Going Too Far(15)
Author: Jennifer Echols

"I went through a Goth phase when I was nine." He looked pointedly at me. "T grew out of it."

Did he mean my blue hair was immature? Ass. I said, "And you grew into your cop phase."

He turned without a word, walked into the parking lot a few paces away, and opened the door of a pickup truck. Great, I’d pissed him off. Riding around with him tonight would be fun fun fun.

To cover his naked muscles, he pulled on an Audioslave T-shirt I remembered him wearing in Spanish class last year. Only it fit him more tightly now. He lit a cigarette, slammed the truck door, and sauntered back to me.

I gestured to the cigarette. "What do you think you’re doing? Flaunting your youth and good health in front of the cripples?"

His brown eyes widened at me, and he glanced toward an old lady moving at glacier pace on her walker. "It’s the one thing I do wrong." He took a drag and sighed through his nose like he did when he was frustrated, but this time he exhaled smoke. "It keeps me awake. I’m tired. I’m always tired. The human body is not designed to work from ten p.m. to six a.m."

"Have you tried coffee? Mountain Dew? Red Bull?"

"That would keep me up too long. I want to sleep when I get home. I already tried and failed for eight hours. After my days off, my first day back is always the hardest. I came here to run and tire myself out." The picture of health took another drag from his cigarette. "Did you just get up?"

"No, I just got off work."

"Work!" He ran one hand back through his hair with a puzzled expression, as if he couldn’t quite believe it was gone. "Where?"

"Eggstra! Eggstra!"

"For how long?"

"Since your shift was over."

"God. Why?"

"My parents are at Graceland. I was supposed to go to Miami on the senior trip.’ If he’d been in uniform, I probably would have added some sharp pricklies to this, such as, "I can’t go to the beach thanks to you, bastard." Strange how I could say this to an enormous cop, but not to a cute blond boy in an Audioslave T-shirt. "They thought it was safe to leave town when I was leaving, too. Now that I’m staying, they need something else to keep me nailed down. Like Purcell, the ass**le cook from last night, calling them to say I haven’t shown up for my shift or something. They don’t trust me. I wonder why not."

He didn’t take the bait. He just shook his head and sympathized, of all things. "That’s a brutal schedule. Why aren’t you in bed now?"

"I have to run every day."

"To lose weight? Please say no."

"What’s that supposed to mean?’

"It means…” He pulled at the hair on the back of his head. "Girls always think they need to lose weight, and you don’t need to lose weight."

I stood up straight and covered my tummy with my hands. "You’re saying I’m too skinny."

He took a long, thoughtful drag and exhaled as he spoke. "No. You’re not."

Was he saying I was fat in all the right places? I put my hands on my hips, pushed my shoulders forward a little for enhancement of cle**age in my V-neck T-shirt, and leaned to the left to stretch my side. I guess I probably looked pretty good, if you were into blue hair and extreme fatigue.

But he was a frightened horse about to bolt. He wore that expression he tended to wear when I got too close to him, the oh-my-God-she’s-trying-to-seduce-me-and-I-don’t-like-it look.

I gave up and relaxed my shoulders. "You’re talking about Angie Pettit. She doesn’t count. She’s a midget. She’s so cute and petite you want to pinch her head off."

Johnafter took one last short drag from the cigarette, threw it down, and squashed it into the dirt with the heel of his running shoe. He imagined the cigarette butt was my head.

"I take it you’re still dating her," I said.

"No. She broke up with me last fall."

Ah, the cigarette was Angie’s head. "Why’d she break up with you?"

Now he put both hands in what was left of his hair and slowly stroked backward. Either this was a show of discomfort he controlled carefully when he was in uniform, or he wanted me to notice his huge triceps. Believe me, I noticed.

"Because I’m a cop," he said, "and I live in this town, and she didn’t want to get stuck here. She wanted to go to UAB."

This surprised me. Angie did not seem like college material. She seemed like cosmetology school material. Not that this was an insult. I knew from experience it was very difficult to get hair to take blue color and hold it for any length of time.

Oh, why not. I leaned to the right and asked him, "Are you dating anyone now?"

"What?" He stepped out of the way to let a jogger pass on the track. Watching the retreat of the woman’s large pink terry-cloth bu**ocks, he explained, "There’s not a lot of opportunity for me to date, or even meet someone. I’m not awake when other people are awake."

"What do you do for fun?"

"Fun," he mused. "What’s your definition of fun?"

"It’s not a good sign if you have to think about it that hard. Basically, your life sucks because of this job. Why do you want this job?"

"It’s something I’ve wanted to do since I was a kid."

I wanted to scream, Why? But I knew I’d get another non-answer. "So, you ran track, right?"

"In high school?"

I straightened up. "You just graduated nine months ago. You really do act like you’re forty years old." He blinked. "I do?"

" Yes, in high school. Tiffany said you were friends with Will Billingsley and Rashad Lowry and those track guys." "Yeah," he said slowly. "Do y’all still hang out?" "No, they’re at UAB." "Why didn’t you go to UAB?"

"I told you," he said. "I wanted to be a cop." He looked around the park like this conversation was making him uncomfortable and he needed a way out.

"Why didn’t you get a degree first in, whatsit, cop studies?"

"Criminal justice," he said. "I wanted to be a cop sooner.”

"Won’t you need that degree eventually to move up in the department?"

"Yes. I don’t necessarily want to move up. I’m happy doing this."

Yeah, you look happy, I wanted to say. But this convo was interesting. I couldn’t sound too rude and give him the excuse he needed to walk away. "If Tiffany hadn’t spilled the beans, were you going to tell me who you are?"

"You mean that I’m nineteen and we went to high school together?"

Duh, I thought. I couldn’t say Duh. Too obvious. My brain would not cough up an alternative witticism. I hadn’t slept in thirty hours.