few minutes.”
He breathed out a laugh and walked to the fridge, taking out the milk and pouring himself a glass.
“Smells good.” He carried his glass to the table and sat down. “Is your homework done?”
His silver badge glinted under the light of the overhead bulbs, his form in his black uniform seeming to grow larger and larger by the second.
Martin and I were never close. Eight years older than me, he was already used to being an only child by the time I came along, and when our parents passed away about five years ago, he’d had to take care of everything. At least he got the house.
I cleared my throat. “Almost. I have some lit questions to double-check after dishes.”
I hadn’t completed them at all, actually, but I always embellished. It was like second nature now.
“How was your day?” I asked quickly, taking the pasta out of the oven and setting it on the table.
“It was good.” He served himself, while I doled out salads into our bowls and poured myself some water. “The department is running smoothly, and they offered to move me up to Meridian City, but I—”
“Like it clean and tidy,” I joked, “and Thunder Bay is your ship.”
“You know me so well.”
I smiled small, but my hand shook as I picked up a forkful of lettuce. It wouldn’t stop shaking until he left for work in the morning.
He dug into his meal, and I forced a bite into my mouth, the silence filling the room louder than the sound of the drops hitting the windows outside.
If I weren’t speaking, he’d find something to say, and I didn’t want that.
My knee bobbed up and down under the table. “Would you like more salt?” I asked, lacing my voice with so much sugar I wanted to gag.
I reached for the shaker, but he interrupted. “No,” he said. “Thank you.”
I dropped my hand and continued eating.
“How was your day?” he inquired.
I looked at his fingers wrapped around his fork. He’d stopped eating, his attention on me.
I swallowed. “Good. We, um…” My heart raced, the blood pumping hot through my body. “We had an interesting discussion in lit,” I told him. “And my science report is—”
“And swim practice?”
I fell silent.
Just tell him. Get it over with. He’ll find out eventually.
But I lied instead. “It was good.”
I always tried to hide behind a lie first. Given the choice between fight or flight, I flew.
“Was it?” he pressed.
I stared at my plate, my smile gone as I picked at my food. He knew.
His eyes burned a hole into my skin, his voice like a caress. “Pass the salt?” he asked.
I closed my eyes. The eerie calm in his tone was like the feeling before a storm. The way the air charged with the ions, the clouds hung low, and you could smell it coming. I knew the signs by now.
Reaching over, I picked up the shaker, slowly moving it toward him.
But I knocked his glass instead, his milk spilling onto the table and dripping over the side.
I darted my eyes up to him.
He stared back, holding my gaze for a moment, and then shoved the table away from him.
I popped to my feet, but he grabbed my wrist, yanking me back down to my seat.
“You don’t rise from the table before me,” he said calmly, squeezing my wrist with one hand, and setting his glass upright before taking my water and moving it in front of his plate.
I winced, my glasses sliding down my nose as I fisted my hand, the blood pooling under the skin because he was cutting off my circulation.
“Don’t you ever leave this table without my permission.”
“Martin…”
“Coach Dorn called me today.” He stared ahead at nothing, slowly raising my water to his lips. “Saying you quit the team.”
The unbuttoned cuff of my white uniform shirt hid his hand, but I was sure his knuckles were white. I started to twist my wrist because it hurt, but I immediately stopped, remembering that would just anger him more.
“I didn’t say you could quit,” he continued. “And then you lie about it like an idiot.”
“Martin, please…”
“Eat your dinner, Em,” he told me.
I stared at him for a moment, reconciling my head, once again, to the fact that it was going to happen no matter how hard I tried to stop it.
There was no stopping it.
Dropping my eyes to my plate, I lifted the fork, less sure with my left hand than with my right, and scooped up some rotini noodles