Chapter Four #2
“You are nice to me, kid,” he said, in that same furiously baffled tone he’d had for the last fifteen minutes.
As if he couldn’t believe she thought she was cruel, any more than he had been able to accept her being at fault.
As if he’d never thought those things about her, and just hadn’t known how to get that across.
Words he’d had no opportunity or courage to say.
But now he did. “You’re nice even though I’m a total ass to you over nothing.
Over you just living your life and being a normal human woman and even trying to help me out.
Because I know you were just trying to help me out, bringing that book over.
And that’s fine. I’m fine with you knowing that I wanted advice on how to be a normal, decent man, worthy of a good woman.
In fact, it’s probably good for me that you do.
Maybe this way I’ll look less like a jackwagon who doesn’t know there’s something seriously wrong with him. ”
At which point, she realized two things:
That he had probably never really hated her at all.
And that all this had to be absolutely excruciating for him to admit.
She wasn’t even sure how he was managing it, if she was being honest. It looked as if it was making him sweat; every muscle in his face seemed tense.
But he got it out anyway—as if something had shoved him into it.
Something big and scary, like thinking you terrified a woman into crashing her car, maybe.
Though that seemed like a step too far. Too much caring on his part.
It was probably something less about her than that—like simple desperation and disgust with himself, of the sort she could actually do something about.
“Well, even if there are wrong things, one of them isn’t your facial hair,” she said, and the words did seem to settle him a little.
He tried on the idea for size, like someone squirming around inside a new jacket that wasn’t supposed to fit.
Then, finally, he cleared his throat. He let out a tentative question.
“So you don’t actually think it makes me seem scary.”
“A little. But not in a bad way.”
“What kind of way, then?”
A hot one , she thought without meaning to.
Then was relieved her runaway mouth hadn’t gotten to the words first. “One that most women find very handsome,” she said instead. Though it still made her blush. And doubly so when he pressed her a little on it.
“Okay, but would a woman like you think the same thing?”
“Well, it depends on what you mean by a woman like me.”
He rolled one hand in the air. “You know. Nice. Thoughtful. Wholesome.”
“You think I’m wholesome?”
“Not in a bad way.”
“So then tell me what you mean.”
“Well, you know. You have freckles and wear cute dresses and you use words like shucks and gee and your store is always full of cookies you baked and in winter you wear hats with bobbles and big mittens and if someone was really horrible you would find that hard to take because your heart is all full of goodness.”
Awwww, her heart said. Oh no, that makes me seem so saccharine, her brain insisted. And her brain won, of course. “That still sounds pretty awful, to be honest. Annoying, to someone like you.”
“None of it annoys me. I just don’t know how to act around stuff like that.
All of it makes me feel like an ogre, on the verge of crushing something with my giant evil feet.
It makes me think that everything I’ve ever done is hanging over my head, in a way the woman I want will never be able to accept. ”
“So there’s a specific one you have in mind, then. Someone you’ve fallen for and would like to maybe ask out on a date. And you want to look good for her. You want to be the right kind of man for her. You want her to see you differently, instead of how she sees you now.”
He didn’t answer right away. Instead he shifted in his seat uncomfortably.
And after a second he patted the pocket over the side of his chest, the pockets of his jeans, the space underneath his seat.
Searching for cigarettes, she realized, and a second later, sure enough, he came up with some.
A packet as ancient looking as she had imagined, soft instead of a carton.
His thumb easily flicked one free from the others in a manner that spoke of long practice.
He drew it out with his teeth.
But he didn’t light it. He just sat with it a second, his gaze obviously turned inward, mind going over things. Then he seemed to realize what he was doing, and snatched the cigarette out of his mouth. He tossed it into the footwell along with the packet in a way that fully illustrated the problem.
He didn’t want to smoke in front of her.
Or maybe he had just grasped that it wasn’t the nice thing to do when someone was trapped in a truck with you.
You’re better than you think, Jack Jackson , she thought, just as he seemed to get it together enough to finally answer her.
Gaze still on the road, even though he’d just pulled up outside her store.
“Yeah,” he said, in this faint sort of voice.
“Yeah, this specific girl I like. I want to be worthy of her. More than anything, I need to be worthy of her.”
And she knew then what to do.
She even felt like he was asking her to do it now.
“Well, why don’t you come inside? I might have some other books that can help.
Better ones than the one you picked, I mean.
Unless of course you still don’t want me to say that you did pick one, in which case we can totally pretend that all you want is a coffee and a nice sit-down, somewhere close to certain titles that I’ve placed there for no reason at all,” she said, without even really worrying about how cheery she sounded. He’d set her at ease on that score.
And he did it again with the look he shot her.
It was half agony, half hope.
“I can’t ask you to do that,” he said.
“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”
“But why? Just because I didn’t let you get incinerated?”
“Honestly, I would like to say yes. Because that’s enough of a reason, no matter how much you try to downplay it. But the truth is, I would just like to. I think you’re maybe not as mean as you seem. And that you deserve a break, after what is possibly a long time of not getting many of them.”
She nodded at the end of the sentence, nice and firm.
Sure of herself in a way she couldn’t ever remember being.
Only now he was staring and staring at her, and he wasn’t saying anything.
It made her mind fill in the blank: Oh, I did the wrong thing, I’ve embarrassed him again .
But just before she could take back what she’d said, he seemed to decide. Then he simply stepped in.
“Well,” he said. “I guess I gotta see to that leg anyway.”