I'm Innocent - Jake T. Austin

7: Twisting Ideas

_____________

7: Twisting Ideas

Fuck. The Polaroid is inside my wallet. Damn it.

"What the hell!" He snatches the bag from me with my belongings in it, "This is my property. How the fuck did it get in your hands?" He continues to scream, his nose flaring and his eyes sending knives at me.

Before I can speak again, he raises his voice, "Why do you even have this? I've been looking for this everywhere!" He screeches out again, "First, you spill some damned coffee on me. Then, you -" he hesitated shortly for his words, making a pause occur, "Then, you fucking spilled beer. Now, you take one of my personal items!" I open my mouth to speak, but a lump is now stuck inside my throat while my mind begins to pound from his aggression. He doesn't wait for my answer, "How the fuck did you even get your fucking hands on this?" He raises the photo to a close proximity of my face, making me panic, as he slowly processes where I might have found it by scrunching his eyebrows together, "I don't remember this being -"

"I found it on the floor," I stutter out as loud as I can, cutting him off almost immediately, so he wouldn't assume I was in his room. Even with all the alcohol in my body, I still look away from his deathly glare by averting my attention to the window. My body is in complete shock right now as he screamed at me: my breaths are shagged and short, my body is trembling, and my heart races as fear splashes inside my veins.

The car makes a sharp turn and comes to an abrupt stop on an alleyway, making me worry even more with the shadows of two buildings blocking the light. Seconds go by in silence, but they seem like an eternity. A sigh escapes his lips almost right after we halted, "Look at me when you're speaking." His voice is neutral but intimidation lurks around it. I snap my head and turn my attention to his revealed chest, not wanting to make eye contact. His skin is dimmed, but I can still make an outline of what he is doing. His fingers slowly comes up to my face, and I flinch away almost immediately at an instinct by turning my head away from his hand. He changed the course of his hand and returns it to himself, and I realize right there he was going to tilt my chin up, but he stopped almost right away as I panicked.

The piercing silence consumes both of us, but it is made short as my voice found its way out of my throat, "I - I didn't mean to - I just - it was on the ground, and I - I - it was an accident," I cannot connect any of the thoughts inside my mind as I try to speak to him, barely even able to look at him correctly with the fear fresh and alcohol not ceasing inside of me. I feel the tension inside the car trying to choke me, suffocating my lungs, but he doesn't seem to notice. He maintains his calm composure, not saying a word like he's analyzing every word I utter out. "I said look at me when you're speaking," he completely ignores everything I had just said, but I oblige with his order and slowly raise my eyes to make eye contact. "Where did you find this?"

"O-on the floor," My voice closes once again as soon as our eyes make contact. Although we are in the dark, his stare is still seen with the amount of light we are given. His eyes make me feel like I've been pinned down to the ground already, and I'm trapped in this spot until I scream out the truth, but I can't tell him that it was in his forbidden room right now, not wanting him to go ballistic on me. My breathing has accelerated exponentially, and finally, he places the Polaroid on the dashboard and moves his hand back to the keys, twisting the ignition to start. He doesn't say anything afterwards, and I don't make any effort to speak except for two words, "I-I'm sorry."

I thought he'd leave me in my silence, but his voice is heard right away. "Save it for -" he pauses his sentence, "I mean - don't worry about it. It's nothing." He places my bag back on my lap without warning, but his hand does not depart my thigh, making my mouth part. We pass two stoplights before he finally removes his hand off of me, putting it back on the steering wheel.