Page 27 of Dirty Beasts: Chance
This gets me a look, and a dirty one. “Sure, to a degree, I guess. I dunno. Believe it or not, it’s taken a shitload of work just to get the degree of mobility I have now. But staying clean and trying to get clear of Alvin has sort of taken all my time and attention.” She shrugs. “So, yeah, maybe if I train like I’m trying out for the Olympics again, I might get it to a point where I don’t need the cane. Or, maybe I’ll do all that work and only get marginally more mobility. I dunno. Would it be worth it to half kill myself only to end up still needing the cane still anyway?”
I reach out and pluck at a loose tendril of her hair, twirling the red ringlet around my finger. “Alternate question: would it be worth it to half kill yourself and get at least some degree of your athleticism back?”
“I’ll never compete again, Chance.” She finally rolls to face me, not pulling her hair out of my touch. “So what’s the point?”
“The point is you’re an athlete. I can see it written in every line of your goddamn incredible body. You can get it back. Sure, maybe you won’t be an Olympic athlete again. But there’s other things to do in life with athletic ability.”
She closes her eyes, shakes her head. “Maybe if I’d capitalized on it right after the accident—it was a pretty well-publicized thing.” She moves her hand over her face, in a miming gesture of reading newspaper headlines. “‘Star athlete’s Olympic dreams crushed in tragic car accident.’” Another shake of her head. “If I’d stayed clean I could have translated that publicity into, like, a coaching career or something. Now? No way. I fucked it all up. Kelly, my partner, cut me out of her life. Won’t take my calls, won’t answer texts, won’t respond to DM’s on social media. Even after getting clean and staying clean for six months and trying to make amends and all that…nothing. No response. Not one person from the whole goddamn volleyball world wants anything to do with me now that I’m a half-crippled junkie. Or, former, recovering junkie. And yeah, I get that it’s the junkie part that has them cutting me off, not the half-crippled part. But I’m still a washed-up junkie who once had a lot of potential.”
“I think you’re selling yourself short, mama.”
She opens her eyes, fixes them on me—endlessly green, fathomless and deep as the ocean. “Wish I was, Chance. But I’m not.”
I let go of her hair and brush my thumb over her lips. “You are.”
She twitches away, brow furrowing in a frown. “Don’t—don’t touch me like that.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like it.” Her hands tighten into fists beneath her chin.
“Liar.” I whisper it. “You do like it.”
“This the psychology degree speaking again?”
“Yep. I aced the course on how to spot a liar.” I trace my fingertips over her cheekbone, brushing locks of hair behind her ear; her jaw flexes, hardens.
She pulls away again. “Quit fuckingtouchingme, Chance.” She glares at me, sharp anger blazing from her eyes. “Just because we’re sharing a bed and a room doesn’t mean I’m gonna hop onto your dick.”
“Who said anything about that?”
She narrows her eyes at me. “Ah. Right. I’m supposed to believe you’re just being all sweet and gentle for the fun of it. Because you’rejust that nice, right?” A quirked eyebrow. “No ulterior motives at all?”
“You remember the promise I made?” I ask her.
She rolls her eyes. “Yeah, you said you wouldn’t touch me unless I asked you to. Which clearly went right out the window seeing as you’re touching me even after I’ve told you not to.”
“Actually, I promised I wouldn’t touch yousexually.” I touch her chin, just below her lip, tugging her mouth open slightly. “This isn’t sexual.”
She again jerks her head away. “Stop,” she hisses. “Seriously.”
I drop my hand. Hold her eyes. “Tell me about your childhood.”
“Why?”
I laugh. “Because I wanna know.”
“Know what?” she asks. “It was nothing special, mostly. Grew up in Santa Monica. Mom’s a teacher—when I was young she taught high school science. Then once my sister Erin and I were in high school and could mostly take care ourselves, she went back to school, got her masters, and got a job at a community college. We were never hard up to the point of feeling poor, but we weren’t rolling in it, either. Lower end of middle class, I guess. I had nice enough clothes, but never the name-brand stuff my friends all had. My sister was the popular one. The pretty one. The funny one. I was Erin’s sister, not Annika. ‘Hey, you’re Erin’s sister, right?’ Hated that shit with apassion.” She shakes her head, snorting. “To make it worse, I was freakishly tall, and before I grew into my build, I was awkward, gangly, knock-kneed, and clumsy. I was at least eighty-seven percent leg, and I couldn’t make those legs work right, so I was always tripping over my feet and bumping into things. Plus, I have this mop of crazy-ass bright red hair. And let me tell you, it takes a lot of learning to figure out how to make this shit look halfway decent.” She grabs a handful of fiery curls and shakes. “Unruly and impossible isn’t even halfway accurate, so it was always tangled and frizzy, it would never stay in a ponytail, and I can’t braid it for shit on my own. Basically, I was a baby giraffe with wild-ass red hair. Imagine the bullying, if you can.”
I laugh. “Oh, I can imagine. Try being six foot tall by ten years old, but so fuckin’ skinny you could see my ribs.”
She frowns at me. “I guess I kinda assumed you’d have struggled with the opposite issue.” Her frown deepens. “No offense.”
I snort. “I can see, looking at me now, how you’d come to that assumption. And if I’d had a home and access to regular meals, you’d probably have been right. But I was a street rat. Rev and I were begging and stealing just to eat scraps most of the time, at least until we clicked in with the gang. And even then, food wasn’t plentiful or good. It wasn’t until we joined the military that I had access to regular meals of decent food and not just junk food from a convenience store.” I laugh again. “Point is, I get not fitting in, and I sure as hell understand not really having grown into your body. I was fucking twenty before I felt totally in control of my body, like I’d really grown into the way I was built.”
She sighs, smiles. “I had moments of brilliance in high school, I have to admit. By the time I was a senior, I’d mostly figured it out. Because I was always the tallest girl on my team, I played middle blocker, but by senior year I was discovering I was actually more suited for opposite hitter.” She smirks at me. “You probably have no clue what those terms mean. Opposite hitter needs to be equally good at both offense and defense, hitting, blocking, receiving serves. It took a lot of convincing for me to get my high school varsity coach to give up her over-six-foot-tall middle blocker to be an outside hitter—mainly because I was really,reallyfucking good as a middle blocker. I just turned out to be even better as an opposite hitter.”
“How’d you go from indoor six-person ball to two-person beach ball?” I ask.