Exotic - Chapter 38: Chapter 38

The hammering on my bedroom door the next morning might as well have been an ice bucket tossed over my head. I jumped awake, bleary-eyed and lead-boned, slouching back quickly in my pillows when I realised the only person it could have been.
The clock told me it was the early hours of the morning, an hour before the alarm I had set to be ready for Aaron to pick me up and drive us to the hospital to get Zsa Zsa. My body protested being pulled from deep, rejuvenating sleep, and my brain remaining in a dreamless fog. My mouth was sticky and foul-tasting, and my torso was plagued with a dull ache. I rested to touch my head and combed my fingers through the matts in the back of my hair.
After Aaron had dropped me home, I'd dropped into bed. Reece had clearly given up on catching me sneaking back inside; the house had been quiet. I'd resigned myself to facing consequences when he woke up.
"Miles!"
Judgment day. Game face.
Reece opened my door and came in without waiting for permission. I pushed back my blankets, sitting up in a defensive hunch. His arms were folded; his face was ugly with disappointment.
He just stared for a while, presumably to let me soak in my guilt. I shifted my eyes to the window, to watch the sunrise. I didn't know what it was that made it hard to meet his eye. I hadn't thought twice about leaving the house the night before, but I didn't feel good about deliberately defying him. I didn't feel bad either.
I just felt embarrassed. In my half-delirious state, I could imagine Mum standing behind him, shaking her head in frustration. What are we going to do with him, Reece? I don't know how much more I can take. He wouldn't do this if his father was still around.
"Good morning," Reece stated. His tone made it clear he didn't think it was.
I didn't say a word. I didn't want to give him anything he could warp against me.
"How'd you get home last night?"
It wasn't exactly the question I'd been expected. Or the blunt bullying I'd hoped for, to make me feel justified in my defiance.
Come on Reece. Tell me I'm a waste of air. Tell me I'm a loser. Give me something to warp against you.
"Aaron drove," I mumbled.
"Was he drinking?"
I looked back to him, brow furrowed. He had every excuse to yell at me, demand answers, demand where I was, and he was concerned about how I'd gotten home the night before? Where was he going with all of this? "No. Neither was I."
Why I felt the need to clarify that, I had no idea. It wasn't like I cared what Reece thought about me.
"Alright," he dropped his arms. "Get dressed."
I stared as if he'd sprouted a second head. "I... Get... What?"
"We're going to the garage. Get dressed," he turned his back on me. "If you're ready to go by eight, we'll stop by Maccas."
He left before I could think of the last word. I pinched myself on the shoulder, hard. I wasn't dreaming, evidently; maybe I'd dropped into an alternate dimension last night, right about the time Caleb Proust kissed me.
The garage? Maccas? Maybe he just wanted to confront me in a public place, so there was no risk of him throttling me. But that was more for my sake than his, and I'd never known him to be so considerate.
I fumbled for my phone, half-expecting a barrage of messages. I'd sent three when I'd arrived home, before crashing into bed.
One, to Jamie; sorry for taking off. my stuff is in the dressing room. i'll pick it up when I work next?
That one had a reply; All cool. Great show.
My second, to Aaron; pick me up tomorrow? X
That one also had a reply; I'll see you at 9.
My third was to Caleb, and it was a positive wall of text. Excuses, apologies, and reassurances that Zsa Zsa was safe. A declaration that it most certainly was not him. A request to meet, before school on Monday. A whole lot of spelling errors to indicate my mental haze at the time.
That one had been read at 5am and had no response. There was nothing from Caleb. No calls, no voicemails, nothing. It was as if the night before had never happened; or, at the very least, he didn't want to remember that it did. Maybe he didn't. Wouldn't that have been convenient.
It was a little humiliating. I should have just said, home safe, talk soon. The rejection would have been lessened significantly.
The last line I'd written was, you looked amazing tonight btw.
I was pathetic.
I texted Aaron as I dragged myself to the bathroom, hoping that the heat of the shower would shed my skin and turn me back into a human being.
hey, reece is pissed i went out
i don't think he's letting me out of his sight today.
I staggered down the stairs after a scalding shower. There was a thick line of mascara left over from wiping off my makeup the night before, running from my eyelid to my hairline, which I scrubbed raw in the mirror. Reece hadn't mentioned it, so maybe he hadn't noticed; or maybe he was keeping all his questions for the real interrogation, which I had to assume was coming.
Reece was at the kitchen table, juggling his keys. I stayed by the doorframe, pulling nervously at the hem of my t-shirt.
He gestured his head to the boiled kettle, plainly asking if I wanted coffee. I shook my head, remaining sceptically despite the innate friendliness of the gesture. There was no way that his restrained nature wasn't performed. Not after last night. Not after telling him to fuck off. He had to be luring me into a false sense of security, so it dug deeper when he told me he couldn't deal with me anymore and he was sending me to England.
Would that be such a bad thing?
"Ready to go?" he asked. I thought about telling him I had plans because I wanted to see Zsa Zsa out of the hospital and spending time with Reece was something I didn't wish for on a slow day. But I worried about further consequences if I didn't go with him. I wondered if I should wipe my phone. Or just flush it.
"Yep. How long will we be?" I asked, a little desperately.
He didn't offer me a timeline, instead just walked to the door with one hand in his pocket and one hand steering me ahead of him, hand hovering over my shoulder without touching it. The morning air was refreshing, even more so than the shower. It made me regret the t-shirt I'd selected, but when we climbed into the truck, Reece put on the heater immediately. He didn't light up a cigarette, much to my surprise. He wasn't dressed in his usual grease-stained attire; his polo shirt looked ironed, of all things. He smelt recently showered. Greasy Reece no longer fit him as a slur, at least on a physical level.
My first thought, sickeningly enough, was that he'd hooked himself a new girlfriend. The thought should have made me gag. Instead, it made me mad. Really, unjustifiably furious.
I crossed my arms over my chest as he drove, glaring daggers out the window. My phone chimed as Aaron responded, telling me to play things cool with Reece. He reminded me that I always had a place at his house if things got rough. I was considering taking his offer, but not for the reasons he presumed. Reece playing nice was almost too weird to handle. It made me nervous.
Reece took us through the drive-thru, and I got a couple of hash browns. I didn't think I could stomach much more. I also didn't want to be in Reece's debt, in any sense of the word. He couldn't hold hash browns against me, no matter how hard he tried.
The garage was empty when we arrived, which checked out for a Sunday. Reece whistled as he unlocked the shop and I followed him inside, buzzing with nerves. The garage was darker than night and full of haphazard materials; the perfect place to cover up a murder, I thought to myself.
Reece flicked on the overhead light and they buzzed above us as he led me through a maze of car parts and scattered toolboxes. He was still whistling. I kept a keen eye out for the exits.
We finally arrived at a small beige hatchback, missing its front tyres and open at the front, innards scattered across a peeling workbench. It was just about the ugliest car I'd ever seen, with its colour scheme and peeling paint and dented doors. Reece gave it a robust slap with his open hand and turned towards me, expectantly.
I stared.
"1998 Mitsubishi Colt," he announced as if it was supposed to mean anything to me. I nodded dumbly. "Dev's son just upgraded, and it was this or the scrapyard."
"I don't follow," I said bluntly.
"Well," he slid his hands into his pockets. "You fix her up, you can have her."
He paused as if he was expecting some grandiose reaction from me. Something more than startled blinking. But I felt like a deer in headlights, half-confounded by his words, and completely blindsided. I took a tentative step forward as if to inspect the car, and then fell back on my heels.
"I..." I hated my stammering with a passion. But I had no one-liners to spare. "I'm... what?"
He gestured to the workbench. "There are some coveralls in the back if you want them. Thought we could get the tyres on it today, patch up the hoses. New back windscreen. What do you think?"
I didn't know what to think. My wind was one thin line of static, and my vocabulary reflected this. "Uhhhh..."
Reece's brow creased; I wasn't giving him the reaction he'd hoped for. "I thought it was about time you learnt to drive. The truck probably isn't exactly your style."
And a twenty-year-old car in a laughably bland shade was? I might have been offended if I wasn't trapped in a state of persistent confusion. I took another experimental step forward and placed a hand on the roof. The metal was bitingly cold.
"Why?" was all I managed to get out. I half-expected Reece to play dumb, and say something gag-worthy like, why not?
But the man had more self-awareness than I gave him credit for. "Look. We've had a bad run this year, Miles. You're growing up, you want more independence, and I know I don't have much of a right to put restrictions on that. You're right; I'm not your dad. I don't think I ever tried to be that, because that was never part of the deal with Gra – your mum. But I am responsible for you, and I feel responsible for you, and I haven't been equipping you with the skills you need to go out into the world. I just kind of expected you to get better and pull your head in without me lifting a finger. But... I'm learning that ignorance isn't the way to cope with grief and uhm... Miles you, uhm..."
He shifted his feet. I watch, in confounded silence.
"You know I... care about you, right?" he finally got out. I was too astounded to reply. "I care about you and I, I want you to go out and do your thing and live a good... full life after high school and... I want you to know that you will always be..."
He trailed off, fingers knotted together, head in the rafters, eyes directed anywhere but my face. His throat had closed towards the end, and the way he was directing his face was reminiscent of holding back tears. I didn't let my guard down, but his stammering had given me enough time to pull my response together.
"You don't have to care about me," I said, more quietly than I liked. "That was never part of the court arrangement."
He heaved a sigh. "Jesus Miles, why do you think I ever went through with any of it?"
For the money, I thought bitterly, but with surprising self-restraint, I didn't say it.
"Grace and I chatted about having a baby, y'know," he continued. "And I, I wasn't for it. Because I never saw myself as a father. My old man was a mean bastard and I know I'm still figuring some of that stuff out, even now, and that's for me to do. I just knew I didn't want to risk messing up a kid because I didn't know if I was going to be a good dad or not. And you had your mum to do all the hard shit, so I didn't have to be anything more than her partner. And we got on then, I haven't forgotten that."
Dim memories of Reece sitting across from me on the dining table, talking me through my maths homework and occasionally just giving me the answer when he knew my Mum wasn't listening, Reece relinquishing control of the remote whenever I wanted to watch something, Reece driving me around all over like some glorified chauffeur, resurfaced. I'd buried them deep a long time ago. Whoever he was back then wasn't the man he turned into when Mum was gone. It had convinced me that everything was an act, a ploy to earn my affection so he could eventually marry my mother. Which, at one point, I might not have minded.
He made Mum happy. That was his only job back then.
Reece burying his face in his hands next to Mum's bedside, Reece helping her hobble to the bathroom at the end of the ward with her IV stand wheeling squeakily beside her, Reece kissing her bald head when he thought I was out of the room.
Reece and I sitting at the living room with YouTube open in front of us, both learning the Windsor knot before the funeral.
I let my hand slid off the car, swallowing to moisten my mouth. It had gone dangerously dry. "Look, I'm... sorry about last night. That's what you're getting at, right?"
He closed his eyes in clear frustration. "No. No, that wasn't what I was getting at."
"What is this then?" I demanded, but it didn't have my usual bite behind it. Maybe because it was hard to stay outraged at someone who wasn't meeting your level. It was easier to raise my voice at Reece when he bit back.
He hesitated, and then waved me off. "Look, just... grab the jack, would you? I'll show you how to change a tyre."
I might have, just to break the awkward tension in the air, if I knew what on earth he was talking about. "The what?"
Reece huffed out a laugh. It was just a laugh, but it triggered something ugly, deep within me. That laugh was at my expense. Exasperated, patronising. Jesus, how does this kid grow up without knowing this stuff? How can he call himself a man? Born without a dick. I set my jaw, clenched my fists, and turned on my heel to storm out. Reece called out my name, equally exasperated, which only fuelled my outrage.
I really should have been watching the floor. It was a labyrinth of scrap metal, cables, and electric wire; an OHS nightmare to say the least. A lawsuit waiting to happen, but I suspected that was intentional; I'd heard Reece's mates laugh about how a well-executed fall could set them for life.
That and my life-long clumsiness were the perfect ingredients for what followed. A stray cable caught my ankle and pulled taunt as I roughly kicked free, pulling me off my feet. My temple caught the corner of a workbench, sending a shockwave of pain through the right side of my face. I ricocheted sharply to the floor, landing on my back and knocking the wind from my lungs.
I might have passed out, or Reece might have just moved faster than I'd ever seen him do so before. All of a sudden, he was hovering over me, eyebrows crunched together like two caterpillars butting heads.
"Shit, are you alright?" he blundered over himself, hands drifting uselessly in the air. As if he had gone to touch me, but had thought better of it. I groaned, raising a hand to shield my right eye. Hot, free-flowing liquid pooled in my palm, and when I retracted it, it came off sticky with blood.
Before I could say a word, Reece was pressing a filthy rag into my hand and trying to guide my hand back to the gash in my eyebrow. I flinched back, making feeble noises of protest. A pesky film of blood had run over my right eye, staining my vision red.
"Miles, you're bleeding," Reece informed me. I hated his voice, his tone, the pitch, his superfluous sentences.
"Don't touch me with that!" it came out as almost a shriek, as I wrenched the rag away from him and threw it halfway across the garage. "It's disgusting."
"Oh, my god..." I could practically hear him rolling his eyes at my objection, clearly thinking me delicate from not rushing to rub filth and motor oil in my open wounds to fester. I hated him all the more for it, wished I had the strength to pull myself up and storm all the way home. Or to Aaron's house, or even to Caleb's, anywhere that took me far, far away from Reece.
"Just fuck off, would you?" I did my best to keep my voice level, but it quivered and shook and broke in the middle. "Just leave me alone."
"Mi-"
"Leave me alone!" I yelled, more resolutely. I wiped my face urgently, but the blood kept coming, dripping down my wrist, gathering in my hair, pouring down my cheek. "Fucks sake..."
"Head wounds bleed a lot," Reece told me, in a tone which suggested he thought he was being helpful. "Just... apply some pressure..."
"Do you think I'm an idiot?" I demanded. I glared at him through the cage of my hands, pressed over my eye.
His expression was unreadable. "No, I'm just..."
"...trying to help?" I finished. "I don't want it. I don't want your peace offering, I don't want your attempt at bonding, I don't want your help. Jesus, you think a car is going to fix this shit? You think I'm going to start popping around to the garage after school in a flannel and jeans and we're going to make her road-worthy together? Did you even consider that might be my worst nightmare; being trapped in this place with you getting called soft by your shitty friends, doing something I have no interest in, just so we have to spend more time together afterward? Do you ever fucking think?"
My rant trailed off into a string of curses as the blood kissed the collar of my shirt, blossoming out across my chest. Some of it had got in my mouth as I had been talking, tanging my mouth with a metallic taste. I had to swallow it down, choke it down, as I struggled to keep myself from dissolving into tears. Because that would have just been the cherry on top to the last twenty-four hours of my life, and Reece was the last person I wanted to see me cry.
He was sitting back on his heels, watching me in stunned silence. He was also breathing hard, and I wondered if it was a pre-curser to hitting me. He reminded me of Aidan, working himself up to lash out at me.
But he didn't. He rocked back and sat down heavily, eyes firmly fixed to the filthy garage floor.
"Wow. Tell me how you really feel, Miles."
I decided my shirt was past saving and pulled it over my face to soak up the blood. It helpfully hid my face as well, and the wet film of tears clinging to both eyes. My breath hitched on every inhale, and my toes curled in my shoes. I felt overwhelmingly confined, despite the open space of the garage – like I was trapped in my own skin, or clothes, or held hostage my own laboured breathing. It was an unwelcomed, distressingly familiar sensation.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut and think about any other place, anywhere far away. Aaron's house, Aaron's dining table. In the car with Max and he, in the midst of some nonsensical conversation. Crescendo, on a Friday night, onstage and glowing with confidence. In the dressing room with Zsa Zsa.
Zsa Zsa, who is in the hospital. That didn't help.
I thought about singing. Drawing. My next fashion venture. Anything and everything to take my mind off the dread. Anything to whisk me away from my current situation. I thought about what Caleb had told me. You're going to be okay. You're going to be really happy soon
With clenched fists and my mouth clamped shut, I fought off the rising panic before it could consume me. When I opened my eyes and pulled down my shirt, Reece was gone. It eased my breath further, but he returned moments later, wielding a first-aid kit. I pulled my knees up to my chest as he cracked it open, silently fetching a gauze and tape. I prepared to swat him away, but he passed me the tools to patch myself up in silence. I took them, careful not to let our fingers brush.
As I mopped my brow cleaned of blood, Reece finally spoke; uncharacteristically soft.
"I don't think a car is going to fix anything. But I thought it might be a start."
I looked up, giving him consent to continue.
He cracked each knuckle on his left hand, methodically, clearly going against every instinct by explaining himself. "I've been seeing a therapist for the past couple of weeks. A guy named Ryan. He suggested extending an olive branch. And I thought, building a car was something I would have loved to have done with my old man, so..."
I'm not you, I was desperate to say, but my tongue felt bloated in my mouth.
Instead, I echoed, "Therapist?"
He nodded jerkily. "Condition of continued employment. Never would have gone to one on my own accord."
"What'd you do?" I hated how invested I sounded.
He hesitated, so I expected the confession to be embarrassing. "Punched a guy in the back of the head at work."
I hadn't quite expected that. I felt my jaw drop.
"I don't have to tell you how badly it could have gone for me, but luckily no one got too hurt," Reece added quickly. "He had it coming, and he knew it, so he didn't pursue anything. But my boss told me I could do something about my... problems... or I could find myself another job, without a reference."
Reece had a therapist. The thought was so far removed from everything I knew about the man that I wondered if hitting my head had thrown me into another dimension where he was a compassionate person.
"Problems?" I prompted cynically. That was probably what Reece thought I had; problems, issues, failings.
"Yeah," he didn't offer any deeper insights. "Turns out the way I've been going about life without your mum hasn't been the healthiest."
You think? I swallowed down the last of the bloody aftertaste in my mouth. Two pieces of white tape fixed the gauze to my face, and I scrubbed my hands on my shirt until the blood clumped into dried beads and rolled off the cotton-like lint. "Thought you said therapists were for women."
"Have I?" Reece sounded genuinely confused. I honestly couldn't remember, whether I had been something he said to me or a perception I made of him all by myself. "As I said, never would have gone on my own accord. I've been better though, since. I've been trying to be better. He told me to be honest with you and open a line of communication. That's all I wanted to do with this. Give us something to do. So, we can... talk, if you want to, when you want to."
"I already have people to talk to."
"Who?"
"Therapist," I blurted out. "At school."
Now I was no longer in his debt, for sharing his secrets with me. That's what I told myself, anyway.
"How long has that been going on?"
"A couple of weeks," I answered honestly.
"What do you talk about?"
I stuck him with a glare. "Isn't the point of a therapist that you don't burden other people with what's on your mind?"
He gave me a perplexing smile. "I don't think that's right."
I watched the ceiling, so I wasn't forced to meet his eye. There was a pigeon nesting in the rafters, watching the goings-on in voyeuristic silence. I gave it a long glare, and it stuck its head under its wing.
"You went down hard. We should check for a concussion," Reece expertly changed the subject when It became clear I had nothing else to say to him. He moved towards me like a person approaching a distressed wild animal, picking a torch out of the first aid kit. I peeled my eyelids back and he flashed the light in both quickly. "You're alright. You're going to have a gnarly scar."
God, I hoped not.
"So, you have absolutely no interest in car renovations," Reece clarified. I sighed obviously. "Well, what do you like doing?"
Singing Lady Gaga mashups in half an inch of makeup and a skirt. I shrugged wordlessly.
"You used to sing."
"What, are we going to start a band?" I snapped.
"Jesus, Miles, can you meet me in the middle here?" he snapped right back. I dropped my chin to my chest, and Reece grunted irritably. "See... I try. I give it a go, but you've just made up your mind to hate me, and there's nothing I can do about it. You push me to go off at you and then you have the excuse to hate me even more."
"Save it for your therapist," I snarled, even though I knew it was cruel. I scampered to my feet and went for the exit again, watching the ground carefully.
"Miles. Please."
I didn't know what it was about his plea that stopped me in my tracks. I leaned back against the workbench, head down, bloody shirt clinging to my exposed ribs. Reece stood, dusting off his hands and knees as he approached me.
He stopped in front of me. Even though he was clean-shaven and showered, his eyes were dragged down by black bags and his breath still stank of cigarettes. The sobering smell kept me on edge. Reece and Mum smoked together. Smoking killed my mum.
"Mate," he said, shaking his head. "We can't keep going like this."
I remained decisively silent.
"You don't have to like me, we don't have to do a thing together," he told me. "But I had no idea where you were the other night. No way of knowing if you were okay. And that made me realise, I have no idea where you are most nights. That's poor form on my part. I'm meant to be sure you're safe. When your teacher called the other day and asked why you hadn't been in class, I had no idea what to say. I didn't know where you were.
"I don't need to know everything about your life. But if you go out, I want to know where. Not because I'm going to say no, because I want to know you're safe," he concluded. "Is that fair?"
I nodded, mostly because I wanted the conversation over.
"I'm not doing this to chew you out," he told me. "You can come back at me."
Every time I did, he just made excuses. Or insulted me. I stopped trying to have conversations with him years ago.
Reece sighed out through his nose, stuffing his hands in his pockets. "You can leave if you want. I'm not holding you here."
I swallowed. "I'm not grounded anymore?"
"I can't ground you," he said simply.
That should have been permission enough to turn on my heel and walk out. Aaron's house couldn't have been more than a forty-minute walk. But something, maybe the earnest way he'd echoed my sentiment from the other day, kept me rooted in place. I dropped my hands by my sides.
"What's a jack?" I repeated, stepping off from the workbench. Reece looked surprised, but quickly recovered and handed me a diamond-shaped tool from the workbench.
Spending a Sunday morning in coveralls, hands smeared with motor oil and red from dragging tyres up and down the shop, wrangling with a lug wrench (another new term for the mental encyclopedia) while Reece played music I didn't particularly like out of a dusty speaker had never been on my to-do list. But surprisingly enough, it wasn't miserable. Awkward, and quiet; but not charged with the usual pressure, when I was waiting for him to lash out. He was speaking way too carefully for me to believe he was about to go off at me.
"Can I paint it?" I asked him as he dropped the bonnet closed. With tyres and its front closed, it looked more like a car than a pile of junk. I couldn't help myself but feel a little bit excited. Not for the potential of more time spent on it, but a car would be a massive step towards independence. Just because I didn't like being in Reece's debt didn't mean I could recognise his offer as... generous.
"The brown doesn't do it for you?" Reece wiped a black smear across his brow, reminiscent of my mascara blotch from earlier. "What colour?"
Purple, I might have said, if he was anyone else. "Red? Black?"
"Shouldn't be an issue. We can drop by Bunnings, get some spray paint," he suggested. "You need to register it. We could do that when we go to get your Learners Permit. About time, don't you think?"
I checked each nail discreetly, picking the grime from beneath them. "Sure."
"Next weekend?"
I shrugged indeterminately. I wouldn't promise him anything. "Can you drop me off at Aaron's?"
"It's on my way," he wasn't making any promises either. I met his eye, made a face, and unbuttoned the top of the coverall and tied it around my waist.
Reece wiped his nose in the crease of his elbow and jerked his head to me. "I'll lock up. There are some spare clean shirts in – well, not clean but, y'know – the office. We'll stop by Bunnings. I can drop you off by quarter to?"
Just enough time to catch a lift with Aaron to the hospital, so I could see Zsa Zsa. My morning had panned out almost perfectly. Although we hadn't shaken on it or anything, Reece and I seemed to have fallen into an easy truce.
I texted Aaron on our way out the door, telling him I was on my way. He expressed his doubts that Reece was letting me go so early, but told me he'd wait for me. He also said the house was still trashed from the night before, and Max was locked away in a dark room with the mother-of-all hangovers.
You can help me clean before Maya gets back.
The shirt I'd dragged out was an employee shirt three sizes too big, and it hung almost to my knees. I felt like a toddler, dawdling across the carpark to the truck. All of a sudden, I felt a hand clasp my shoulder. I just about jumped out of my skin, which Reece recognised. He retracted his hand quickly.
"Sorry. Just..." he cleared his throat. "Good work in there. You're a natural."
God, I hoped not. "I nearly dropped the car on my hand."
"Nearly," Reece emphasised, and chuckled to himself. "Thanks for... humouring me, I guess."
I rolled my eyes inwardly. When it came to Reece, that was the least venomous gesture I could think of. "Thanks for the car."
Not feeling like I was navigating broken glass around Reece. That was brand new. My walls were still high and fortified, but safety – even the illusion of safety, promised by a man who changed faces more than Mystique – was a new, precious sensation.
I pictured Alba's pyramid in my mind, pictures scrabbling over the line of the second category of needs. Clawing my way onto the third tier, permitted by her psychologist of choice to think about relationships, love and belonging.
Slow down, tiger. Reece still doesn't know the first thing about you.
With that, I tumbled down, back to my usual place. Yearning for a higher place on the chain of needs. Tense with the knowledge that a slip up could undo whatever progress Reece believed we had made.
He jerked his chin towards the truck. I followed with my head down.