Afraid of the Dark

Banner by my darling Tori (boycott love). Thank you, dear! :D

"Hit me."

The cheap playing card hit the coffee table with a soft slapping noise and slid across the plywood surface. Wentz stopped it with his hand and picked it up to check the other side, exposing the radio station's logo emblazoned on the back. He grimaced and threw his cards down in disgust.

"Fuck. I busted."

I laughed and showed him my cards. "Nineteen, baby."

"Shut up," he muttered, taking my cards from me and shuffling them back into the deck with his own.

We had found the pack of playing cards, courtesy of the radio station so that their guests wouldn't die of boredom before they could go on the air, lying on the table in the middle of the big, windowless lounge. Stump was still gone, and, likewise, no Radio Officials had made any kind of reappearance yet, so we decided to play blackjack while we waited for the interview to start.

With an expert flick of his hands, Wentz dealt us each our cards. He examined his carefully, a determined look on his face.

I checked my own cards: an eight and a five. That wouldn't do. "Hit me."

"Hold on," he grumbled, still analyzing his hand.

"You're dealing! You have to hit me!"

"Oh, I'll hit you, alright, if you don't shut up."

"Ha ha," I said dryly. I watched him reviewing his cards obsessively for a moment and then told him, "You know, the numbers won't change if you stare at them long enough."

He glared at me over the tops of his cards. With a very dignified expression, he ignored me and dealt himself a card.

"You're supposed to give me a card before you give yourself one," I complained.

"This isn't Vegas," said Wentz. He wasn't looking at me; he was absorbed in his hand again, so apparently he hadn't busted--yet. "Nobody's gonna follow me up to my hotel room with a crowbar if I don't play by the rules."

"I might if you don't give me another damn card already."

"Fine!" he snapped, grabbing the first card off the top of the stack and practically throwing it at me.

I caught it in mid-air and flipped it over. It was another eight. "Twenty-one!" I cried triumphantly. "Ha!"

"No!" Horrified, he threw down his own cards and grabbed mine, staring at them in disbelief. "No! Why are you so fucking good at this?!"

"I don't know," I said, shrugging. I looked over at his cards, which were now facing upwards, and did the math: he had seventeen. "Why are you so fucking bad?"

"You say that now, but just wait! I'm gonna beat your ass this time." He jerked the cards away from me and started shuffling them again, glancing up to shoot me a venemous look of resentment every now and then.

"Sure, Wentz. Sure." I smirked. "Oh, and it's my turn to deal."

"You can deal next time," he said curtly as he handed my my cards. "You know, after I beat your ass."

I rolled my eyes at him and checked my cards: two tens this time. Poor Wentz. So far, I had won every game, and I was starting to feel bad about it.

He examined his hand with maniacal fierceness and finally dealt himself a card. He regarded me with suspicion. "You need a card?"

"No."

"Okay," he said as he threw down his cards once more, "I've got eighteen."

I showed him mine in return. "Twenty."

"Damn! Seriously, why are you so good at this?" He stared at me in complete bewilderment as I gathered up the cards and reshuffled them. "Are you cheating?"

"No," I laughed, rolling my eyes at him. "I don't cheat."

-----

We played two more hands. I won both of them. Stump still wasn't back yet, and the radio interview should have started three minutes ago.

We played a third hand.

And a fourth.

And a fifth.

We were on the fifth one when Wentz said, very seriously, without looking up from his cards, "So, how are you so cool?"

At first I could only blink at him a few times, confused; we hadn't really spoken in a while, and the question was odd. "What do you mean?"

He shrugged. He still wouldn't look at me. "I don't know. It's just... I've never met a reporter I actually liked before."

I wasn't sure what to say to that. "...Well--"

"Hit me."

I gave him a card and went on, "I think--"

"Oh, damn."

"You busted?" I guessed, biting my lip to keep from laughing.

"Yeah," he sighed. He dealt us each a new hand without bothering to shuffle the old cards back into the deck. "Sorry--you were saying?"

I had been hoping to just let that particular subject drop, because, again, I wasn't sure what to say--but, clearly, he wasn't going to let me get away with not replying. So I decided tot take the safe route: sarcasm. The old turn-it-into-a-joke-to-avoid-the-real-issue tactic never failed. "I was just going to point out that I'm not a reporter. I'm a journalist."

"Oh, well, excuse me." He flashed me a purposely phony smile that was sort of beautiful nonetheless. "I've never met a journalist I liked before."

"It's not our job to make you like us."

"You must not be doing your job very well, then."

I looked up from my cards to stare him down. The look on my face was deadly, I could feel it. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, c'mon," Wentz laughed, a little nervously, his eyes wide with surprise at the sudden intensity of my reaction. "It was just a joke."

For a second, he looked almost scared of me, so I took that as remorse and let it go. But I still couldn't help but feel sort of angry at his...audacity. After all, I barely knew the man. We were hardly on those kinds of terms.

An awkward silence fell between us. I turned back at my cards and was the first to speak: "Hit me."

He did.

"You're kind of touchy," he observed. His expression was careful; he was afraid to offend me again. "You don't have to be so defensive about everything, you know."

The way he looked at me then went beyond the here-and-now, the context of the situation--as if the words belonged in some other conversation we were having, silently, subconsciously, maybe. The look in his eyes had nothing to do with that joke, this game of blackjack, the two of us sitting alone in that room. It was more than that. Much more.

It scared me.

I looked down at my cards so I wouldn't have to look at him anymore, deciding to just ignore that last statement. "Hit me."

He did.

"Look..." Wentz's tone was so soft and understanding that I actually glanced up at him out of surprise. "I know we barely know each other, but I feel like...I know you...already, sort of. Does that make sense?"

No. It made no sense. How could he think he knew me already? How could he think that he knew me when my own mother didn't know me? When no one ever had? When most days I wasn't even sure I knew myself?

I didn't reply.

"And I just...if something's bothering you...if it's me, or whatever...you can just tell me. I won't be offended." He let out an empty laugh. "I handle the truth pretty well."

"What makes you think something's bothering me?" I asked coldly.

"I don't know, I just..." He grinned sheepishly, avoiding my gaze as he raised a hand to his eyes and rubbed his temples for a moment. When the hand disappeared again, I was surprised to see that his face was red; I figured this was as close to embarrassed as I would ever see him. "I know it sounds stupid, but I...I see something in you that...that...reminds me of..."

He growled in frustration and then said, loudly, bluntly, squinching up his face a little as if the words stung on the way out, "To be completely honest, I've been fascinated by you since we met, because--because I think you and I are more alike than...."

He looked up and his eyes were just begging me--You know what I mean? But I could only stare back at him in bewilderment, shock, outright terror...

He sighed wearily. "Sometimes...the look in your eyes...I recognize that look. I used to see it every day in the mirror, and--"

I surprised both of us by interrupting him. "Used to?"

"Yeah. Before they, uh...broke me," he explained with a tiny, hideously sardonic laugh.

I stared down at the cards in my hand, not seeing them--my eyes blind to the bright colors, the bold black outlines, the faces, the numbers...

"I don't want that to happen to you."

"Nothing's going to happen to me. All my dreams are coming true," I told him, half-laughing at the ridiculousness of what he was saying. I got out of West Virginia; I left my family, my past, my former failures behind. Here, out in the wide beautiful world, I had my dream job, my freedom, my future. Things could only get better from here.

Wentz pursed his lips and shook his head at me a little. "All my dreams came true, too," he whispered, his dark eyes boring holes in my resolve. "Look where it got me. You think you can make all these plans, set these goals, and once you get there, everything's perfect, but...it's not. You don't know how it's all gonna turn out, Sarah--"

I was on my feet immediately. "You don't know what the hell you're talking about," I spat. "And don't you call me that ever again."

"What? 'Sarah'?" I couldn't tell if the puzzled look on his face was genuine or sarcastic; everything was such a game to him that I was beginning to wonder if he was ever entirely serious. "I thought that was your name."

"It's 'Ms. Hastings' to you."

"Well, excuse me, Ms. Hastings," he snarled, throwing his cards down on the table. He stood up, too, and, standing there with only a foot or so of space between us, I realized for the first time that we were the exact same height. "God forbid I treat you like an equal--"

"You don't know me!" I screamed at him, suddenly infuriated. "You don't know anything about me--"

"Oh, I know you. I know you, Sarah. I knew you the moment I saw you--"

"You don't know a goddamn thing."

Wentz looked me straight in the eye, his gaze probing and so calm it was unsettling. I felt raw, exposed, violated by this very conversation, so I set my jaw and folded my arms across my chest, but it did no good. The mas was wasted on him.

"That's it, isn't it?" he said softly. "We get along too well. I know you too much, already. I see right through all your fronts, and that scares the shit out of you."

I cocked my head at him confrontationally, trying in vain to intimidate him. "How dare you assume--"

"I like you, and you like me, too. And that scares you. Doesn't it?"

My heart skipped a few beats and my tough facade faltered for a moment. Recovering, I forced my mouth into a vile grimace and scoffed venemously, "Don't flatter yourself. I'm not scared of anything."

"You'd like to believe that, wouldn't you?" said Wentz, raising one eyebrow at me. "And you'd like me to believe it. But I don't. That's bullshit. Everyone's scared of something."

"Well, I'm certainly not scared of you."

"Oh, I think you are." He stepped around the coffee table between us, towards me, and I took a step back almost instantaneously--to an outsider, our interactions might have looked comical. "I think you're terrified. I think that's why you're lashing out at me."

He stepped forward. I stepped back.

"Trust issues, right?" he went on when I said nothing.

He stepped forward. I stepped back.

"You never let anyone in. You never get close to anyone."

He stepped forward. I stepped back.

"That's why you like this job--you fly around the world observing people, never having to let them in, never taking the risk--"

"Yeah, well, what about you?" I said accusingly. "You tell everyone all about your every flaw--hell, you write them into songs for money! Has it ever occurred to you that maybe everyone hates you--" in a moment of startling vulnerablility, he actually flinched at that, but I was too angry to feel guilty-- "because you're always pointing out reasons for them to?! How is that any better?!"

He threw up his arms, yelling, "Because at least I'm honest! At least I don't hide from reality in some made-up fairytale world! At least I'm not fucking afraid!"

This time, I stepped forward. He didn't step back.

And all at once, we were so close that I could feel his hot breath on my face, could see his white teeth glistening like fangs behind his curled upper lip. His face was red--redder than before--and his eyebrows were contracted sharply over his eyes; the sadness in them didn't match the anger in the rest of his face, and I was momentarily transfixed by their gaze.

I tore my eyes away from his and, slowly, firmly, with conviction echoing in my voice, I repeated the biggest lie I ever told: "I am not afraid."

And then the lights went out.