Beyond the Pale Motel by Francesca Lia Block Read Free Book Online Page B

you?
    â€œYeah, I think I’m coming down with something. It’s no big deal. I wanted to talk to you.”
    I was always so comfortable around Scott, but for some reason I felt the desire to back away. “Sure. What is it, honey?”
    â€œI just … I really want you to have everything you deserve,” he said. “I want you to be happy.”
    â€œThanks, Scotty. Me, too.”
    â€œNo, seriously.”
    â€œOkay. You sure you’re okay, though?”
    â€œYeah,” he said. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”
    â€œI’m going to make you some Chinese soup with lots of ginger and garlic. Can you come by tomorrow?”
    â€œThank you. And then maybe I can show you my new space.” Scott had moved out of his girlfriend Emi’s apartment a few weeks earlier. I still didn’t quite understand why he had broken up with her. They’d met when she applied for a job as a trainer at Body Farm, although she’d turned it down because she didn’t want to work for Big Bob. She was only in her midtwenties and Scott had alluded to some sexual issues between them. I didn’t know if she was just shy and inexperienced or if it was something with Scott. In some ways he was a mystery to me. Not that I thought he was gay, but it felt like he was hiding a part of himself, holding himself back. We had flirted when we first met at Body Farm, he was my best friend besides Bree, we loved each other, but there was always this distance. And it had grown worse in the last year. I’d thought it was Emi, but now that they’d broken up, he was just as remote, if not more so.
    Big Bob was at the door with the hot new girl. Her name was Leila Reynolds; Scott had introduced us. He had been training her at first, until Bob saw her and decided she was his. I wondered if Dash’s new girlfriend looked like that, except with tattoos and piercings probably. “Looking good, Catt,” Bob said. “Losing some weight there?”
    He hardly ever talked to me. I stared at him blankly. “Thanks.”
    â€œTell Bree to come see me,” he said.
    Something about him reminded me of taxidermy—the sewn back face-lift, the dead glass eyes. I realized that without Dash I was much more afraid of just about everything and everyone, which made no sense. I told myself then that I should have been afraid of Dash all along.
    *   *   *
    The next night Scott came by for soup and homemade spring rolls, which we ate on the couch, sitting cross-legged facing each other, wearing our socks. We hung out awhile and then drove over to Scott’s new apartment. It was just a studio in a French Normandy building on Franklin, and he’d sold almost all of his furniture. I asked him why he’d downsized so dramatically.
    â€œIt’s a fresh start. I need to be ready for change.”
    â€œWhat kind of change?” I asked. “You’re not going on some big trip without me or something, are you?”
    â€œMaybe.” He smiled and walked over to me, his hands in his sweatpants pockets. “But it won’t be forever.”
    Scott was a big homebody so I had no idea where he’d go. His family lived in Ohio but he rarely visited them. He didn’t get along with his dad (who was sure Scott was a “queer, living out West with the queers, the Jews, and the Mexicans”), and he worried that if he had too much contact with his mom, she would have to deal with her husband’s anger. Scott had told me how much he worshipped her, though. I’d seen pictures and we’d talked on the phone once or twice when I was over visiting him; she looked like a mom in a TV show and had written a bestselling vegetarian cookbook called Corn Fed .
    â€œScott,” I said, “did I do something wrong? I already blew it once with Dash. I can’t lose you, too.”
    He put his hand on my shoulder. It had been a while since