Page 12 of Truck Stop Tempest
“Are you cold?” I asked, lifting the bottom hem of my sweatshirt, preparing to offer the tiny girl a shield against the biting wind.
“No. I’m good. Thanks, though.” She grabbed my wrist and stopped me from undressing.
Fuck. Those cold, small fingers seared my skin.
“Why’d you leave early?”
“Hmm…Truth?” She turned her palms face up and studied the pink skin.
“Yeah. Truth.”
Tuuli stopped and faced me, arms dropped to her sides. “Sometimes, I don’t feel worthy of being in church. Sometimes, I feel like bad things are squeezing my heart so tight it’s going to implode, create a black hole, and suck everybody in.”
Her confession struck me hard, a lightning bolt searing my insides from head to heart to gut. I related, too well.
“That’s dark.” I had nothing more to offer, other than truths that would scare her.
She started to walk again, her usual bouncy sway missing from her strides. “My turn for a question.”
“That’s fair, I suppose.”
“Were you coming to meet me?”
Her bold inquiry caught me off guard. Before thinking, before taking a breath to come up with a convincing lie, I confessed, “Yes.”
“Why?” she asked, gaze to the ground, windblown hair hiding her features.
“That’s two questions. It’s my turn.”
“Fine,” she laughed. “If that’s how you wanna play it.”
I didn’t want to play at all. She was a child. That simple fact should’ve stopped me from asking, “That guy from the other night. He your boyfriend?”
“Umm.” She opened her mouth to speak, shook her head, then mumbled, “It’s complicated.”
“It’s not a complicated question. The answer is either yes or no.”
“No.”
Good. “But he used to be?”
“That’s two questions. It’s my turn.”
I expected her to ask again why I’d come to meet her. She didn’t.
“How’d you get the scar?” She raised a finger and tapped on her temple.
My hand lifted, a defense mechanism, and I tugged the hood of my sweatshirt further over my face. “House fire.”
“You were inside the house?”
I wasn’t going there. Ever. Not with Tuuli, not with anybody. “That’s two questions. My turn.”
We continued with the back and forth, keeping it light with surface level probes. Worked for me. I sensed her secrets were locked as tight as mine.
Two blocks away from The Stop, Tuuli threw me for a loop when she asked, “Why no girlfriend?” And then added, “Someone as hot as you should have girls lined up for miles.”
She thought I was hot. Fuck. I was fucked.