C H A P T E R 9: Sunflowers and War
☀ ☀ ☀
Scout sat cross-legged on the ground outside of V&L's Motel where she stared a large, horned beetle into near non-existence. It was about the size of a small farm animal, she thought. It reminded her of something that might have crawled straight out of Animal Planet... or Mandy's womb.
She yawned and stretched her arms up towards the corpulent, pink clouds that reminded her of cotton candy hippos floating across the ambers and corals of the morning sky. Her mid-drift rose slightly more over her belly button, and it was then that she wished she would have worn a longer shirt. If she had known upon dressing that morning that she would be babysitting Skylar for the day, she probably would have wrapped herself up in her bedsheets — scratch that; she probably wouldn't have gotten out of bed at all.
Don't think for a second that she did not protest. She almost walked a goddamn picket line and called the Union when her father knocked on her bedroom door that morning demanding that she make sure Skylar was acclimating well to Santan Valley. The alternative was giving up three months' worth of pay — one of the many "perks" of having your father as your boss. Scout never responded well to ultimatums, so she confiscated her father's wallet before she left. She figured if she had to spend the entire day touring Santan Valley with the third to last person she wanted to spend time with — the others being Antonio and Mandy, — then Scott could at least fund the excursion. She thought of it as compensation.
Eventually, the beetle wandered off somewhere near the motel's office, where Scout heard the faint chit-chat of Violet and Lily streaming out of the open window. A moment later, Violet emerged from the office with a large duffel bag hoisted over her shoulder. She stopped on the step when she caught sight of Scout sitting in the middle of the parking lot.
"G'mornin', SJ," Violet said.
Violet Fern was possibly one of the least sociable people Scout had ever met, but she always seemed to have a soft-spot for Scout. Scout assumed it was because insolence loved company just as much as misery does.
"Morning," Scout greeted with a hand over her eyes like a visor.
It was then that Scout realized the rarity of a Violet Fern sighting before noon. Violet only ever got up that early on a handful of occasions, and, typically, they were never good occasions. Over the years it had meant:
1. Someone is dead.
2. Someone is dying.
3. Something is on fire.
It never meant:
"It's a beautiful morning, so I thought I'd get out of bed and enjoy it."
No, it never meant that.
Scout scurried to her feet, quickly wiping the dirt off of the denim shorts that she practically lived in. "What's going on?" she asked with a new cadence to her voice, one of panic.
Violet's eyebrows drew together in a dark line across her forehead. "Nothin'," she answered. "Cool your jets, kid."
"Well, why are you awake? You never get up this early unless something tragic is happening."
Violet motioned towards the duffel bag weighing her frail shoulder down. "Laundry."
"Laundry?"
"Laundry," Violet reiterated with a faint smirk, "and since you're here, you can have the honor of deliverin' this bag to room number five."
"Come on, Vi," Scout groaned, throwing her hands in the air. "I'm supposed to be waiting for the new guy. I already have to babysit him all day, so why torture me more?"
"'Cause it gives me somethin' to look forward to," Violet said, shoving the bag into Scout's arms.
Scout slumped beneath the weight of it. "Gee, thanks, Vi," she snarled. "You're a real peach."
Violet muttered something presumably sarcastic beneath her breath before turning around and heading back into the office.
The bag was heavy, it was getting progressively hotter outside, Scout was sweating, and she was mad. She did not know who was in room number five, but when she found out she swore she would shove the bag down their throat. Then she swore she would punch Skylar for making her wait so long. That is, if she could even find what room he was in.
Scout dragged the bag by the handle across the parking lot. It felt like there was a ton of bricks in it, but then again, almost everything Scout ever had to carry felt like a ton of bricks. She was not athletic. The last athletic activity she ever took part in was cheerleading in eighth grade. Not by choice, of course; Scout would avoid any activity that required breaking a sweat at all costs. It was Georgia's fault; she had always wanted to have a cheerleader for a daughter, but since Mandy was too busy screwing the football team, the next best thing was Scout. Scout would not have joined if Georgia had not resorted to crying as a means of persuasion, but she did, and Scout always hated seeing Georgia cry, so she became a cheerleader. A month later, the captain overheard Scout saying their cheers were stupid, and kicked her off the squad. Not that Scout cared at all. She hated the pom-poms anyway.
When Scout got to room number five, after fighting to get the bag across the parking lot for ten minutes, she reared back her left Chuck Taylor and kicked the door as hard as she could with a loud BANG.
She waited anxiously for the door to open as she wiped the back of her hand across her forehead, collecting a conglomerate of sweat beads. She had a witty remark on the tip of her tongue. She was ready to hurl it at the resident of room number five like a verbal hand grenade.
The door flew open with a thud much louder than Scout anticipated. She almost fell backwards into the parking lot, but caught herself just in time. She was even more pissed then, and her tongue was burning with slight. She opened her mouth to speak, but when she looked up at the body leaning lazily against the door frame, her tongue dried up like the deserts that surrounded Santan Valley.
"What?" muttered a shirtless Skylar Glass who stood in the doorway with a toothbrush hanging out of his mouth.
Scout was fully aware that Skylar was wearing nothing but a pair of tattered jeans slung dangerously low on his hips, but she trained her eyes intently on his face. She knew that if she let her eyes wander across the ridges of his abs, the deep v-lines that disappeared into his jeans, and the ink splotches that marred his skin, there was no way she could look away. In that way, he was a lot like a hurricane or an asteroid, something so devastatingly captivating. If she let her eyes wander for even a second, she knew she would be doomed.
"Is this your bag?" she asked, her voice a lot more steady than she thought it would be.
"Yeah."
Scout stepped aside as he bent down to grab it.
"You do know that I'm supposed to babysit you today, right?" she asked begrudgingly.
Skylar easily tossed the bag with one hand onto his unmade bed, and turned around to face her with raised eyebrows. "Oh, really?" he asked without any audible emotion.
Before she could reply, he turned around and trailed off. He breezed passed the bed and into the bathroom across the room. She heard him spit in the sink and continue brushing his teeth.
She frowned, sweeping into room number five and closing the door behind her before shoving his bag over and sitting beside it on the bed. She kicked her feet back and forth, staring up at the small imperfections in the white paint of the ceiling.
"Yes, really," she called out to him after a moment. "I'm already having a shitty day, so I'd appreciate it if you didn't make it any worse."
Skylar stalked out of the bathroom, minus the toothbrush. He ignored Scout's presence entirely as he dug around in his duffel bag.
Scout continued staring at the ceiling and resolved to doing so, despite the slight pain in her neck, until Skylar put a shirt on.
"No response?" she asked.
She caught him staring hard into her face from the corner of her eye. She continued surveying the ceiling, gulping modestly. He intimidated her, no matter how much she would beg to differ.
He shook his head before pulling on a white T-shirt. Then, in that deep voice of his, replied, "I'm not going to entertain your premenstrual syndrome."
Scout choked on her own saliva, coughing and spluttering until she regained her composure. When she did, she hollered, "EXCUSE ME?"
"You're excused," Skylar said. He thought he should have been smirking just then, but it felt as if his face was disconnected from his thoughts. He just looked curiously blank.
Skylar returned to digging through his duffel bag as Scout stared incredulously at him with eyes as wide as Saturn's rings. She looked as if he just slapped her.
Skylar resurfaced from the bottom of his bag with a roll of gauze.
It had taken him a full hour the night before to clean the large gash in his palm. He had not realized it was riddled with splinters until he was sitting outside of his hotel room, staring off into the rainy night with a pain in his rib cage that hurt worse than any beating he had ever gotten. And he'd gotten a whole lot.
The gash still trickled red, ripping open deep and crimson whenever he splayed his fingers. He wrapped the gauze around his palm so tightly that his knuckles were white.
Scout had been sitting their glowering at him, racking her brain for a comeback. She always had an arsenal of them on reserve, but her mind went blank whenever she stared at Skylar for a prolonged amount of time. She hated the affect he had on her, and she had not even known him for a full twenty-four hours yet. When her brain finally thawed long enough for her to remember one of her many witty one-liners, she noticed Skylar wrapping his hand. Her interest overrode her pride. "Rough night?"
He scoffed. "Rough life."
"Well," her brows furrowed, "you're not gonna be much help to my dad with a busted hand."
Skylar's breath came out in a long, labored sigh. He was concentrating on a spot on the wall just passed Scout's head. There was something in the way he was. He just... was. Scout couldn't put a word to it. All she knew was that he looked so inconceivably enervated. Like the room or life or maybe she was sucking the life right out of him.
"I'm fine," he breathed.
She raised her hands in defense. "I don't really care, honestly. I'm just concerned for my dad. He seemed excited to have help."
"He still has help," Skylar said, his weary eyes now trained on the middle of her face. "I don't need you runnin' back to him and tellin' him I can't work. I don't give a shit if my hand is fucked up, I need the money."
"Fine," Scout muttered. "What happened to the quiet guy I met yesterday?"
Skylar snorted loudly with contempt. He leaned in close to Scout, her expression now contorted into alarm. She momentarily forgot how to breathe when he parted his lips to speak in a low drawl: "He had a rough night."
Scout-Juliet Compton, the spitfire with walls as extensive as the Great Wall of China, who once beat the living shit out of the two-hundred pound quarterback that tried to grope her during her very short tenure as a cheerleader, had never been so unnerved in her entire life. And that was saying a lot. If it had not been one-hundred-and-three degrees and if the logical part of Scout's brain had not suggested that it was, in fact, sweat collecting between her thighs, she would have been thoroughly convinced that she pissed herself.
Skylar stood up with a swiftness and exited room number five of V&L's Motel, leaving the door swinging on the hinges behind him.
Scout stared after him for a moment with an incredulousness so absolute that it was the only thing she could have ever fathomed feeling in that moment. She absolutely could not believe the audacity of him. He had no right to treat her that way, she thought, because (a) he was in her town, (b) he was working for her father, and (c) Santan Valley, Arizona was her goddamn town. Her fuse burned even more when the thought of how attractive Skylar was when pissed off crossed her mind because (a) he was an asshole, (b) she had decided she would not be another notch on his presumed bedpost, (c) HE WAS AN ASSHOLE.
Scout shot off of the bed, exiting the room with the stolidity and the urgency of a tornado in a trailer park. She was pissed off, and when Scout-Juliet Compton was pissed off, she was the last person you wanted to fuck with — second only to a serial killer, she liked to believe. She stomped into the dirt of the parking lot, her hair an ombré storm all around her face and her arms swinging like pendulums as she went. She was headed straight for the white-striped, black Chevelle that sat gleaming in the morning sunlight like a polished gem. Skylar was just climbing into the driver's seat when she stopped in front of the car.
She planted her hands firmly on the hood, staring hard at Skylar through the windshield.
He stared impassively at her.
"This is gonna go one of two ways," Scout growled. "Three months worth of paychecks are at stake for me, so you'll either let be babysit you for the day willing, or I'll throw you in the truck of this car and take you with me. Either way, we're going together."
Skylar cranked the key in the ignition. The Chevelle roared to life, and he revved the engine loudly.
Scout flinched, but she did not relent.
"What, you gonna run me over?" she shouted.
"Why don't you make this easier for both of us?" Skylar said. "You leave me alone, and we'll just tell your dad that we spent the day together."
"Great plan," she winked sarcastically, "but that's not gonna work considering that my father is watching us right now."
Sure enough, in Skylar's side-view mirror he could see Scott standing down the street in front of the auto shop with a mug in his hand, conveniently deciding to take a coffee break at the same time that Scout came to retrieve Skylar. Scott was watching the entire transaction over the brim of his steaming mug.
Skylar looked on the verge of having another mental breakdown. "Get in the car," he sighed.
"Gladly," Scout spat.
She rounded the car without breaking stride, and all but ripped the passenger door off the hinges. As she went to slam the door, a toned, ink-defiled arm shot across her and caught it just before it could close.
Skylar's face was a breath away from Scout's for the second time that day, she noticed, and also for the second time that day, she forgot how to breathe.
"Don't slam my goddamn door," he hissed. He closed the door gently before returning to his side of the vehicle.
Scout blinked owlishly at him. Then, like a tornado crashing into a tower or thunder cracking over a vacant field, she burst wide open with laughter. She howled maddeningly into the quiet interior of the Chevelle, and she found it hard to stop.
Skylar stared at her, his mouth slightly ajar.
"Oh, God, you're one of those guys," she spluttered, her small frame shaking with amusement. "Do you refer to your car as your child? Have you named it, too?"
Skylar shook his head slowly, his nose scrunched as if he smelled something foul. He had had enough of her shit for the day, and they had barely spent ten minutes together.
She continued howling like Skylar was the funniest thing she had ever seen in her whole life. That is, until Skylar put the Chevelle in gear and gunned it out of V&L's Motel's parking lot, throwing Scout back into her seat so hard that the air was knocked out of her lungs. That was the third time Skylar had caused her to lose her breathe that day, and she did not like it one bit. At this rate, she would need an inhaler by the end of the week, if not sooner.
"Jesus Christ, I don't even have the seat belt on yet. You could've killed me!"
"What a shame," he muttered flatly.
She buckled the seat belt into place around her, all the while staring daggers into the profile of Skylar's face.
He felt her staring, but he did not care. It was within the syncopating beats shared between his chest and the vibrato of the Chevelle's engine that he was finally able to get out of his mind for awhile, and Scout was not going to ruin that lone moment of placidity for him.
But Scout was relentless, she had been since birth, so she decided that she would stare at him until he acknowledged her. What she had not anticipated, however, was that her relentlessness would backfire. It was only when she found herself admiring the constituents of him that she realized that. She was mesmerized by him; the unselfconscious tilt of his stubbled chin beneath her burning gaze, the way he mussed his hair with one hand while the wrist of the other rested on the top of the steering wheel, his startlingly long eyelashes in profile, the sharp angles of his jawline and that alluring space where it almost meets the ear before skin disappears under hair, and eyes that vaguely reminded her of sunflowers.
Scout quickly looked away, setting her eyes on the heat waves undulating over the road. Skylar won this battle, but he did not win the war, she thought.
"Where are we going?" she asked after awhile.
Skylar did not respond. Instead he turned sharply into Santan Valley Diner. He double-parked in the space right in front of the door, cut the engine, and got out of the Chevelle without a word.
Scout sighed, climbing out of the car in pursuit of his fleeting figure entering the diner. In the parking lot, she could still see the mark on the dirt where she had spit out a mouthful of vanilla milkshake the day before. She then remembered the remark Bo made about Skylar's endowment, and blood suddenly rushed to her cheeks.
The cool circulation of the ceiling fans and the scent of cherry pie overwhelmed Scout when the bell rung over the door. A waitress behind the counter smiled. Scout smiled in return, but she was more focused on the sight of Skylar lounging in one of the burgundy booths, reading the menu in the canary sunlight that penetrated the diner's large, circular windows. She couldn't help but notice that, in room of immaculate burgundys, canaries, seashells, and ivories emphasized by the surge of the morning sun, Skylar was a painting in black and white. All he was doing was sitting there, staring at the menu and biting his bottom lip every so often that she was sure it would burst open in an ocean of crimson, but it was like he was a reservoir of all the sorrow in the world. Like he walked around absorbing the sadness that existed wherever he went. Scout felt bad for him, then, almost to the point of consoling him, but her judgement overrode her impulse. Nonetheless, she approached him, her sneakers squeaking loudly against the checkered tile en route to him.
"So, you're giving me the silent treatment?" she asked, sliding into the seat across from him.
"No," he said, staring intently at the breakfast section of the menu. There was a rift between his brows, and his teeth continuously nipped at the split of his bottom lip.
"So, you're only giving me one-word responses, then?"
His eyes did not leave the menu. "Not really."
"You're a real piece of work, Skylar Glass."
His gaze did leave the menu then, but only to roll his eyes. "If you're gonna continue antagonizing me, then you can go sit at a different booth."
"No, thanks," she said. "I'm comfortable right here."
He stared hard in her eyes for a moment, leaning forward and placing his menu down on the table. His gaze was intimidating. It made her squirm.
"Fine."
She opened her mouth to protest whatever he had in mind, but he had moved too quickly. By the time she formulated a response, she lost her voice and all of the thoughts she planned to speak, for he had slid into her side of the booth, trapping her tightly between the wall and the solidity of his body. He flopped an arm behind her head on the back of the booth. She became completely aware of the way the calloused pads of his fingers tips grazed the exposed skin of her shoulder. She could no longer feel herself breathing, or the sweat beading across her brow, or her electric green fingernails digging into her palms. All she could feel was his steady breathing beside her, the warmth of his body pressed against the side of hers, and those goddamned fingers grazing her shoulder.
"What the hell are you doing?" she muttered dryly.
"Getting comfortable."
His expression was the curiously blank slate it had been earlier that day, and it pissed her off. It gave her no hint of what he was thinking or feeling. She hated that. She hated not knowing his intentions, and that easily charted in the top three of her hate-list just then.
She grit her teeth. "Do you have to do it so close to me?"
"Yes. Do you have to keep harassing me?"
"Yes," she growled, shimmying away from his fingers. "Stop touching me!"
He leaned in close to her face, so close that she could see the golden flecks in his sunflower irises. "Why?" he whispered. The mint on his tongue fanned across her face. "Am I making you uncomfortable?"
"VERY!" she shouted.
Her heart was crashing into her ribs, and she swore she heard them crack. Her eyes flitted about the constituents of his face, and then the blurred vision of the diner behind his head. The only thing that was clear was him and the incredible richness of those copper irises. In that moment, despite everything that had transpired in her life and the uncertainty of where those things would cause her to end up, she knew, and she knew for sure, that he would be the end of her.
"If I promise to stop antagonizing you," she began, straining to keep her voice steady, "will you please get back on the other side of the booth?"
Skylar nodded after a moment's pause.
"Then I promise."
That seemed sufficient for Skylar. He was already back on his original side of the booth before she could release the breath she had not released she was holding. And that was the fourth time in thirty minutes that he took her breath away.
Skylar resumed scanning the menu as if the previous events had never happened, while Scout, on the other hand, was still vibrating with admiration and anxiety and self-loathing, all accumulated in a large knot in the pit of her stomach. The last thing she wanted to do in that moment was eat, but a pretty, raven-haired waitress that Scout recognized as one of her former classmates, Linsey, had waltzed over to their table with a smile and a notepad.
"What can I get for you, handsome?" she asked before recognizing Skylar's company, then adding "And SJ?" as an afterthought.
Skylar looked Linsey up and down as if he was searching for something. Scout thought he must have liked what he saw because he stared a little too long for innocent observation.
Scout grimaced and muttered, "Just a black coffee."
"Number eight," Skylar said, handing Linsey the menu.
Scout had been patronizing Santan Valley Diner long enough to know that the number eight was hash browns and toast, which just so happened to be her regular order. She would not let Skylar know that, though, because that would mean her having to get a new regular, and she did not want Skylar to know he had that much influence over her life choices.
"Anything to drink?" Linsey asked, her voice extra sweet. Her hand purposefully lingered on Skylar's as she took the menu.
Scout practically glared the two of them to death.
"Water's fine."
She smiled really wide at him, and at Scout for courtesy's sake, before skittering back to the kitchen to relay their orders.
"For Christ's sake," Scout barked angrily, "she looked like she was about to rip your clothes off and fuck you right here on the table!"
Skylar rolled his eyes, trying his best to rub the migraine out of his temples. "This is gonna be a long day," he sighed.
Later, after Skylar finished his breakfast at an agonizingly slow pace, and after he and Scout spent ten minutes arguing about who would pay only to result in each of them paying for their own orders, and after Linsey not-so-discreetly gave Skylar her phone number — snatching his hand halfway out the door and jotting it down on his palm in pen, — Skylar and Scout spent the following three hours driving aimlessly around Santan Valley with the only sounds being the quiet hum of the radio and the air whooshing in their ears through the open windows. The only time they spoke was when Skylar not-so-kindly demanded that Scout get her feet off the dashboard, to which she responded with, "Asshole." That was the end of the conversation.
Despite her resignation to the fact that she would take the thought to the grave with her, she rather liked riding around in Skylar's car. The Chevelle was a sight to behold, and she thought it looked even better with the two of them in it, but that was definitely not what she told her father upon Skylar dropping her off at the shop that afternoon.
When Scott asked her if she enjoyed her day, she responded unceremoniously with, "I hate you." Then, like the soundtrack to every teenage girls' life, she slammed her bedroom door.
Scott stood outside of the door with a smirk on his face. "I'll take that as a 'no'."