Taking Faith (9 page)

What Elena had said t
o
her came flitting through her mind.
Just be his wife, Amy.
That's what she'd do. She'd just do what needed to be done around the house and the office in hopes of Roger seeing that people could care for absolutely no reason at all. There was still come goodness in the world, despite everything.

With her vow tightly in place, she sat on the couch and
turned on the television
to
the news. She leaned back and
tried to find something, but most of the channels were locked. She realized, they thought of everything in this place. If she could watch the news, she would know where she was. So she settled on a home renovating show and leaned back to zone out. Some people say that TV
rots your brain, but for Amy it
was comforting, especially when she felt alone. The TV
or the radio
was on almost all the time in her apartment, even if she wasn't watching it. It was just the noise, the other voices…

She left the TV on and decided to check out the rest of the house. She found the laundry room by the garage. He had another car in the garage that she hadn't seen before. It had a cover on it and she saw the dip in the cover telling her it was a convertible. She bit her lip and smiled, but closed the door. She loved convertibles, always had. In fact she was so taken by them that in high school s
he went to a dance once with a S
enior and the only thing she knew about him was that he drove a convertible.

She laughed at herself as she walked back across the living room. It felt like forever ago, but she was only nineteen. It was nothing compared to the grand scheme. Nineteen, married, shackled and stolen. She should write a novel about this, she thought.

She used to keep
a journal, she may start again.
Back in school
she
journaled
every
day. She remembered going back and reading about her crushes and being so embarrassed she ripped the pages out.
She realized that if she had met Roger in school, or anywhere, she would have liked his looks. She was always attracted to 'quarterback' types, and Roger was definitely that.

She wondered if he'd ever dated anyone. Did they even have a school here? She shook her head. Really she shouldn't care. She was only going along with this until she could leave. She hated to think what would happen to Roger once they realized she was gone though… She shook her head again. She would
not
think about that.

She went on with her tour and found another bedroom, but there was no bed. It was filled with workout equipment and boxes, and it was very dusty. The equipment hadn't been used since she'd been there apparently. She closed the door and peeked through all of the closets and the bathroom cabinets.
Once her tour was done, she decided to see what she could make for lunch and found some thawed chicken. Chicken and rice it was.

So with her vow in full swing, her tour finished, lunch started, Roger's history and family life nowhere near solved, but she had a fuller understanding that he was a victim if nothing else, she was ready to tackle the day, the week, the month if need be.

She would bide her time until opportunity arose in the form of a wide open door.

Chapter 8

She heard a loud thud and then a dull curse from the bedroom. She figured Roger was up and apparently disoriented. She couldn’t contain her small giggle at his stumble.
He came from the room, all grumbling and messy hair. He rubbed his hair with both hands and groaned long and loud. She stopped her silent giggle as she felt her chest tighten. He may be a mean, scarred man, but he was a beautiful man nonetheless. She turned her face away.

"Did I hear a giggle from this room?" he asked and she turned to look at him, but he was looking around the room by then. "Did you…clean?"

"Yes. And lunch is almost ready," she spouted all business like and went back into the kitchen. She was stirring the rice and determining it was sticky enough to be done when he came in. He was staring at her with a questioning look. "What?" she barked.

"Nothing," he said defense and raised his hands. He backed out of the room that way.

She took two bowls into the dining room to find him already sitting there. She went back and got them two sodas. "I was going to make some tea, but you don't have any."

"I don't like tea. Well, I do, but I don't keep it in the house. That was all my father ever drank and all I was ever allowed to drink growing up." He held up his can and smiled at her. "This is my silent rebellion."

She nodded. "Ok. No tea."

"Water is fine for meals though," he continued. "It's what I usually drink, but then again I was eating frozen dinners and sandwiches every day, so. This looks really good."

"I thought you said no sandwiches in this house," she asked in a small voice.

"I said you weren't to make any," he corrected. She didn’t look up, just looked down into her plate. He sighed and went on. "Sandwiches are man's food. It's what he eats when he doesn't have a woman to cook for him. That's what this community thinks and if my father ever came over and we were eating sandwiches, it wouldn't be pretty."

She nodded and took a bite. It was good. Too bad she didn't feel like enjoying it.

"Look," he said slowly and
took a big bite, chewing slowly, "I'm sorry. I'm a grump when I wake up. And I've never had to explain my behavior or reasoning to anyone so… I'm sorry if I seem agitated." He cleared his throat when she stayed silent. "Thanks for lunch."

She nodded again and knew it was going to take some getting used to on both of their sides. She needed to just steel herself and keep her plan forefront on her mind. She finished her lunch and then cleared the dishes. She could feel his eyes on her, but she kept working. When everything was clean, she came out to find him watching TV. He was watching the same show she had turned it to.

"I'm going to go and take a shower, all right?" she said softly.

"Of course. Go ahead," he said and smiled a half smile. He seemed to be puzzled by her, but she kept her resolve. After the shower and a fresh set of clothes, she returned to find him in the same spot.
She sat cautiously on the high
back chair, pulling
legs under her. Her eyes were on the TV, his eyes were on her. She tried not to squirm, but it was pretty hard when she could practically feel the questions burning inside him. She held in her smile and felt pretty smug for putting him so off kilter.

"What's that smile for?" he asked quietly.

Dang, she didn't do a very good job apparently. "Nothing."

"Are you…trying to pull something, Amy?" he asked so low, she barely heard him.

She swung around to look at him. "What? No. What do you mean?"

"What's with the nice guy routine?"

She felt her eyes bulge. She had said that exact thing about him. She pressed her lips in a hard line. "I can be nice for no reason at all. I can choose how to react and respond to things. That's the beauty of free will." She stood, angered. "That's something, no matter what you do to me, you can never take away. I'll always be
me
inside."

She walked away and went into the bathroom. She shut the door so quietly, though she wanted to slam it. She slid down it and cried. She knew this was going to be hard. She took a deep breath. That man
out there had
never had anyone be nice or kind or gentle to him for any reason, of course he'd be suspicious. She needed to pull it together and keep the plan together.

She wiped her eyes with some tissue paper and
smoothed her hair back. She opened the door and he was there, his hand lifted as if to knock. He jumped. "Oh, sorry. I was coming to… I'm sorry."

She nodded and tried to smile. "It's ok. I'm fine."

His brow bunched. "Were you crying?" he whispered. "Amy…" He cleared his throat. "Listen, I'm a jerk, ok? Just…whatever."

"Yeah, whatever. It's fine." She moved passed him, having to brush against him to do so. She ignored the small noise he made as she did so. It sounded entirely too sensual for someone who had admitted that he wanted nothing to do with her and didn't even want her there.

She went back into the living room and stopped, unsure of what to do. She wanted to keep herself busy with something, but the man literally had nothing to do at all. For a woman, anyway. He followed her back in and watched her. So she improvised. "So, your convertible…what is it?"

"You were in the garage?" he asked quickly.

"Yeah," she answered nonchalantly. "I gave myself a tour." She smiled at him coyly. "You kind of skipped that part."

He chuckled reluctantly, as if taken aback. "Yeah. Uh, it's a
'
79
Cadillac Eldorado
. The only thing I ever bought for myself purely for pleasure."

"Why's that?"

He grimaced. "Well, I never had anything
that belonged just to me
," he said defensively, gruffly. "I work hard and I don’t think there's anything wrong with me getting myself something-"

"No, no,
no,
" she stopped him. "I meant why was this the only thing you'd ever bought yourself?"

"Oh," he said in surprise. "Uh…well the law is that a man has to have a certain amount of money saved up on top of the cost of the bride when he takes a wife. So, my father kind of exploded when I bought this. Said I set myself back."

"How old are you?" she asked, but noticed that the question might seem derogatory with the topic so she continued, "You look pretty young to have…accomplished so much."

"I'm twenty six. How old are you?"

She swallowed. Twenty six… "Nineteen."

"What?" he said and cringed. "Really?"

She nodded. "Mmhmm."

He blew
out a 'whew'. "Most of the wome
n are young, but I thought you were at least twenty one, two maybe." She shook her head, though it wasn't needed. "That sucks," he groaned and pulled on his lip with his fingers. "My God, you are so young. They took your whole life away."

"I'm very independent, always have been." She straightened her back. "I was already living on my own, so…"

"Nineteen," he mused with raised eyebrows. "Wow."

"So what do you do on days off?" she asked to steer the conversation.

"This is it," he laughed. "I usually just sit around and catch up on CSI, mow the grass, work out, take a drive."

"
Could we…take a drive?"

He cracked a sideways smile. "You want to take a drive me with me?"

She nodded, thinking about how the dance she'd went to with Lionel was wasted. He'd rented some fancy car to impress her and hadn't even driven his convertible the night of the dance.

Roger shrugged. "Sure. My baby hasn’t been out in a while. Let's go."

Amy was teeming with excitement. Not only was she getting to ride in her first convertible, but she could also get a good layout of the town. But mostly, the beautiful convertible. And when she followed him out to the garage
, and he yanked the cover off,
she saw how beautiful it was. Cherry red and white leather. She sighed and made a quick path to her side.

He chuckled at her, but didn’t say anything as he got in. It started the first time. The engine purred just for her, Amy thought as she relaxed against the warm leather. She was pretty pasty and the white of the leather seemed to give her skin a glow. She smiled
as she buckled her seat belt.

He drove down passed his sho
p and around through downtown. The wind brushed her face as h
e waved to a few people whose eyes seemed too interested and nosey. After about fifteen minutes, he pulled into a broken down drive-in theater. The screen had branches skewing the view and a long split down the middle. There were vines and broken speaker poles
scattering the area.

He parked it in front of the screen and pulled a speaker to set on his window. He turned and grinned at her. "What do you want to see?"

She laughed. "I think anything they played here is long gone. Why did this close down?"

"Well," he laughed once, "when the men aren't interested in dating their wives, it doesn't make much sense to have a drive-in. I came here once when I was about six with Alex and his mom, but it closed down soon after that. The only ones who would use it
were
teenage boys and we were too busy being groomed to be stellar husbands to watch movies." He laughed again and shook his head.

"Well…" she mused, "I bet it was nice while it lasted."

"I guess.
"

The
y sat in
comfortable silence for once as they both looked at the screen and imagined what it was like to have one normal thing like this in the lives of these people. "Your mom never brought you here?" Amy asked.

He scoffed. "Uh, no. I told you my mother was prickly."

"Yeah, but she was still your mother," Amy countered. His mouth tightened. "What?" she asked. "You can tell me."