Page 52 of Rent: Paid in Full
“Huh?”
“How much for your ass?”
“One thousand dollars,” I say without pause, with no hesitation whatsoever. I even have the nerve to sound sure of myself.
Miller doesn’t skip a beat. “Done!”
Christ in a casserole.
What have I done?
17
Miller
I can’t believe it.I literally cannot believe Ryan’s agreed to let me fuck him. I’m so happy it feels almost impossible to lie still. I have about a million things I want to tell him, but since I have a feeling that might make him rethink his decision, I close my eyes and smile quietly in the dark.
I can tell he’s restless. He’s trying to lie still, but his breathing is a little louder than usual and his sheets are rustling.
“Tell me something,” I say after a while. He acts like he hates it when I do this, and maybe he does, but I know it helps him fall asleep faster.
He grunts in my direction and gets up to use the bathroom. He’s in there for a long time. A suspiciously long time.
Wonder if he’s jerking off?
Oh, please, please let him be jerking off.
“Everything okay?” I ask when he comes out.
“What do you want to know?” he says, getting into his bed and changing the subject none too subtly.
“Mm.” I take a while to think it through. It’s not all that often he agrees to humor me like this, so when he does, I like to makesure my question is a good one. “Okay, got one. Your earliest memory?”
He sighs, and I can almost hear him rolling his eyes, but he answers anyway. “I can’t remember much from when I was really little. I think my memory only kicked in when I was like four or five, but I remember this one time Jenna and I were visiting my gran and grandpa. It was raining. I guess we were going crazy in the house because my gran had us put our rainboots on. I was stoked about that because I’d gotten new boots a few days before. Shiny red ones. My gran gave us this big umbrella and told us to go play outside. They had a big yard with lots of trees. We used to have fun playing in it, but we’d never been out in the rain before. Jen let me hold the umbrella. I think it was the first time I’d held an umbrella, and I was way into it.”
I’m not completely sure, but there might be a tiny smile in his words. “It was kind of dark and dreary out, and I remember the sound of the raindrops hitting the umbrella. It was loud. It was those big fat raindrops, you know? The ones that make a plopping sound when they hit an umbrella.”
I murmur to show him I’m listening, but I don’t say anything because I don’t want him to stop talking. “They ran down the umbrella and splashed onto my boots. My feet stayed dry the whole time, and I was stoked about that. Jenna had to huddle in close to keep out of the rain. We walked around chatting and laughing, and there was something, I don’t know, it sounds kind of dumb now, but there was something almost magical about it. I felt like I was in a storybook or something.” He’s quiet for a couple of beats. “I think about it randomly sometimes.”
“That’s neat,” I say, trying to keep my tone light.
Everything Ryan’s ever told me about his sister and his parents matches this theme. His family are thoroughly decent, kind people. They love him, and he never felt anything but safe when he was little. They made him believe the world was full ofgood people with good intentions. When I think about the fact that life got hold of him at thirteen and taught him something different, it makes me crave violence. Seriously,craveit. It makes my chest feel tight, and I have to consciously fight the urge to clench my fists so hard my nails dig into my palms.
It’s quiet for a while, and I think he might be drifting off, but then he says, “You?”
He doesn’t usually ask. Most of the time, I can tell that he tries not to. Recently, he’s been caving more and more. “My first memory is of a nanny picking me up and carrying me out of the dining room because my parents were fighting, so it's not really a great memory. But something I think about randomly sometimes was the day my dad took me to work with him. He took me to this old house he’d bought. It was amazing. It was really old and dilapidated, but it had good bones. High ceilings and wide hallways. There was a bird’s nest in one of the fireplaces, and some of the rooms still had beaten-up pieces of furniture in them. Some windows had curtains on them, but they’d weathered so much that they looked almost like webs. We were there for ages. I was so happy. I walked around each room and imagined what it would look like when my dad fixed it up. I found this little vase or canister, or whatever you’d call it, in the kitchen. I couldn’t believe my luck. I thought it was fancy, like treasure or something. It was cream China with old roses painted on the front—”
“Just roses? No dicks or boobs?”
“Sadly, no dicks or boobs.” I laugh. “Just roses. I showed my dad, and he said I could keep it. I still have it.”
“Did your dad fix the house up?”
“Nah. He tore it down and built a square block of apartments on the land.”
He doesn’t say anything.
I stay awake for hours. I’m up long after Ryan’s breathing deepens. I listen to it, trying to match my breathing to his, fighting the desperate urge to get out of my bed and into his. To be close to him. To rest my head against his and put a hand on his chest so I can feel his ribcage expand and retract. To lie next to him and feel the heat of his body against mine.