Numinous

Four

"You're lying through your teeth," she grumbled, trying to ignore the way her heart pounded at how he looked at her. "Why do you always have those headphones on?" She asked him. She was losing her filter as the alcohol kicked in. He reached up to touch them as if he'd forgotten they were with him.

"Music helps me relax. I can get overwhelmed sometimes, when there's too much noise or too many people. I keep them with me so I can just pop them on if I need to. I was born with a mild form of Asperger’s and it used to be way worse when I was little; I didn't speak until four years old and I was homeschooled for quite some time before I was ready to spend time amongst peers. I never made any friends, though, I kind of just stuck out like a sore thumb. It’s hard being on the spectrum. It was difficult for me to be social, and I couldn't read facial expressions, well, for the most part. I couldn’t relate to anyone emotionally, I didn’t really know how to, naturally. I had to learn, but it's still hard to interact with some people. At least if I have my music blasting, and my headphones up, no one wants to talk to me; it makes everyone happy." Avery had never heard of Asperger’s before. It confused her to no end, wondering what that word meant.

“Asperger’s?” she questioned after a moment.

She watched his eyebrow go up before he cleared his throat, took a sip from his beer, and began his explanation. “That basically just means I have a developmental disorder that makes interacting with others harder for me. It’s a mild form of autism, and I’m highly functional, but I still struggle every now and then. It’s difficult for me to be empathetic with people, I usually have to gauge someone’s facial features and act accordingly, and it goes horribly wrong sometimes—even to this day.”

"You seem…empathetic for someone with Asperger’s, though, I mean, you seem normal." She blurted, wanting to shove her fist in her mouth for speaking without thinking. “Oh God, I’m so sorry. I know that was rude of me to say, and I just said it anyway.” Benj chuckled as he sensed the girl’s embarrassment from where he sat across from her. She had put her head in her hands to hide how embarrassed she was. He found it adorable and wasn’t offended by her observation, only because he found it hard to be offended by much of anything. Perks of not feeling the pressure of societal normalities due to utter lack of an understanding of it. That was the only perk in his eyes, however.

“No, no, I get it and I’ve heard worse, so you’re good. I’ve been managing this disorder for almost thirty years now, and I’ve gotten surprisingly good at pretending to be normal. It’s something I've worked a long time on. Years of intense therapy, of memorizing facial expressions and learning to ask how someone is feeling if I can't read it by their body language. It's part of my job, to be able to observe whether someone is in pain, or happy, or sad, or angry with me."

"Your job?" She asked.

"I'm a medical technician up at the hospital overnight. I basically just administer medications for an entire wing of the hospital. It's mostly just preparation for my residency. I will finish up my doctorate program soon and I'll be going into fellowship at my dad's practice down in Arkansas." Avery only caught about half the big words he used, and understood about twenty-five percent of what had just come out of his mouth, but it all flowed like poetry, so she didn't mind that he talked like a d**k.

"You're a doctor?" She asked him. He didn't look like a doctor. Or look old enough to be a doctor. She couldn’t believe he was almost thirty with his boyish features. He chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. "Not yet. I've got a lot to go, but that's my goal." He didn't seem very proud of his accomplishment, although it was a big accomplishment to not take pride in.

"How long have you been working at it?" She asked him out of curiosity. He raised his eyebrows, scrunching up his face as he thought. "I graduated high school early in two-thousand-ten when I had just turned seventeen—I’ve got a late birthday so I’ve always seemed younger than I actually am. Anyways, I enrolled in my first college course the Fall of two-thousand-eleven due to early admission, so I don't know, almost ten years give or take a few months. I've had to repeat a few courses here and there. Some of the material is very...dull. Hard for my brain to soak up. I’m more of a free thinker, and I like to think I’m sort of artistic, so all the studying and the writing gets me down sometimes."

"That's amazing. I didn't even graduate high school." She muttered, feeling stupid suddenly, like he would think less of her. She wondered if she actually was stupid. She only went to school up until halfway through sixth grade, until she ran away from home. Everything she knew, she pretty much learned on the streets. She didn't know much past trying to survive and getting a decent meal. She was definitely academically challenged; carrying a mini calculator she found at the dollar store in her apron pocket at work to help her count out change. She wasn't a very good reader, either. She hated it, in fact, and she never quite knew how to spell words that she used daily, she just knew how to say them. She also thought smart people were d***s for knowing big words and using them.

She gasped.

"Oh my God, I'm...I'm a dumb person," she said aloud.

Benj laughed hard, his eyes shut, hands on his stomach, leaning back in the booth, his mouth wide open as he howled in his amusement. She frowned. "It's not funny," she said offhandedly. He straightened up slowly, barely pulling himself together through his laughter. "I obviously have to disagree with you on that; dumb person launched me off a f*****g cliff, Avery. You're adorable." She crossed her arms over her chest.

"Humph," was all she had to respond with.

"Why do you think you're a dumb person?" She rolled her eyes up towards the ceiling. "I don't know anything. I didn't just not graduate; I never went to high school. I never went to middle school, I barely remember much about elementary school, but I'm almost positive that's just the beginning of all the knowledge I've missed out on."

"Why? Why didn't you go to school?" He asked.

He was sure his parents would have murdered him if he didn't go to school. Would have forced him to go either way, dead or alive. Especially with all the money they poured into his tuition for private school. He noticed her face sink a little when he asked her this. He didn't think she wanted to talk about it, and was going to tell her she didn't have to talk about it, but she spoke up. "I left home abruptly. Only packed a duffel full of clothes, a few books and skipped town with fifty dollars to my name. I didn't have my birth certificate, social security number, or vaccination records, I didn't know how to enroll myself in classes, and I really didn't care at the time. I had to spend my days making money to feed myself, finding somewhere safe to sleep."

The questions that left Benj with were endless. He didn’t even really know where to start first. He knew it wouldn’t be polite to ask them all, so he didn’t speak for a minute, trying to shove the questions back before he could ruin what they had going on. It didn’t stop him from being a little bit curious. He wanted to know what was so bad that she left home. He wanted to know why she had to find places to sleep if she could have gone to another family member, if she even had one. Benj hadn't thought about how different their lives were.

She worked at a run-down diner in the middle of a pretty impoverished part of the city, and he was in school on the other side of the city studying to become a doctor. He knew there were going to be some barriers between them, but he didn’t know how many. He'd been lucky. To grow up with money. He was lucky to have his parents to take care of him. To support him. He was aware that not everyone had that, and cursed himself for forgetting that.

"I'm sorry you had to deal with that when you were that young. Why did you leave?" He asked, shocked. "Things weren't good at home, my parental units were both going away; one was dead, the other heading to prison, and I didn't trust anyone. I didn't want the police to find me and place me with my uncle, so I thought it was best to just disappear." She didn't remember much from her early childhood, but of the things she did, her uncle was a part of the abuse her father inflicted on her, and it wouldn't have gotten any better had she stayed. He was her closest known relative besides who raised her.

"Avery," he gasped, covering his mouth with a hand. "I'm sorry you went through so much so young. I guess I was privileged; to get the upbringing I did. I never really thought about...how worse off others have it." She wondered what was so bad about his upbringing when he was a freaking doctor as a result and she was a w***e from the streets as a result of her own.

It was strange to see him reacting this way to what she had told him. Most men she told about leaving home so early usually got it in their minds that she was a problem child and that anything would go with her. This was often the time where he would lean over the table and ask her if she wanted to get out of there. Maybe take her to a seedy motel and ignore her when she says ‘no’.

"You can go back to school," he said matter-of-factly, before either of them could get into too deep of thought. "You know, get your GED?" he had no idea if he was helping or hurting her by bringing it up. He usually found that those who weren’t in school and had never finished school got discouraged quickly, especially if they thought he was being condescending.

She looked confused after he spoke, though. "A what?" she questioned. His jaw dropped and she flushed, averting her gaze to the table between them. He wanted to curse himself because he hadn't meant to embarrass her or react the way he had. He just had a hard time believing that she had lived under a rock so much that she had no idea what a GED was. How was that even possible? "I told you I'm dumb," she defended quietly. He shook his head quickly. "No, you aren't, and don't let my next sentence counteract that, but," He rebutted.

"My parents joke and call it the Good Enough Degree, but it’s really just a General Education Degree. It's equivalent to a high school diploma and the two are basically interchangeable in similarities. It'll be like going to high school without going to high school. They have online courses, or night school classes, one on one peer tutoring. If you think you're dumb—which you aren't, because a diploma is not a measurement of intellect but a measurement of test taking abilities—you can always change that."

"I had no idea that existed. Is it expensive?" He shook his head. "Nope, it's usually under two hundred dollars, and some offer courses for free and you just have to pay the fee of the test. I’m sure they have scholarships and fee waivers as well. You can just enroll and get going." Avery was bummed out for a second. She didn’t have any money. At least none she could spend. She had to save it so that she could get out at some point. Getting an education had always been the furthest thing from her mind. Would it make it easier for her to leave, if she had an education? Would it really make a difference in her life? She had so many questions, but she didn’t ask any of them.

Even if she had the means to pay for something like that, she probably still couldn't do it. She never had free time like that, she didn't have the guts, either. Besides, Allen would kill her if he found out she was going to school. He didn’t even like when she read books on her break. "That's neat. Maybe I'll do it." She told him. "Or maybe I won't." She said with a gleam in her eye. He smiled at her.

Benj understood that education wasn’t for everyone. At least not until they had other pressing matters figured out. He felt bad, for how much education he had gotten growing up whenever he met someone who hadn’t. He was very privileged to get the upbringing he had gotten, and he knew that for a fact. Without the help and support financially from his parents, he would not be here today. His parents still paid for his apartment and his tuition costs that weren’t covered by his scholarship money, even though he had the money to pay for those things himself.

He was grateful that his parents wanted him to save his earnings so that he had something to fall back on if he ever needed it and they were gone. That was one thing he enjoyed learning how to do when he was growing up. Money management had always been a fun little game for him, although lately, he had so much money he didn’t know how to even start using it. He didn’t take expensive trips and he didn’t buy himself too much. He usually liked to spend money on others, either donating or gifting it.

He would like to one day buy a house, but that was going to be well after he finished up with medical school and found someone to settle down with. He wanted kids and a happy home life, just like his parents had. He wanted something to come home to that wasn’t loneliness and emptiness. It was hard having everything together in his life besides who he wanted to share it with. He was ready to open his heart to someone and put his energy into a relationship—but dating was difficult. He was no good at it and there was a lot he still had to learn if he wanted to be a good partner to anyone.

"It’s never too late to get your GED and start somewhere, is all I’m trying to say. Of course, people take all different types of routes in life to get to their destinations, and if education isn’t for you, I don’t want to push that on you." She snorted at that.

"You sound like a guidance counselor." She said making a face. He laughed shortly. "I'm sorry, but it's true! You're never done growing and learning, there are people two times as old as me just beginning medical school. You're young, you'll figure it out, diploma or not, GED, or not, I think you're pretty damn smart, girly. You got yourself this far, and I think you’ve done a spectacular job." She smiled at him earnestly.

She thought she really ought to try being positive like him; he pulled it off well. The only problem was she didn’t know if she could do it. She really didn’t know if going to school would be the right move for her. She didn’t know what the right move for her was at all. She had never been good at making her own decisions. It always led to her getting into trouble. For as long as she could remember, someone else was in charge of the things that went on in her life. Thinking for herself was daunting.

"That's kind of you to say," she said. "But I honestly don't think I'll ever figure it out. Life is hard and I don't know the rules. I feel like I'll never learn them." Confessing this to him felt easy. Felt safe, somehow. Benj understood where she was coming from. Sometimes he wondered if he was taking the right path himself. He liked his job, but he didn’t know if he liked it enough to do it for the rest of his life. He just knew his main motivation for doing it was to make his father proud and to set up a life for himself that he could enjoy just the way he wanted to; comfortably.

"The rules are that there are no rules. I mean, there are some rules, like laws and morals and s**t, but anything else? It's all open for interpretation." She laughed once at his mention of laws. She was almost positive what had happened to her today and every day was illegal, and yet no one was telling Allen he couldn't do it. Not even her.

She froze up whenever he was near, and she always knew when he was near because the hairs on the back of her neck would stand up and her stomach would cramp up, and her throat would get tight, like she was choking.

He would open his mouth and call her useless and tell her to do things she didn't want to do and her body acted on its own, out of instinct. Like she was stuck in survival mode and every move was crucial, every move had to be made correctly, and it had to be whatever Allen wanted, because he owned her. She was his to have whenever he wanted, she was his to share with buddies, she was his toy.

His maid.

His plaything.

His property.

And what made it even worse was the fact that everyone knew. Allen wasn't quiet about it, he called her a slut in front of the entire kitchen crew almost daily, he'd dragged her by her ponytail in front of the main line cook and one of the dishwashers because he wanted her to see the filth on the bottom of the toilets in the men's room. No one did anything, though. The men had just stared at her openly, laughing, covering their laughter in their hands, they didn't try to stop him.

No one stood up for her, not her coworkers, not the customers. Allen reserved his behavior in front of customers, but he was still so mean to her then, too. It was like no one cared, and she was actually just garbage, she was actually useless and worthless and stupid and only good for laying on her back. She felt the weight of every bad word she had been called, every slur thrown at her, every fist that hit her skin, every curious wondering eye, every turned cheek, she felt it in her core.

Thinking of Allen made her tired. Made her want to scream. She wondered if Benj even noticed, since he was there so often. But he usually had his eyes downcast, his headphones on. He was in his own world, and she found herself wanting to be in his world, too. Maybe it was better than hers. Maybe no one ever felt pain in his world.

She met his eyes over the table and he gave her a warm smile.

She liked that.

He smiled at her, he was nice, and easy to talk to. Gave her choices, let her take the lead in picking the table, waited over two hours for her outside in the cold and greeted her with happiness and warmth. Even when she thought he ought to be cussing her out.

She was also terrified. Beyond terrified.

"Maybe you're right," she sighed, finally. "Maybe the rules are open for interpretation." Another drink arrived and she slammed it back.

"Did someone hit you?" He asked suddenly, again, like he couldn't help it. She felt dread, nothing but dread as she met his eyes. He looked curious, sad for her, like she wanted his pity. She didn't want his pity. She didn't want anyone's pity.

"What's it to you?" She asked him. He shrugged, feeling as if he'd said the wrong thing again. He hadn't wanted to upset her, but this had been on his mind since she met him outside the bar. He'd held off for a while. "I don't...I don't know. I just...noticed. I didn't mean to upset you, I'm sorry if that was invasive."

This entire ordeal had been invasive for her. Here she was, telling a stranger personal details about her life, details she should keep to herself. She reached into her purse and pulled out a wad of money, putting it down on the table.

"I'm sorry, Benj, I have to go, I can't stay any longer," she stood, but the room began to spin as she did and she was propelled back into her seat. She didn't think she could hold as much liquor as she thought she could.

She had really f****d herself over. It was a gamble with life she wanted, and a gamble with life she would get.