problem, see. I don’t know.”
“You don’t know what?”
He tips his chin at me, studying me like I’m a puzzle or something. “You. I don’t know a thing about you. Until now, I didn’t know you played soccer. I didn’t know you had a talent for lame poetry. I didn’t know anything. About you. The girl who knows so much about me. You do, don’t you? To draw all the conclusions about me. About my hurt.”
Oh, he has no idea.
He has no idea all the things that I know about him, and I don’t want to give him any idea either. So I try to act casual and shrug even though it comes out awkward.
“Uh, yeah. We lived in the same house. For years. A-and as I said before, you were busy with soccer and other things.”
“Well, again lucky for you. I’m not busy now, am I?”
I look to the side. “I don’t understand.”
And as if in response to me averting my eyes, he raises his other arm as well, grabbing the same shelf by the side of my head, making a prison out of his limbs and chest. So I never look away from him again.
“Who taught you to play soccer like that?”
“Like what?”
From the corner of my eyes, I see his biceps bunch. “So magnificently.”
“What?”
His jaw clamps as he keeps staring at me. “Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a talent like that.”
I press my back into the bookcase and crane my neck up. “B-but you said all those things and –”
The bookcase shifts again and if he keeps putting pressure on it like this, all the books will fall out.
And dig a hole on the floor and I’ll fall.
I’ll fall and keep falling.
Falling and falling. For him.
He frowns. “I said them because they were true. Talent alone doesn’t mean anything. You have to hone it, make it better, channel it. I could teach you.”
“I’m sorry, what?”
“I could.”
I don’t even have the time to bask in his compliment, bask in the fact that he used the word magnificently.
My favorite player said that I play magnificently.
Because then he says, “On one condition.”
“What condition?”
He shifts closer then, bending his body even more.
With his arms raised and placed by my sides, it looks like he’s doing a pull-up and his silver chain is swinging in a mesmerizing way.
He tips his razor-sharp jaw at me. “Just tell me if it’s your thing.”
“What’s my thing?”
“Stealing.” Before I can respond to that, he goes on. “Because that’s mine, isn’t it? That t-shirt you’re wearing.”
I freeze.
I practically freeze and combust all at the same time as I become aware – very uncomfortably aware – of what I’m wearing right now.
His old t-shirt.
The one that I stole after he left for California.
And he can see it, the whole world can see it because I don’t have my chunky sweater on like I usually do.
Because ever since he humiliated me on the soccer field a day ago, I’ve been feeling so warm and heated that I haven’t been wearing it. I even put up my hair and tied it into a top knot so as to let my neck breathe.
“I… I don’t…”
“It is mine, isn’t it?” He nails me with his eyes, pins me down like he did back at the bar, as if I’m a bird. “I remember throwing it away or something a long time ago. But maybe I didn’t throw it far enough. Far enough away from your sticky fingers. So, is that your thing? Stealing? T-shirts. Money. I wonder, what else have you stolen? Not that I mind. I mean, it’s an old t-shirt and some chump change. But I’m just trying to get to know you. We lived in the same house for years and I was busy with other things. Which is a shame, really, because I should’ve been paying attention to you. The little sister. You grew up kinda nice.”
He said so many things just now.
So many, many things that I don’t know which one to focus on. I don’t know which deserves my attention the most: the fact that he basically called me a thief or the fact that he said I grew up nice, and now he’s looking me up and down.
Because he is.
His gorgeous lips are turned up in a cold smirk and he’s taking me in like… like I’m a doll or something. An object. That he’s eyeing and I so want to get away from him.
But I’m frozen.
My feet are glued because despite the cold,