Page 39 of Rent: Paid in Full
His eyes go vacant, and he tilts his head to my ear. “Fuuuck. You’re so pretty when you smile.”
“Oh Jesus,” I mutter, dropping my head in both hands.
He turns around, leaning his back against the bar and motioning to the booth we just came from with his beer. “Wanna see something cool?” I really don’t, but Emily has ensconced herself with his friends, and I’m not in a big hurry to get back there. “Watch what happens to Dean when Sienna talks to him.”
I watch for a while. A couple of minutes pass before anything happens. People are talking animatedly, louder and more exuberantly than during the day. Sienna catches Dean’s eye and smiles. He sits straighter immediately, lower back stiffening, and a wide-eyed look of terror and joy flickers across his face. His jaw works a couple of times before he replies.
“Geez, poor guy.”
“Wait,” Miller whispers. “Keep watching. This is new.” Sienna laughs at whatever he says, resting a hand on his arm and throwing her head back until her blonde hair cascades down her back. “He’s been like this since he met her, but it’s new for her. It wasn’t there before. I only noticed it a few weeks ago.”
His lips are touching, resting against each other, but they’re quirked to one side. His eyes are soft, almost translucent in this light. He talks me through the rest of the group in the same way, pointing out tiny mannerisms, little peccadillos he observes and collects for his own entertainment. I have to admit, his observations are interesting, and while I wouldn’t class them as flat-out impressive, they are impressive-adjacent.
“You’re good at reading people,” I say, stomach churning at the thought of what he sees when he reads me.
“Have to be. You get real good at reading the room when you grow up in a warzone.”
He raises his beer to me and smiles amiably. He holds eye contact for a long time. Way longer than I’m comfortable with, but I find myself unable to look away. Dusty gray-blue has clouded over. Instead of flashes of silver, there’s pain. He doesn’t flinch or look away. He doesn’t even blink. He lets me see.
“What about Trip?” I ask, eager to lighten the mood. “Any bruising insights as to how the Cheeto fetish evolved.”
He laughs and then quiets. “I don’t think Trip has a very easy time feeling good about himself. He tries to hide it, but he’s shy. I think he likes having something to offer, to hold between him and other people. Almost like a shield. A cheesy orange shield.”
“Hmm,” I say, trying not to react at how insightful that is. “Pity it had to be Cheetos. Ke—”
“Yeah,” Miller finishes for me. “Kettle fried would have been so much better. Sour cream or plain salted?”
“Plain salted for sure.”
We make our way back to our table, and thankfully, I manage to get a seat next to Emily.
“So,” I say, once I’ve handed her drink to her, “did you see her today?”
Despite the fact I haven’t known her for long, Emily and I have struck up a friendship. She felt so awful about getting the single room, leaving me stuck with Miller, that she offered to let me hang in her room whenever I need to get away from him. Things have been so dire that I’ve taken her up on her offer quite often. She’s surprisingly easy to talk to, and she’s not at all the person I imagined her to be when I met her. She and I are pretty much neck-and-neck when it comes to not knowing how to handle ourselves around other people.
“Yeah.” She nods, but her eyes stretch worryingly wide.
She recently told me about a girl in her history class who makes her feel odd. Apparently, the girl has short, spiky dark hair and birds and flowers tattooed down both arms. Apparently, when Emily is around her, she feels like she might be having a sugar crash for no discernible reason. She’s started taking protein bars with her to history class, but so far, they haven’t been helping. She’s thinking of going to the doctor to get checked out.
“Did you talk to her?”
Her mouth turns upside down, and her eyes stay the same. “Yeah.”
“What did you say?”
“Um, I think my exact words were, ‘Er, hey, hi, um, hello.’”
My shoulders shake from laughter. “It’s not that bad, Em. It could have been way worse.”
“Itwasway worse. I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I added a bunch ofoohsandaaahsand finished off with a couple of these weird guttural sounds.” She mimics a strange choking sound. “It was bad, believe me. It was as bad as it gets.”
We chat about other things for a while, and when my drink gets two-thirds of the way down, Miller hands me another silently. When he’s out of earshot, Emily puts a hand over her mouth and whispers, “How’re things with Miller fucking MacAvoy?”
“Ugh, the same. Maybe worse.”
“Still making you coffee in bed and sending your laundry out for you, huh? What an asshole.”
I know she’s being sarcastic, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ve tried and tried to explain why I can’t stand him, but without getting into the wholehe offers me money for sex and I take itthing, it’s really, really hard to explain.