It was already dark when we left the subway tunnel.  Now it’s really late. Later than she should be on the streets by herself. Particularly in this neighborhood.  This is my neighborhood. I’m perfectly safe here. But she’s not from here. This I can tell without ever hearing her voice. She’s not my kind of people.

I put my fingers down, and pretend they’re someone walking. “Let’s go,” I say.

She stands there, and crosses her arms in front of her. “No.”

There’s one thing I’m already sure of and it’s that this chick means no when she says no.

Suddenly, the guy from the diner, the one she called Bone, walks up beside us. “Need some help, Kit?” he asks.

His lips are dark in the night, and I can barely see them. But I can see hers. She smiles what I know to be a phony smile at him, because her real smile will drop a man to his fucking knees, and she says, “Fine.”

“This your guy for the night?” he asks.

She looks at me and steps forward, running the tips of her fingers down my chest. I go hard immediately, and I catch her hand in mine. She startles for a second, but then I cover her hand with mine, pressing it against my heart, tight and secure. She looks up at me and bats those brown eyes. I hadn’t realized how dark they are. But they’re almost black in the darkness of the night.  “This is my guy,” she says.  But I can tell she’s talking to him, and not to me.

The hair on her arms is standing up, and so is mine. But it’s probably for very different reasons.

Bone walks away, looking over his shoulder at her ass. I want more than anything to punch him in the face. But I have a feeling that wouldn’t be a good idea.  “I’m your guy?” I say to her.

She deflates, and lifts her hand from my chest. “He’s gone,” she says. She slips her bag off my shoulder and puts it on her own. She stands up on tiptoe and kisses my cheek, her lips lingering ever so briefly. I want to turn my head and catch her lips with mine, but she’d run if I did that. I’m sure of it. Thank you, she signs. My heart leaps when I realize she’s speaking my language. I just taught it to her, but still.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“Home,” she says with a shrug. Then she turns on her heel and leaves me standing there. I shake out a new cigarette and light it, and I watch her walk away. She doesn’t look back. Her black bag is bouncing against her leg, and her guitar case is in her other hand. She hunches down against the wind. Does she own a coat? I wish I’d given her mine.

I follow her. I can’t help it. I need to see where she’s going, or I won’t be able to find her again. Not to mention that her being alone in the night in the city scares the shit out of me.  She’s not hard enough for this place or for these people.  If I let her get away from me, I might not ever find out what that tattoo means to her. And I sort of need to know now that it’s on my arm. I might be able to find her in the subway tunnel. I realized when I saw her today that must be why she looked so familiar. I’ve seen her in the tunnel, busking for change.

She crosses the street and goes toward the old bank building, the one that was turned into a shelter for the homeless a few years ago. There are people in a line outside, and she gets in line with them.  She doesn’t have anywhere to stay. She’s going to a fucking homeless shelter?  But before she can go inside, they close and lock the doors. The people in line stand and protest. But they’re full.

The throws her head back, her long dark hair falling even longer, reaching her ass. She’s frustrated, I can tell. But she doesn’t complain. She picks up her case, and starts down the street. There’s another shelter a few blocks over, but my guess is that it’s full, too. The shelters sprung up around here like fast food restaurants when the city began to change. But there are too many homeless and not enough places for them to stay.

I follow her, finishing my cigarette while I do. But instead of going to the next shelter, she stops and sits down on a bench, dropping her face into her hands. She’s tired. And I feel weighed down by her burden, too. I approach her and sit down beside her. She looks up, her brown eyes blinking in confusion.

“You followed me,” she says, looking up and down the street like she’s not sure where I came from.

I nod.

Her chest bellows with air, and I’m guessing that was a heavy sigh.  “You don’t have to sit with me,” she says.

I look at her, and I make sure to use my voice. “Come home with me,” I say.

She looks into my eyes, hesitates for a moment, and then says, “Yes.”

Emily

He’s going to expect me to sleep with him. They usually think they can get in my pants if they give me a bed and a meal. He’s given me food, and now the bed is the next part of it. He wouldn’t be hard to sleep with. He has those dreamy blue eyes and curly locks of blond curls spring about in wild disarray all over his head.

I retrieve the money he gave me earlier from my pocket and try to give it to him. “For the place to sleep,” I say. So he’ll know I don’t plan to sleep with him.

He shakes his head, looking at me like I have lost my mind. He slides my canvas bag off my shoulder again and puts it on his. His building is surprisingly close. All this time, I’ve been staying at shelters right around the corner from this guy. And I didn’t even know he was there.

He opens the door and motions for me to step inside. “Do you live alone?” I ask.

He shakes his head no.

I stop him and press on his shoulder. “Who do you live with?”

He does that thing again where he shows me two people taller than him and two shorter than him. He lives with his brothers.  Shoot. I’m not going to an apartment filled with men I don’t know. “I can’t,” I say, but he rolls his eyes at me. Then he bends at the waist and drives his shoulder very gently into my midsection. He hefts me over his back like I’m a sack of potatoes. I’m still holding on to my guitar, and I knock him against the backs of his legs with it, because I know I could be screaming at him right now and he would have no idea. I can’t talk to him. I can’t tell him to put me down.

He carries me like that up four flights of stairs, and he’s huffing a little when we get to the fourth floor. I expect him to keep climbing, but he doesn’t. He stops and opens a door, and we’re suddenly in a hallway.

My struggling has ceased, because it’s no good. He can’t hear me. He can’t respond. So, I brush my hair out of my face with one hand and hold on tightly to my guitar with the other. He opens a door and steps inside, closing it behind him.

Four men turn to look at me, flopped there like a sack of potatoes over his shoulder. I’m turned to face them as he closes the door, so I wave. What else can I do? The one I met at the tattoo parlor gets to his feet. “Who’s that?” he asks.

The tattoo guy bends over to look in my face. “Shit, Logan, that’s the girl who clocked you.”

The other men get up and walk over, too.

One of them says, “Dude, she’s got Betty Boop on her panties.” I can’t even reach back to cover my butt.

Logan lowers me to my feet. I stumble as he sets me upright, when all the blood rushes back to my head. He reaches out to steady me, and he smiles. I realize that they could all see my panties when he had me upside down, not just the one of them. The rest were just nice enough that they pretended not to look.

Logan points to each of his brothers in turn, and motions for them to talk.

“Paul,” the biggest one says, as he extends his hand.

“I remember you,” I say.

“I’ll never forget you,” he says, with a laugh as he smacks Logan on the shoulder. “And neither will his nose.” He feints as Logan makes like he’s going to punch him. But he doesn’t. He stops right before he gets to his face.

The second to largest one, and they’re all big boys, sticks out his hand and says, “Matthew.” Matthew looks tired and a little green. I look at Logan and he nods subtly.  This is the one who has cancer and is going through chemo. Paul slaps Matthew’s hand away and says, “You’re not supposed to be sharing any germs right now.”

“Fuck you,” Matthew says, and then he walks toward the hallway and goes in his bedroom and closes the door. He doesn’t look back at me, but I don’t mind.

The last two brothers have to be twins. They’re younger than Logan, and they look identical.  “Sam and Pete,” Paul says.

They huddle around me, and I end up sandwiched between them, which they think is hilarious. They jiggle me around for a minute, until Paul barks at them.  “Let her go,” he says. He pops them both on the backs of their heads and says, “They don’t know how to act when company comes over.”

Company? That’s what I am? “Nice to meet you,” I say. I’m a bit overwhelmed. This is a lot of testosterone in one room. There’s shooting and fighting blasting from the television and I look over at it.  I know Logan can’t hear it, but there are subtitles playing at the bottom of the screen. I don’t know why, but that makes me smile.

Logan motions for me to follow him and I do, presumably toward his bedroom.

One of the twins (I can’t tell them apart) calls out for us to wait. But Logan can’t hear him. I follow him down the hallway, and the other of the twins is standing at the end of the corridor laughing like hell. Something is up, but I don’t know what. Logan opens his bedroom door, and steps inside. I follow him. And that’s when I see a form move in the bed.

“Who the fuck is that?” a female voice shrieks. Logan turns around and slaps at the light switch, and the room goes bright. A book flies across the room and hits his shoulder just as the light comes on. I step back out of the room, because whoever that is in his room is throwing shit like crazy. She’s blonde. And she’s naked. Completely and starkly naked. Shit.

She jumps out of bed and starts grabbing for her clothes.  Logan swipes a hand down his face and sticks his head out of the room. He motions toward Paul, who is leaning casually against the wall, a grin on his face. Paul walks down the hallway, his stride full of swagger, and he removes me from the doorway and goes in himself. The door closes with a thud.

“I thought you knew she was coming!” Paul says with a laugh. I imagine him doubled over, because that’s how the twins are, they’re laughing so hard. They’re high fiving each other and listening to hear what’s going on behind the door.

Logan must have signed something to him. Because he says, “She said she was going to surprise you.”

Well, she did that, apparently.

Paul heaves a sigh and says, “He wants you to go.”

More thuds in the room make me think she’s throwing shit again. Good God.

“He doesn’t want you to surprise him again,” Paul says quietly, but I can hear it. I want to press my ear against the crack in the door, because things have gotten quiet. I can hear her sniffle.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” she says with a loud inhale. “I’ll never sleep with you again.” The door flies open and she steps out it, and then she attempts to crowd me back against the wall. The twins freeze, their mouths falling open. She’s almost six feet tall. I’m not.

“Oh, shit,” one of them says.

I tolerate her until a piece of spittle flies out of her mouth and hits me in the cheek. “You better back the fuck up, bitch,” I say. And I draw my fist back. I don’t hit like a girl. I never have. I never will.

Like one of those hooks on the gong show my grandma used to watch, Logan wraps his arm around her waist, picks her up and spins her away from me. He shakes a finger at me. He better be glad he caught her, or she’d have my fist up her ass.

“Don’t shake your finger at me,” I warn. I’m pushing against him to get to her. “I’ll rip every extension from your head,” I warn. She actually has nice extensions. I’d love to ruin them. “I’ll wrap them around your skinny neck and strangle you with them.” I’m still reaching for her, and Logan can’t sign, because he has her on one side and me on the other. I swipe at my cheek. The bitch spit on me. He hands her to the twins, who try to calm her down.

He holds up one finger at me. I think he wants me to wait. Wait for what? That skinny little no account whore just spit in my face. He shakes that finger at me again. I grab it and bend it back, until he winces and makes me let go. He’s stronger than me and I know it. But it felt good. I could get tired of that finger really quickly.

He bites his lips together and sets me back from him. Then he walks to her, takes her by the elbow and escorts her to the door. She slides her shoes on as she goes, and her pants are still unbuttoned. She’s going to be doing the walk of shame and she didn’t even get laid. I take a good bit of joy in that. I’m more content than a cat in a windowsill. Logan signs something to Paul.

Paul turns to the twins and says, “One of you walk her home. It’s late.”

They both volunteer by raising their hands and jumping up and down. He calls on the one on the left. “Pete, you take her.” He glares at him. “Don’t stay long.”

“Asswipe,” the other one grumbles as he stalks back to the couch. “Pete gets to do everything.” He slams his feet down on the table. Then he changes his mind, stomps down the hallway and slams the door to his bedroom.

“Pete’s not a man whore,” Paul calls in the wake of his departure, deadpan.

“Since when?” Sam complains, sticking his head back out his door. “I’ll have you know-” But he shuts his mouth when Paul glares at him. The door slams closed behind him again.

Logan swipes a hand down his face and then grabs my arm, leading me into his room. “I didn’t know she’d be here,” he says. His voice is halting and slow.

I pout, crossing my arms beneath my breasts. He looks down at them. He is such a guy. “When was the last time you slept with her?” I don’t know why I want to know this.

He holds up three fingers and points behind him. He’s not quite meeting my eyes.

“Three days ago?” I clarify.

He nods. “But I didn’t invite her tonight.”

“Is she your girlfriend?” I ask.

He shakes his head.  He holds up that finger again and I roll my eyes.

He leaves the room and comes back with a stack of clean sheets. He jerks the slut sheets off the bed and throws them in the hallway. He motions for me to walk around to the other side of the bed, and then he snaps the sheet open and makes a movement like he wants me to help him. I might as well.

I work quietly with him to make the bed.  Then he crosses to me and tilts my chin up. I think he’s going to try to kiss me and I’m balling up my fist to deck him again. But he just looks into my eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says. His voice is clear. Halting, but clear.

“I’m not sleeping with you,” I say.

He jerks his head back, clearly surprised. He steps back and shakes his head, and I think he’s biting back a smile. “I brought you here to keep you safe. Not to have sex with you.” He smiles again, and then he walks out of the room.

I follow him, because I don’t think we’re done yet. He goes to the fridge and pulls out a beer, pops the top of it and offers it to me. At the last second, he takes it back. “How old are you?” he asks, his brows drawing together.

“Nineteen,” I admit. He puts the beer back and hands me a cold bottle of water. I take it. It’s cool. And I’m thirsty. “What now?” I ask. He takes a sip of his beer.

He shrugs, and goes to sit on the couch.  I look around. The place is a mess. There are pizza boxes everywhere, and dirty laundry piled up in the hallway. There are dishes in the sink, and the counter is full of clutter.  There hasn’t been a woman in this place for a really long time.

“Can I use your shower?” I ask. It has been a few days since I had a shower. It’s hard to protect my stuff when I’m wet and naked, but I’m not too worried about it now.

Paul looks over his shoulder and then signs something to Logan. Logan looks at me and nods, pointing down the hallway. He makes a two with his finger and points, and I assume he means the second door. So, I grab my bag and head that way.

I open the door without knocking and I find Matthew hunched over the toilet. I move to step back and he looks me in the eye, his watery and red. “Don’t tell my brothers,” he warns. He starts to wretch again, and I step in the room and close the door. I open the cabinets and find a wash cloth, wetting it with cold water. I pass it to him and he wipes his face. He closes the toilet, flushes it and sits down on it. “Fucking chemo,” he says. “It’s a bitch.”

“Do they know you’re sick?” I ask.

He shakes his head and flushes the toilet again when it stops running. “Please don’t tell them. They have enough to worry about.”

“I won’t.”

“Did you need to use the bathroom?” he asks. He doesn’t look like he has enough strength to stand.

“I was going to take a shower,” I say. “But I can wait.”

He gets up, groaning. “I think I’m good for now.” He smiles a watery smile.  “But I might have to barge in on you.” He removes a towel from the cabinet and lays it by the sink for me.

“You’ll be here to puke and not to look at me naked,” I say.

“I don’t mess with Logan’s women,” he says. Then he goes on to say, “Ever. It’s a brother thing.” He burps and I worry that he’s about to toss up his cookies again, but he doesn’t. He smiles at me and walks out, closing the door behind him.

“I’m not Logan’s,” I say more to myself than to him.

He opens the door back up, startling me. “Yes, you are.”