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"You look like you ain't ate anything in days." He pushed a bag of Chipotle across the table. "I didn't know what you'd want…" She looked up from her notes, eyes bleary from lack of sleep. He was hovering above her, one hand on the back of his neck, as though he thought what he was doing didn't quite fit into their relationship. "Thanks," she said, offering him a tired smile. "You want to join me?" He grumbled something, but took a seat across from her, anyway. It was the Sunday before midterms, and most of the tables around them were filled with students, half of whom were in a study-filled daze. "How are your midterms going?" she asked, cutting the burrito in half and pushing it towards him. "I've still got about fifteen pages for my general psych class, and statistics is killing me. I just can't remember all of these equations." "I got a Crime & Policy debate next week. And then Merle and I are heading out of town for the weekend…" He looked up at her, and she thought she could read the hesitation in his eyes. She got that. It had been one week since the woods, and well, that wasn't exactly a conventional college hook-up. They'd held hands, and if she'd leaned a little too close to breathe in the scent of alcohol on his skin, she hadn't thought much of it. That had been a one time thing. And this, this was probably just another one time thing (and what happened if all those one time things added up?). "You ever been on a motorcycle?" His next words surprised her. "Are you asking me on a date?" "I guess you could call it that." She watched as he poked at his half of the burrito with a fork. "It wouldn't be anything classy. Merle's got a thing for… trashy motels and shit. But it'd be nice to have someone else there." He looked up at her. "Someone I can trust to handle him." She met his tired gaze. What made him think she could handle the oldest Dixon brother? It sure as hell hadn't been her performance with security. That memory alone embarrassed her. "Look, I get if you've got…" "I'd love to." "Yea?" "Yea." She was sure that the smile on her face matched his own. -- -- -- "Look, I'm sorry," she said into the phone, as she slammed her closet door, "but I already told you I'm going out of town this weekend. I can't -- Maggie, you know what it's like for me at parties." "But I promise this time will be different. It's at Glenn's frat, so it won't be crazy like all the other ones." She had met Glenn once, maybe twice. He was Maggie's on-again off-again boyfriend, and he was a total nerd. She couldn't remember what frat he had joined, but she thought it must be the one where everyone got together on Thursdays and played Smash Bros. That was the only one not known for its crazy parties. "I'm sorry," she said again. She was folding a pair of jeans into her backpack. "I've already got plans…" She wasn't about to tell her sister that she had made plans to go out of town with Daryl Dixon. That was the sort of information that'd have Maggie over here in five minutes flat, a look of distress on her face. "Besides, you and Glenn won't want me there once the night gets going." "That's not true." "Maggie..." As she turned to lean against her desk, she saw him. Like a cat in the night, he'd crept in through her open dorm door and sprawled across her bed. "I've got to go." She hung up the phone before her sister could argue. "I thought you didn't live on campus." "Don't." He had one of those shy grins on his face that made her feel like she was glowing. Like, he'd thought of sneaking up here all along, and now he'd done it, just to surprise her. She knew she must have been staring, taking in his ragged jeans and layers of flannel, because his smart ass grin didn't disappear when he asked, "Your sister okay?" "She's fine." She grabbed her backpack and offered him her hand. "C'mon, before you get my bed all mucked up with cigarette smoke…" Her dorm was close to the central administration office and usually a crossroads of activity. Tonight was no different. Except tonight a low-rider motorcycle was parked at the bottom of the back entrance. "Where's Merle?" she asked, noting that Daryl was alone. "He got a head start." She couldn't tell from his tone of voice what that meant. She was too focused on the motorcycle, and that she'd definitely never been on one -- unless that time she and Jimmy had snuck into his barn, and made out on one counted. Evidently, the list of stupid things Daryl Dixon convinced her to do was growing. "Here," he said, tossing her a helmet attached to his saddlebag. "I can't have you reading to me the statistics of equal opportunity death machines all the way to Atlanta." She might have been offended, if she didn't just know that he was joking. "Thanks." She put the helmet on and climbed on behind him. "You're going to want to hold on." He kicked the engine into gear, and the machine seemed to come to life under them. His entire body seemed to tense as she wrapped her arms around him, and she almost thought she could hear his heartbeat. Or was that the sound of her own nerves, thrumming in her ears in time to a rhythm that she didn't, couldn't, wouldn't be able to understand? She leaned further against him, completely unaware of his tightening grip on the handlebars. -- -- -- They arrived in Atlanta on the sound of the wind. She thought Daryl must have done this a lot because he didn't have trouble finding the two-story motel just outside the city's limits. It was one of those low-class traveling stopovers, where all of the rooms faced an outer courtyard and parking lot. It was the sort of place that might have a pool, but if it did, it wasn't the sort of pool you'd want to spend any time in. She'd stayed in a place like this once when her, Daddy, and Maggie had decided to go to Disney World. She remembered that the air conditioning and the ice machine had been broken, and that all three of them had been glad to vacate in the morning for the cool air of her Daddy's pick-up truck. Luckily, Georgia in October was a lot more favorable, and she didn't think she'd need to be worrying about the weather. The concierge was more than willing to tell them that Merle Dixon had taken a room on the second floor, farthest from the outdoor pool, and he'd taken the room next door for, as the concierge put it with an almost grimace, "his baby brother and his lady friend." That really didn't surprise her. She didn't know what she counted as to Daryl. Maybe he went to all this trouble once a year to bring an unsuspecting first year out here. Maybe that was one of those cons that the Dixon brothers always ran, except she was pretty sure that Daryl wasn't like that. They found Merle's room without any trouble. It was the only one in the place that seemed to be pumping loud pop music into the general vicinity, followed by the loud sounds of a scuffle, and then, "Ah, nobody wants to hear that shit." The pop music was immediately replaced by the slow intro to "Hells Bells." It was a fitting salute to what she thought she'd walked into. As though picking up on her hesitation, Daryl turned back to look at her. His grey eyes were fixed on hers, and she knew she didn't want to be anywhere than where she was right at that moment. "You sure about this?" "Don't worry about me." "Darylina, is that you?" She didn't know how anyone could have heard anything over the music, except somebody had, and that somebody was most definitely Merle Dixon. He was leaning out the door of the room closest to them, eyes moving from his brother to her. She didn't like those eyes, anymore than she liked the idea of being pulled apart by rabid wolves. "What the hell Merle? Started the party without us?" "I had to check the goods, little brother. I'm telling you they're sweet. Though, maybe not as sweet as that Disney princess you've got with you. You got a name, sweetheart?" "Don't -" She put a hand on Daryl's arm, the briefest of touches before stepping next to him. "Beth," she said, introducing herself. "And I ain't your sweetheart." She felt Daryl's arm pressed back against hers as she heard Merle laugh. "You sure know how to pick 'em, little brother. Now, c'mon, the night ain't going to live itself…" -- -- -- Poor decisions always led to poorer ones. That's what her Daddy had taught her. It seemed to her to be the truth, or else she couldn't figure how she'd ended up at the edge of a dirty motel pool, counting spiders in the water. She was pretty sure that she was drunk, except she'd never been drunk before. And wasn't there a first time for everything? The night had started off like any other: Merle and Daryl drinking, her picking at her toes and listening to them talk about their wild childhoods. Mostly, Merle talked, and Daryl simply watched her. She had been about to ask why the hell he'd brought her here (he seemed perfectly capable of babysitting without her) when Merle had climbed to his feet and said it was time. That was about the time that the hookers arrived. She didn't know for sure that they were hookers, except that she was pretty sure no one that beautiful would hang out with Merle Dixon willingly. The man seemed to have a soul blacker than coal, and he made his brother just as dirty. There had been drugs, too. Drugs, women, and dancing in that cramped motel room. She didn't know when she'd decided to start drinking, except it might have been about the time that a brunette had started to dance up against Daryl, all smooth and like she'd done it a thousand times before. Beth Greene wasn't a jealous woman, and she wasn't about to let the callous, typical, standard nature of two roughnecks ruin her weekend. So, she'd found the closest bottle of Jack Daniels, and disappeared. That was when she'd found the pool, and what it meant to drink to the bottom of a bottle (to be fair, she thought, it hadn't been a remotely full bottle). "Where the hell have you been?" His words seemed to be coated in that tangy taste of cigarettes that always seemed to be chain-smoking: before classes, right before he climbed four stories of library steps to see her, and now. She looked up at him, cigarette hanging off his lower lip. She felt dizzy, and sick, and stupid, caught up in those low grey eyes and that way that he seemed to just know what she was thinking. It was all she could do to look away. "I had to get some air." She felt his weight settle next to her, and she hoped to God she wasn't slurring her words. "How's the party?" "Don't," he said, smashing his cigarette into the cement. "You didn't come all the way out here because you wanted to get some air." How could he so put together? She felt as though the world were slipping out from under her grasp one second at a time. "I thought this was a date." "It is, isn't it?" "No -" She struggled to find the right words to explain what a date was, except based on her limited understanding of college standards, all of which came from her sister, this was a date. "Do you bring hookers on all your dates?" He looked at her, and she knew that he knew that she was drunk. But he didn't say, Jesus, how much have you had to drink?, and he didn't say, I thought you didn't do drunk. He just smirked, one of those slow, smart ass Dixon smirks. "You think any of those women got anything on you? Hell, you don't know anything about me." It was about the time that he leaned in to kiss her that she threw up in the pool. -- -- -- The sunlight slipped through the curtains, slowly pulling her from sleep. Her head hurt, and her mouth tasted like something had died in it. She was just glad that she hadn't woken up to the taste of paper in her mouth, except -- Shit. "You're going to want these." She opened her eyes to see a bottle of Ibuprofen, a glass of water, and one shaggy-headed, definitely not so drunk that he got sick, Daryl. "I'm so, so, so -" He held up a hand. "I should be the one to apologize," he said. "I should have taken you to one of those fancy restaurants, where everyone gets roses and champagne, and shit… You don't deserve this." "I don't want that either." She pushed herself up into a sitting position. It didn't make her head feel any better, but she wasn't about to have this conversation lying down. She took two pills from the bottle and swallowed them with a glass of water. "Really, I don't want any of that. I just -- I just want you." There was a brief moment as she pulled him to kiss her that she thought she also wanted to brush her teeth, and maybe stop her head hurting. But all of that seemed to disappear as she melted into the taste of cigarettes and day-old Jack Daniels and him. |