Page 33 of Play With Me
It’s Farrah who speaks. “Please, I interrupt your visit. Stay with us.”
This is so awkward, it’s like knots tightening in my stomach. But I sit down with them. “I…guess I can stay for a minute?”
Cap’s chewing his lip, and instinctively, I reach for his hand. He takes it, smiling gratefully.
Farrah sees, her big eyes blinking. “They are sad you have moved to here,” she says. “Yes.”
It’s not a question, just a statement. “Oh,” I say. “Yes, well, I couldn’t pass up this program I’m doing. It’s perfect for me, you know?”
“Books?” Farrah says.
I catch Jude’s little snort at her summation of my life in one word. I throw him a glare.
His mouth flattens. Has this always been what he’s like with her? I can picture it, suddenly. They met right after his knee injury. When according to him he’d fallen into a deep depression. Started drinking heavily, risking a dependency on his pain meds too, until he flushed them down the toilet and switched to ibuprofen, the one-track determination that got him into professional athletics being the thing that saved him too. But that was the only time, he told me, that he gave in to the brainless sex his teammates took part in. He said all of that time was a blur, until Farrah came back to him with that little plus sign on a stick.
“Books,” I say to her in agreement. “What can I say? I love them.”
Farrah smiles widely. “And the camera?”
I look down. I’m gripping my camera strap with my free hand like a life preserver. “That too,” I manage. Oh how I wish I were behind the camera right now. Then I wouldn’t have to talk.
Jude clears his throat. “Well, what should we do?”
“The Eye!” Cap says. He’s talking about the giant pod-like Ferris wheel only a few blocks from here. “You promised, Dad!”
“Yes, good,” Farrah says. “And I am thinking to talk about the train trip, the activity and hotel?”
“Yeah!” Cap says, enthused. “I was looking at a book about Switzerland. And did you know the train goes faster than the fastest car? Let’s go, Farrah!” He takes her by the hand and suddenly we’re all up on our feet, Cap and Farrah walking out ahead.
Jude and I follow, a few feet behind.
“I should let you guys go,” I say again. “I don’t need to be a third wheel here.”
“Fourth wheel,” Jude says with a smile that doesn’t meet his eyes. “Please don’t. Have you been on the London Eye?”
“No.”
“Then it’s perfect. Just stay for that. Then you’re free.”
Out on the sidewalk, the rain has stopped, though the clouds still hang low and dark. Cap and Farrah walk briskly ahead of us, chatting happily, hand in hand.
“Why are you being such a dick to her?” I ask Jude the moment I’m sure they’re out of earshot.
His jaw tightens and he jams his fists in his pocket. “Why do you care?”
“Because that’s not you.”
“I just don’t like being around her.”
“Cap can see it.”
Jude takes a deep breath. “I don’t know how to stop it.”
“Maybe try to let go of the anger you’re holding on to? Isn’t that what the therapist you saw said? To remember the past is gone. The only time now is the present.”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t have to interact with her back then.”
I clutch my camera case against me as we walk, skirting sideways to avoid running into a rack of postcards outside a tourist shop. “She seems lovely.”
