The Contradiction of Solitude (4 page)

Overshadowed by junk food. I had hit a new low.

“Maybe I should try for the White House next time.” I sounded like an idiot. My poor attempt at a joke was ridiculous. But I didn’t care. I just wanted to hear her voice again.

I was feeling irrational. Impulsive.

Crazy.

“Or maybe you should just eat them and stop playing with your food like a two year old,” she suggested without a hint of coldness or sarcasm.

Her voice was calmly neutral and devastatingly blasé. She had taken me out at the knees as though she were talking about the weather.

Who was this girl?

“Or I could do that,” I agreed, humiliated and intrigued all at the same time.

She cocked her head to the side and regarded me, and I felt like fidgeting in my seat. But I didn’t. I wasn’t
that
guy. I still had some balls after all.

Even if they were starting to shrivel under her impenetrable gaze.

Then she quietly slid into the chair opposite me, without an invitation, and reached for the menu wedged between the ketchup bottle and maple syrup.

This was odd.

She
was odd.

I picked up another fry and dunked it in the ranch dressing. I ate it slowly, watching the girl with the coal black eyes the entire time.

“Can I get you anything else, Elian?” Nancy asked, coming back to the table.

The girl who had taken over my table continued to study the menu, as though she were by herself in this room full of people. As though sitting across from me meant nothing but a shared space between strangers.

And really wasn’t that all it was?

I wasn’t so sure.

“Uh, do you want to order?” I asked the girl, feeling off balance.

I was unsettled.

The girl with the coal black eyes finally looked up from the menu and closed it softly before putting it back where she found it.

“I’ll have what he’s having.”

“Good choice,” I said, smiling. Her lips lifted in response. Not so much a smile as a grimace. As though she wasn’t used to stretching those muscles.

“Seasoned fries and ranch dressing it is,” Nancy said and she sounded a little sour. Nancy was a sweet middle-aged lady with graying red hair and lipstick on her teeth. She had been working at Denny’s for as long as I had been eating there. Three long years.

“Thanks Nancy. And can I get a slice of Kentucky pie while you’re at it?” I asked and Nancy gave me a sweet look before writing the order on her pad.

Once Nancy was gone, I turned to Coal Black Eyes and waited. She had pulled out her book and had it open on the table in front of her, her arms folded to hold the battered edges down.

What was going on?

I didn’t say anything. It felt wrong to interrupt her. So I continued to build things with my fries. I’d carefully pile them up and then slowly dismantle them. One by one.

“My name’s Layna,” she said without looking up. Her hair fell on either side of her face like a curtain. Hiding her from my curiosity.

Her voice was smoky and dark, much like her eyes.

“Layna what?” I asked, wiping my mouth with a napkin and waiting some more.

She didn’t answer right away. She kept reading. And I kept eating.

We fell into a slightly awkward but strangely companionable silence.

It was the weirdest encounter of my entire life. I didn’t make a habit of sitting with strange girls who didn’t talk. I was an outgoing guy because it’s who I trained myself to become. Most people seemed to like me. I was safe. Non-threatening. Easygoing. I had mastered the art of hiding what I didn’t want others to see.

I had friends. I had a job that I enjoyed. I had an ex-girlfriend or two that could corroborate to the fact that I was a decent sort of person.

But there was something about this moment, this girl, that felt…
necessary.

I couldn’t help but stare at her.

It wasn’t just her looks that fascinated me. She had a magnetism that was usually reserved for cult leaders and religious icons. I imagined walking over hot coals and jumping off cliffs. It wasn’t absurd or insane.

It just
was.

Maybe I should leave. Maybe I should ask her why she was sitting at my table when I didn’t know her and it was obvious she wasn’t there for the conversation.

But I didn’t do any of that.

I just sat there. Eating my fries. One at a time. Trying not to stare at the girl who had invaded my space.

“Whitaker,” she said finally, answering the question I had almost forgotten I had asked. She turned the page in her book and dog-eared the top corner before closing it. She pushed it to the edge of the table and turned her attention to me.

I shivered. Cold. Frigid.

Her eyes were just as unusual as the rest of her. It wasn’t the color so much as the unfathomability of them. They cut through me. Stabbing me and thrilling me.

Coal black.

“I’m Layna Whitaker,” she repeated, as though to make sure I had heard her.

Oh I had heard her all right. Her name was now tattooed on my insides. Beating in my skull like a drum.

Nancy came back just then and dropped Layna’s plate on the table in front of her before giving me my slice of pie.

“Thanks, Nancy,” I said.

“Anything for you, sugar,” the waitress said with a coy wink before walking away.

“She likes you,” Layna murmured, picking up a French fry and doing just as I had always done. Submerged it in the dressing before scooping it out and eating it, then licking her fingers clean.

“Nah, she’s just a lonely lady,” I replied. Something about my words seemed to bother Layna. Her eyes were sad. So sad and so dark. They made my stomach knot up and drop to my feet.

“Yeah…lonely,” Layna said softly, more to herself than to me.

We fell into silence again.

“I’m Elian,” I told her after a while.

“Elian what?” Layna parroted my words back at me and I had to smile.

“Beyer. My name is Elian Beyer.” I gave her my name easily and without hesitation. Maybe we were making headway here. We had progressed from total silence to swapping names.

That was something I guessed.

“Nice to meet you, Elian Beyer.” Layna turned her coal black eyes back to her plate and we finished eating without saying another word.

Nancy came by a few more times to re-fill our drinks and to ask Layna if she wanted dessert, which she declined.

And then, after another thirty minutes, Layna was getting to her feet. She was leaving, and we had shared no more than a few dozen words between us. But for some reason that was okay.

“I’ll see you next time, Elian,” Layna said, giving me one last glimpse of her coal black, sad, sad eyes. She picked up her book, tucked it back under her arm and left just as she had come.

And I was left wondering if I had imagined the whole thing.

I realized she hadn’t left any money for the bill and maybe I should be annoyed that she assumed I’d pick up the tab. Hell, I didn’t even know the girl. It was a fucked up assumption that I’d pay for her food when she barely even acknowledged my presence.

But for some reason I didn’t care.

Because I knew I’d see her again
next time
.

And that was payment enough.

T
he person I became was born in the normal way with a mother who wanted and loved me and a father who provided for my every need. I was doted on. I was adored. I was dolled up in pretty dresses with bows in my hair.

It was a perfect life created from perfectly horrible lies.

My mother loved in an oblivious way. Unable to see fault in her life or her husband. Her glasses were always rose and she refused to see the nightmare she had unwittingly built a home with.

But those rose-colored frames didn’t extend to me. As I grew older she saw in me the things she wouldn’t see in Daddy.

Bad things.

Horrible things.

My father was…
different
.

He loved in the only way that he could. Stern. Hard. But with an undercurrent of gentle tenderness that made what came later so hard to bear. Because my father was a broken man. Splintered and fractured with few discernable pieces left of the person he may have once been.

And for that reason he became the center of my young, complicated heart.

He wasn’t a man you’d pay much attention to. He owned a hardware store in the middle of town but otherwise kept to himself. He didn’t have friends. He didn’t go bowling or have lunch with the rotary club. He found idle chitchat meaningless and unnecessary.

But he talked to me. He would tell me stories. Tales that kept me close to a man I loved and struggled to know.

He’d often leave us for a week or so at a time to go fishing, his one passion. I never thought to question these trips because as a child, I only cared about the day he came back.

Not why he was gone.

“Do you want to come with me to get some ice cream for after dinner?” my father asked. He had just gotten back from a fishing trip. He was gone longer this time and I had missed him.

My mother hadn’t questioned why he came home on Monday instead of Saturday like he said he would. She had smiled and made sure to make him his favorite dinner. She only ever gave him those smiles. They were reserved for him alone. There was love and devotion in those smiles that in my mind I wanted for myself. We were all happier when Daddy was around. Life was better. The grass was greener. The air just a little bit clearer.