Page 61 of Trust Me

The sliding door creaked, making me turn my head. It was pouring rain outside. Why the hell would he go out there?

Some foreign but increasingly familiar feeling started in my chest. It was stupid to think he’d get struck by lightning or some dumb shit, but the thought still floated around absently. He could also get sick. Or he could slip on the deck and knock his head on one of his flower pots. Maybe that spider friend of his would crawl up his nose and walk across one of the wrinkles in his brain, severing something important.

What the hell was wrong with me? Oli wasn’t my responsibility.

Too curious to sleep, I stood again. This time, I slid my arms into a sweatshirt so I wouldn’t freeze my damn nipples off if I had to drag him out of the rain.

I opened my door and scanned the space. Determining he’d gone outside, I walked as quietly as I could toward the back. There was a voice out there, soft and melodic. The tune was familiar, and I found myself intrigued as I got closer.

Before I reached the door, he cut off abruptly. There was no way he’d heard me this time, but when I looked out of the glass, he was staring directly at me from where he was crouched in front of the flower that served as the spider’s home.

With my cover blown, I slid the door open and offered him a smile. “Hey, crazy pants.”

He looked away from me, focusing on the pot. I watched as he carefully slid it closer to the building so it was beneath the cover of the roof, just out of reach of the rain.

“What are you doing?”

“The wind made a hole in his web.”

“You’re sure it’s a boy spider?” I teased.

“You can’t tell?”

“I haven’t really looked, honestly.”

“Scared of him?”

“Not scared, but not interested either. My mom calls them demons, so I’ve always been the executioner.”

All I could see was the side of his face, but there was a noticeable frown there. Coming closer, I crouched beside him. Despite my aversion, I carefully touched the tear in the spider’s web.

“Are you one of those people who always brings them outside?” I asked.

“I leave them alone unless they get a little too invasive. They’re just existing like the rest of us.”

“They could exist outside like this one.”

“And people will still kill them if they find them. It’s kind of like they aren’t welcome anywhere. Like they don’t belong.”

“This feels deeper than spiders.”

Finally, he smiled a little. “There used to be one in the corner above my bed when I was, like, nine. I’d tell it about my day before I went to sleep. If I found other bugs, I’d toss them into his web. He appreciated it, I think.”

“Sounds really lonely.”

“It was lonelier when my foster mom got rid of him. She was mad I hadn’t told her about it. Said it would crawl in my mouth while I was sleeping.”

“I heard we eat a bunch of spiders every year.”

“That’s a myth.”

“Thank God.”

Oli plucked a few fallen leaves from the soil and tossed them over the edge. When he was done, he just stayed like that, watching the spider, even though it wasn’t doing anything.

“You shouldn’t be out here,” I said. “It’s cold, plus it’s late.”

“I like it out here at night.” He looked up, his eyes moving across the sky. “I can never see the stars at this time of year, though.”