Filed to story: Brace Face Betty Drama Story
“Disgusting?”
“Yeah. I did. I thought it was gonna be disgusting.” It’s a relief to laugh. It kills the tension that’s been climbing up my spine since I got out of the Nova. Marcus spins me around, wrapping his arms around me.
“The kitchen can get turned upside down,” he admits. “But don’t worry. I cleaned out all the dead flies and rat shit in honor of your visit.”
“You are not serious.”
“No. I’m not.” Hesitantly, he leans down and places a gentle kiss against my mouth. “I’m just fucking with you,” he murmurs. “The park doesn’t have rats. And Oscar catches and eats all the flies.”
“Oscar?”
“The cat.”
“You have a cat?”
“No. He’s the cat, not my cat.”
“What’s the difference?”
Marcus shrugs. “Sometimes he lives here, with me. Sometimes he lives at one of the other trailers. He’s a cat slut, keeping his options open. Come on. I’ll show you where everything is.”
The kitchen isn’t quite spotless, but it’s damn near close. The counters are clean, and there are no dishes in the sink. Small, spiny cactuses sit on the window sill over the sink, and my brain nearly melts. Even a cactus requires some level of attention, and I just can’t wrap my head around Marcus Moretti caring for something like that.
The bathroom’s small, but the grout in the shower isn’t black with mold, the mirror isn’t streaked with watermarks and flecked with toothpaste, and the actual toilet bowl is glowing white.
Marcus pauses, faltering in front of the last remaining unopened door in the trailer. “My room is…uhhh…” He rubs at the back of his neck-the very first sign that he might be suffering from a few nerves himself. “I don’t sleep in here much. It’s not exactly palatial.” He opens the door and enters, bracing himself like he’s stepping into a room full of angry wasps. He hits the lights, and I follow after him.
The room’s a decent size. Probably the same size as my room at home. The walls are bare. Dark grey curtains at the windows. A shelf on the wall displays a series of framed pictures, drawings actually, hand sketched in pencil. The same woman features in all of the drawings-dark hair, dark, soulful, wounded-looking eyes, pouting mouth. She looks heartbreakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly sad at the same time. Her resemblance to Marcus leaps out of the drawings and grabs me by the shoulders, shaking me, leaving no doubt in my mind that she is his mother.
A large, king bed dominates the room. The duvet cover is plain white, as are the sheets and pillowcases beneath it. “Bought the covers this afternoon,” Marcus says awkwardly. “I didn’t know what color to get, so I said fuck it and got white. The woman in the store said it’d look clean. Maybe I should have gone with black. Or red.”
“White’s good, Marcus,” I whisper. Suddenly, the bed feels very big and very intimidating. I’ve already slept with him. I know what his body feels like against mine. I’ve had him inside me…but I suddenly find it very hard not to feel shy when confronted with such a large bed. My palms are sweating like crazy. I turn away from it, moving to stand in front of the drawings, studying each one of them closely, trying to calm my racing heart.
“My father drew them. Before I was born,” Marcus says behind me.
“Where is he now?” After the harrowing story of his mother’s suicide, I’m almost afraid to ask.
Marcus grunts. “Who knows. Prison, probably. He skipped out on us after Ben was born. I hardly remember him. He wasn’t around much in the first place.”
I brush my fingers against the closest drawing, a heavy sadness tugging at me. My dad’s always been there, no matter what. I can’t imagine what it would have been like to grow up without him. Without knowing that he always had my back. “Not many people can draw like this. He was very talented,” I say.
“His only real talent was letting people down. I barely remember him. I look at these pictures, and I see her, not him.”
“You miss her,” I say softly.
Marcus replies, voice dipped low, scraping the barrel of his chest, hushed, like he’s afraid someone from the cruel, harsh world outside might hear him admitting his one and only weakness. “Sometimes, I miss her so much sometimes, I forget how to fucking breathe.”
MARCUS POV
I’ve had plenty of girls want to come hang out at the trailer, but I’ve never let any of them inside. I’ve never even given anyone my address before, so having someone here now is really strange. Monty came here with me the day he gave me the keys, but apart from that I’ve kept this place to myself. Quiet. Private. Mine.
Betty moves around the kitchen, opening the drawers, taking mugs out of the cupboard, putting water into the kettle and prepping the coffee filter, and I lean against the kitchen wall, watching her like a hawk, chewing on my thumbnail. She looks like she belongs here. She has no idea where anything is, but she looks so damn right searching through my stuff in my kitchen that every beat of my heart feels labored and fucking painful.
This is so damn confusing.
I’ve guarded this place so fiercely that I’m not sure what to do now that she’s here and I want her to stay. She doctors my coffee, heaping four teaspoons of sugar into my mug, then pouring in a healthy splash of milk and handing it off to me.
“Thank you.” Jeez, even saying fucking thank you to her feels weird. I’ve had to fight so hard to earn or accomplish anything in this life that I’m usually very reluctant to be polite about it when I win. I can’t remember the last time someone did something as simple as make me a coffee, though, and the gratitude I’m hit with is genuine. Pathetic, but I don’t know how to fucking handle it.