Chapter 4 #2
“I guess you could say I’m married to my job.” Oh, and I seem to have it bad for a seventeen-going-on-twenty-seven-year-old guy who can’t remember anything about his life.
“So you live alone?”
“Just me, myself, and I.”
“Any animals?”
“Nope.”
“Is your real name Ollie?”
I nodded. “Short for Oliver.”
“Oliver…?”
“McFadden,” I said, and when I stopped walking, he looked back at me and then backtracked over.
“What? Did I ask too many questions?”
“No. It’s just that you never told me your name, Reid…?”
“Oh. Valentine. Reid Valentine.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Reid Valentine.” Freakin’ Valentine? I’ll be damned if that’s not the most perfect name for this man. I held out my hand, and he stared at it for a moment before a lopsided smile crossed his face.
“Nice to meet you too, Oliver McFadden. Or do you prefer Ollie?”
“Either’s fine, but my friends call me Ollie.” I let go of his hand, not because I wanted to, but because he might start to question why I wanted to link fingers so soon after introducing ourselves.
As we began to walk again, Reid said, “I’m really glad I ran into you today, Ollie.”
Oh yeah. My stomach fucking flipped.
“Me too,” I said, trying to keep my voice nonchalant. “Glad to see you on your feet.”
“I wasn’t sure how to reach you. You know. To tell you how grateful I am for what you did.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Reid shook his head. “You go around saving lives like some kind of superhero and don’t even want to accept a ‘thank you’?”
I snorted. “A superhero?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been called that before.” I rubbed my stubbled jaw. “Which one?”
“Which superhero?”
“If I’m gonna be one, I better at least be one of the good ones.”
When Reid’s brow furrowed, I realized too late that, shit, maybe he didn’t remember any of the character’s names. But then he said, “Superman.”
“Whew. I’m so glad you didn’t say Ant-Man.”
“Who?”
“Uh, never mind.”
I was surprised how easy the conversation flowed as one mile turned into two.
Reid had a never-ending set of questions for me, and I was only too happy to answer every one.
For someone who’d gone through what he had in the past few weeks, he was, remarkably, not bitter.
Instead, he was curious, friendly, and open. As open as he could be, anyway.
As we closed in on our fifth lap around the lake, I could see that he was starting to get a bit winded. From the little I knew about him, he seemed to be the type who would power on even if he wasn’t feeling up to it, so I decided to give him an easy out.
“I should head back home, get ready for work,” I said as we reached the stretch his parents’ house sat on.
“Oh,” Reid said, the expression crossing his face equal parts relieved and disappointed. “You work on weekends too?”
“Not usually, but I’ve been covering more shifts lately.”
“Does that leave any time for fun?”
Fun? What was that? I’d always been the guy my friends called to hang out, but I’d turned them down so much working crazy overtime that they’d stopped asking.
Damn, when had I become such a sad story?
“Not much,” I admitted. Though that needed to change, and soon.
Although I’d said that after Christmas too…
“That’s too bad. I think you work too hard.”
As we slowed to a stop, I gripped the back of my neck and stretched it from side to side. “You might be right.”
“I am right.”
“And you look way too smug about that.”
“I’ll be smug when you tell me you took a day off to go bowling.”
“Bowling?”
“Or barhopping or hiking or whatever it is you do for fun.”
“Bowling,” I said again, laughing. “Well, I’ll keep you posted on how it goes.”
“You do that. And Ollie?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for the walk.”
“Anytime.” Really. Feel free to join me anytime.
“Are you out here every day?”
“About five days out of the week, usually. I’ve been working a lot lately, so sometimes it’s still dark out.”
“Okay. Maybe I’ll catch you out again soon,” he said, and it sounded like a question to my ears.
“Well, it looks like we’re neighbors, so I don’t think you can get rid of me.”
I hadn’t meant it the way it came out, and I hoped he wouldn’t get the wrong impression. Well, it was the right impression, but I hadn’t meant to give it to him or anything, so— Ah, shit. Screw it.
“It’d be nice to have a friend nearby,” he said, pushing his hands in his pockets. “One I remember, anyway.”
Friend. Yeah, I’d always had a lot more than friendly feelings for Reid, but I could handle this friendship thing.
There was something endearing about his straightforwardness, and the inquisitive, open way he approached the world after the trauma he’d gone through.
I’d always thought of him as just a touch reserved, maybe hesitant, when I’d seen him at Joe’s, but this version of Reid seemed to be anything but shy.
“See you later, Ollie,” he said as he headed across the patch of grass that led to the gate of his parents’ backyard. As he went to pull the gate shut behind himself, I stopped staring long enough to wave goodbye.
But who was I kidding? This was so far from goodbye that it was practically a new beginning.