BEAST (10 page)

“Maybe it’s an indication that it’s time to up the reps?”

“I’m game….um, tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow is fine.”

“
Bye
Christopher.” His eyes followed her as she walked out of the room. Christopher headed to the security door grinning and humming and when it opened three guys were standing on the other side. The smile left his face.

“If this is about y’all damn bet, I’m not interested.” He brushed past them.

“Beast.
There is no bet.”

“
Hmph
.”
He grunted and headed for the showers.

“Beast.
Christopher!” He stopped and turned. All three men were standing there glaring at him. “What the hell are you waiting for? Ask her out for Christ sakes!” A slow flush ran up his neck and enveloped his face.

“What are you talking about?”

“Dude,
you’ve been training her for a month. T
he girl likes you. Why else would she drink that shit you make every morning? And no girl works out five days a week!”

Christopher looked away. “Don’t turn this into a game.” He turned back to them with a cold look on his face. “This isn’t a game.” His heart was drumming in his chest and he was angry but unsure.

Carlos stepped forward. “There is no bet. We’re all routing for you, Beast. That’s all. Just ask her out…or else.”

He looked at Carlos in confusion. The big man flexed his muscles. He was a foot shorter than Christopher. He looked at the other two guys. They were flexing their muscles, too.

“What in the hell do you mean, ‘or else?’” Christopher liked each of the guys he worked with. But he had never been threatened by any of them.

“You got three days to make something happen.” One of the men said. “Or we’re going to make it happen for you.”

Christopher’s face paled. “You guys got way too much time on your hands…”

They gave him angry looks. “We know.”
And then walked away.

~***~

There was nothing much worse than 16 Marines with nothing better to do than to butt into his personal business. Christopher sat back in his armchair and drank a beer, something he seldom did. If they weren’t lying about there being a bet, then this was worse than he thought. Because it meant that they would keep pushing and pushing until they were satisfied.

He groaned. They couldn’t understand
,
they hadn’t been in this same position before. He knew how it worked. He squeezed the half empty bottle and tried the shut away the memory. But it replayed despite his reluctance to relive it.

Debbie Roberts lived down the street from him down in Corbin. He knew her only in passing. She had something like ten brothers and sisters and it seemed that all she did was take care of the little ones. They were always running wild and Debbie would come to their house and ask if anyone had seen this or that one.

Sometimes she would look so tired. They’d catch the school bus which was all the way down at the bottom of the hill. It took a good fifteen minutes to walk it, worse was when you had to walk up it. You actually had no choice but to be in good shape if you lived on Cobb Mountain. Debbie was certainly built nice, even for a fourteen year old.

She didn’t talk much either and kept to herself. There was no such thing as poor white trash when you lived on the mountain—everybody was poor. It wasn’t a word he learned until they moved to Covington. But Debbie’s family was poorer than poor.

One day they were walking up the hill and Debbie just sat down. They weren’t walking together, just at the same time. But when he looked back and Debbie was still sitting on the ground he went back.

“You alright?”

She didn’t move for a long time, then she squinted up at him and he remembered that she had dark brown eyes and blond eye brows and the fine blonde hairs around her face was damp with sweat. “Why should I get up? Why should I walk up the mountain, take care of my mama’s kids, do my homework, walk down this hill the next day, sit in school where people talk down on me? Why should I do that?” There wasn’t a tear in her eye and she was asking him an honest question and waiting for an honest answer.

He swallowed. “Because you
ain’t never
going to get off this mountain if you don’t.”

Debbie had pulled herself up and walked up that hill…with him. And every day after she waited for him at her gatepost or he waited for her and they walked down it and then later in the afternoon they walked up it once again.

Then at school she started sitting next to him during open assembly. There wasn’t much need to talk but it was nice that she sat near him. And when he thought that he was satisfied with her silent company, she changed it by asking him about his scars and she reached out and traced a finger down the long one that ran down from his forehead. He’d given her a surprised look. No one but family and doctors had ever touched his scars.

He’d explained about the cleft palate and though she didn’t seem to completely understand she was satisfied with his answer.
Later that day she came knocking on his door and asked if he wanted to walk with her to the store.
He did.

And the next day when she knocked on the door carrying her school books they sat on the sun porch and did their homework together. And that is how he and Debbie Roberts became friends. They didn’t talk a whole lot, it was mostly comfortable quiet.

“She likes you.” His brother Walt had said. Walt was a year older and had a girlfriend that he had been seeing since summer. “Why are you being a baby about it? She likes you, Chris! You’re like her only friend. Just ask her to be your girlfriend.”

He’d blushed beet red. He thought about her all the time, he thought about her sad eyes and her long blond hair. He thought about her skinny elbows and her beautiful legs in cut off jeans.

But did she think about him?

“Just do it.” Walt said. He gathered up his nerves and on Saturday when they walked down to the spring to bring back fresh water he’d reached out for her hand.

Debbie looked at him but didn’t pull her hand out of his. “Debbie. Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

She had given him a confused look. “I am your friend Chris.”

“No like…” He leaned in and kissed her and she’d touched her lips in surprise. Then he knew…Debbie didn’t like him like that. Debbie had never even thought of him in those terms. She made up some excuse to go back to her house. Afterwards she slowly stopped coming around after school and he stopped seeking her out.

Not long after, they had moved up to Covington Kentucky where his Dad had gotten a job at the VA hospital. Debbie didn’t even say goodbye to him. For years he wished that he had just kept his mouth shut and then he would have never lost her friendship. Even if he couldn’t have her as his girl, he at least could have had her as his friend.

Ashleigh’s friendship was about the most important thing to him right now
, even though it had only been a month. S
he gave him something to look forward to each day. She made him laugh, she made him think. The guys could say ‘go for it.’ But he liked Ashleigh and he wasn’t willing to risk losing her friendship by making the same mistake twice.

~***~

Ashleigh was looking at her roots in her mirror. She hadn’t been to the hair salon in weeks and her nails had long since lost their overlay. She quickly pulled on jeans, but they were too loose and even with a belt they sagged. She pulled out a box of clothes that she’d packed away. She tried on three pairs before she found one that fit her snuggly. On a hunch she pulled the jeans off and looked at the tag in back.

Size 16.

She gasped and nearly choked
.
Size 16?!
She’d lost three dress sizes
! How long has it been since she first stepped into the gym
? Three months.
She couldn’t wait to tell Christopher!
Things were happening faster
because of him
.
She had to do something nice for him!

She paced while she thought about what she could do to show her appreciation. She would invite him to lunch with her, Lance in Kendra. He was her friend and she wanted her other friends to know just how cool Christopher was.

Ashleigh ran to her closet and began ripping down her clothes. They were getting packed up. She forgot all about going to the hair salon and about getting her nails done. She didn’t even want to buy new clothes. No, Ashleigh wanted to dig out her OLD clothes! The ones that she hoped to one day fit into again. Now ‘one day’ had arrived!

~***~

“Christopher, guess what?”

He looked up from where he had adjusted the mats. “What?”

“I’m down three dress sizes!”

He smiled crookedly at her, his eyes twinkling. “Now do you believe me? I told you
you
were getting smaller.”

She clapped her hands and jumped up and down. “I believe you. I believe you Christopher! Now are you going to help me celebrate, or what?”

He paused. “Celebrate?” His smile faltered.

“I want you to meet my two best friends. We go out for lunch together
at least
once a week. Will you go with us?”

“With…your friends?”

“Yes.”

“I’m not much of a people person.”

She swallowed. “Because…of your scars?”

He nodded.

She inhaled and decided to plow forward. “Those aren’t just from your cleft palate, is it?” She held her breath hoping that her question hadn’t embarrassed him.

He reached up and touched his upper lip. “I have a bilateral cleft. It’s a lot tougher to correct surgically. But I also had some problems with the way my skull came together…or didn’t. They tried to fix that…badly. I look like Frankenstein’s monster.” He smiled slightly.

“Can…cosmetic surgery help?”

“Yes.”

“Why-?”

“How much good is that going to do, honestly? I’ll never be an Adonis. And I’m a jarhead. The time it would take for me to get surgery just so that I’ll still be ugly seems hardly worth it.”

He turned away and sat down and proceeded to go through his stretching. She’d upset him and it crushed her. It made her sound as if she thought he should get surgery and that’s not what she had meant at all. After nearly six weeks of knowing this man his scars
were
just an after-thought to her anymore. Most times she forgot about them…or they seemed so much a part of the kind man that she knew that they were no longer ugly to her. It was just Christopher’s face.

She sat down opposite him.

“Christopher. I apologize.” She thought about the way it always made her feel when people with good intentions told her that she needed to lose weight in order to be truly pretty. “I didn’t mean to insinuate that you should change anything about yourself. You are a wonderful man just the way you are.”

He met her eyes. His brow knit and he steeled his resolve. Maybe…maybe it wasn’t like Debbie Roberts.

“Christopher, please come to lunch with us. Will you say yes?”

He warmed and then slowly nodded. “Yes.”

She smiled in relief and then leaned forward and gave him a quick hug. Christopher’s hands came up to lightly touch her back. “I realize it’s hard for you to meet people. But you don’t have to be nervous about meeting my friends. They are good people. And I…took the liberty of explaining about your scars. So you see
,
you don’t have to worry. You don’t have to be lonely, Christopher. You got me, okay?”