He sighed before he sunk into the sofa, and looked up at the ceiling, his head on the back of the couch. He looked so pale, and I felt a little bad for him, but not bad enough to help him. Cops had never showed up at my door before and I didn’t want them to do that again. It didn’t make me feel particularly comfortable, and regardless of how much I liked him, I didn’t know if it was going to be worth it to keep seeing him if he brought with him this huge amount of baggage.
He craned his neck to look at me and sighed, closing his eyes tightly, his hands becoming tight fists on top of his legs. He looked shaken, and for a second, I was worried about him. Not worried enough to change my stance or to say anything to him.
With my arms firmly crossed over my chest, I waited.
He sighed again, closing his eyes. “How much do you really want to know?”
“As much as I have to,” I said. “You kept saying that it was better if I didn’t know what you were doing, that it was better to keep me in the dark. But you can’t keep me in the dark anymore. It’s not fair.”
He blinked, sitting up slightly. “I never lied to you.”
I stared at him. “I didn’t say that you lied,” I said. “But you weren’t exactly being forthcoming, were you?”
“I told you—”
“I know,” I said. “You wanted to protect me. But the best way to protect me now is by telling me the truth, so please, tell me the truth.”
He thought for a second. “Where do you want me to start?”
“The beginning would be good,” I replied.
“I don’t know where—okay, so I told you, after my parents got divorced, I got into petty crime, right?”
I nodded.
“It was just a way to make ends meet,” he said. “I never intended to make it a lifestyle or anything, but things didn’t work out like that. I was doing things like shoplifting and then selling the things I’d bought, you know. Standard credit card fraud. I didn’t mind, I was good at it, until I was flagged and caught in a supermarket. Maybe I wasn’t as good at it as I thought.”
I stared at him, saying nothing. I wanted for him to say everything to me, and I didn’t want to interrupt, I didn’t want to make him feel like I was leading him on, I just wanted him to say what he needed to say without leading him into it.
“But anyway, I got caught. I got arrested and I was lucky enough to get a defense attorney who was, actually, pretty good,” I said. “Considering he was free and everything. He got me off on probation and community service. I got lucky, because I’m white, come from a good family, and didn’t have a criminal record.”
I blinked. “Right.”
“My community service was picking up trash from the side of the road. Parks too, that kind of place,” he said. “It was actually not too hard. To be honest, I kind of liked it. But even if I had wanted to get a job doing something like that, I wouldn’t have been able to. I had a record; it wasn’t going to be easy for me to get a job. No matter how entry level the job was. And I was really good at picking up trash, trust me.”
I nodded, not saying anything.
“While I was there, I met some people. They also couldn’t get traditional jobs, and they wanted an assistant. I still needed to make money, so I offered my services. It was actually really simple, I would drive the getaway car, or I would stake out a place, because I didn’t look quite as suspicious as they did, so it was unlikely that I would get the police called on me.”
I shook my head. “Sorry, I’m a bit confused. Are you saying that they used you because you didn’t look like a criminal?”
“Yes. That is exactly what I’m saying.”
“Okay…” I said, trailing off, unsure what to say. I supposed that he didn’t look like a criminal. He looked a bit like a bad boy, with the leather jacket and the tattoo, but he looked like an actor playing at being a criminal rather than an actual criminal. I didn’t know how much of that could be chalked up to vanity, but I thought it was probably quite a lot.
He sighed again and sunk into the sofa’s cushion even more, looking away from me as he continued speaking. “You can’t just drive the getaway car forever. At some point, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.”
“What does that mean?”
“I went with them. I staked out places, and then I would go inside, take the most valuable things, like the jewelry, the electronics, instruments, anything that would make us a pretty penny,” he said. “I befriended the rich owners by pretending that my parents were thinking about buying a house in that neighborhood, and I learned their schedules by stalking them online.”
“Who did you target?”
“Whoever looked like they had enough money that they wouldn’t be upset about it. I mean, there was no way for me to know, but I never targeted families with young children or single men or women. That would’ve felt unfair.”
I shook my head. “Stealing is unfair.”
“Yeah. I know. I knew it while I was doing it, but by then, I couldn’t stop. I had been doing it for so long, and I was good at it,
