Chapter Five #2
If she hadn’t been told five seconds earlier that he liked some other woman.
Maybe even loved some other woman.
It was utterly preposterous to think.
And even if it hadn’t been, she was in no position to assess something like this.
She’d never experienced anything like it.
Everything about it was probably perfectly normal for casual acquaintances, and her simultaneously romance-starved and romance-addled brain was just turning it into something it wasn’t.
Calm down , she ordered herself. Remember what happens when you start fantasizing about things .
You end up thinking weird stuff, like writing stories is making creatures crawl out of your walls and the telephone that doesn’t work on the wall talks to you.
And what happens then? Your dad decides you need to spend some time in the hospital.
And, true, her dad had been an asshole to do that.
She knew he had been an asshole, thanks to her mother apologizing for it after the divorce.
And the years of therapy, of course. The years of rebuilding her self-worth.
But even so, she remained wary of reading too much into things, or going on any wild flights of fancy.
Just in case , she always told herself, whenever she let her imagination run riot, or went to pick up a pen to write anything more than a grocery list down.
And not just because of the scarier consequences.
It also made her zone out.
“Hey, kid, you okay?” he said, through the fog she’d descended into.
And for just a second, even this seemed familiar in that disturbing old way.
She remembered picking up the receiver on that clunky phone, left behind by the family before them.
An antique almost, heavy as anything and the color of bubble gum.
Sure, down to her bones, that she had heard it ring.
Then even surer that some voice spoke to her over a crackling and hard-to-hear line.
You don’t have to be afraid, I won’t let anything hurt you.
I’m always here even if I can never be more than your guardian , someone had said.
Though of course she knew now they hadn’t really.
And not just because it was mad to believe a broken phone could suddenly work.
Nobody had even known, then, that she was terrified of nonexistent monsters.
Nor would they have had any desire to save her, if they had.
It was all just nonsense, and anyway, she was normal now.
Tell him you’re normal , she told herself.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m totally fine,” she said, with a laugh she’d practiced and perfected over the years.
People always let it go when you let yourself seem happy.
Only he didn’t, exactly. He didn’t even seem embarrassed to have asked.
“Because for a second there, you looked a little out of it,” he said, as grave as the first time.
Like he took this very seriously. Like if she told him all about what she’d been thinking, he’d say, Well, you just tell me if those imaginary monsters come back, okay?
I’ll look out for you, like the spooky ghost phone voice said.
And that idea was so compelling, she had to actually shake it off.
“I guess I just… I mean, that was kind of a lot to deal with.”
“Oh, right. Yeah. Of course it was. Of course . How didn’t I get that?
” He slapped his forehead. Started to stand and sort of back away.
“I should get out of your hair so you can rest, and eat, and get back to normal. Maybe feed that little dog of yours, because I’m pretty sure I can hear him whining upstairs. ”
“He’s fine, he has a feeder. You really don’t need to go.”
“Sure I do. You’re all set now.”
“But I haven’t even gotten your books yet.”
That got him. She saw him freeze and redden a little.
But his eyes flashed wide and eager at the same time.
And it took him a second to shake that off.
“You can’t be hobbling around, looking for stuff for me.”
“All right, so I’ll point and you can get them.”
He chuffed. “And risk me messing up your neat-as-a-pin store?”
“I don’t think you’re going to do that. Nothing got knocked over last time.”
“Yeah, but you need to realize how much effort that took,” he said, with a pretty healthy dollop of rueful weariness. “Every time I turned around I thought I was going to obliterate a fancy lamp with my enormous butt. Or somehow crush a paperback in one massive meat hook.”
“You say meat hook and enormous like they’re bad things.”
“And by that you mean you somehow think they’re not.”
Careful, Nancy , she thought. “I mean that most women like me wouldn’t. They would just see that you’re big and solid, and probably enjoy that. And especially when they realize that you’re also good at scooping people out of wrecked cars and bandaging legs.”
“It remains to be seen if I’ve nailed that last one.”
“So let’s see, then.”
She stood on the last word.
But was surprised to find she didn’t even have to pretend.
She walked around a little, no problems at all.
“Seems great to me. And that means you lose, and I win, and so you have to wait there while I grab you a few things. Starting with, I think, Learning to Love Your Inner Self . Because, honestly, you know I don’t think you need to be super different.
I think you just need to connect with your own good qualities,” she said, as she breezed over to the shelves.
One hand was already reaching for what she’d thought of when he sighed heavily from somewhere behind her.
“Kid, I don’t have any. And honestly, even if I did, self-help is just…
it just doesn’t seem geared toward my specific issues.
And I can’t exactly ask them any follow-up questions when doing what they suggest fails. ”
“So maybe what you need is some kind of forum.”
“I don’t think they’ve been a thing since Roman times.”
She laughed at that. Turned to show him how much she appreciated the joke.
But to her bemusement, he seemed weirdly serious.
“No, I mean, like, online,” she prompted him.
And only then did he chuckle and bat a hand at her.
“Of course you did. Yeah, I knew that,” he said, leaving her wondering what exactly he’d meant. Had he been joking, too? She couldn’t tell, and so took the easiest possible route out of this conversational conundrum.
“But you don’t like the idea, I’m guessing.”
He shrugged. “Me and computers tend to not agree. In fact, the more modern the technology, the worse problems I have. Things tend to go haywire around me. Stuff blows up real easy, for perfectly ordinary if ridiculous reasons.”
“So that’s why you have the VHS tapes.”
Oops , she thought when she saw his expression.
A little taken aback, followed by a half wince.
“You noticed them, then. You saw, like, titles,” he said. Because of course it was the titles that worried him.
“If you’re waiting for me to mock you for them, you’re gonna be here a long time. As in super long. As in so long that I’ll be able to read whatever I pick out for you, aloud, while you stand there, dumbfounded.”
“I don’t mean to be dumbfounded. It’s just usually people do mock me.”
“Well, I won’t. Not if you really enjoy them.”
“Honestly, I don’t just really enjoy them.
They’re… helpful. They have been helpful to me,” he said, a little haltingly.
The way anyone would if they’d never been able to talk about tender things they liked.
Or confess that they needed whatever those tender things gave.
Which of course just made her want to give him more.
“So then maybe you just need more stuff like that.”
“More stuff like what, exactly?”
“More romantic stuff.”
“You mean like the kind of thing you read.”
She flushed at that. Thought for a second that she’d gotten carried away, that she’d projected too much of herself onto someone else, that she’d imagined connection where there was none or at least exaggerated what she thought she’d seen in him.
He liked romantic movies, but he didn’t want that much romance.
Not like the romance in her favorite books, no way, no how.
But the second she went to correct herself, he seemed to realize what she had meant.
It hit him that the answer was yes, and when it did his eyes seemed to go wide, and he stepped forward all in a rush.
He jumped in. And he did it fast, and hard, and almost breathlessly.
“Yes, please, yes, I want them. I want your favorites, all of your favorites. Where are they?”
There was nothing she could do after that but grab them for him.
She gathered up a few old-school historicals, a modern contemporary, and a paranormal, while trying not to think about it too hard. Then she shoved them into his hands before she could change her mind.
Not that he did a thing to make her want to. He wouldn’t even let her give them to him for free. Instead, he stalked over to the cash register, and hit some of the ancient buttons vigorously until it opened, and shoved some cash in there. Then he tipped an imaginary hat, and took his leave.
After which she discovered, in something of a daze, that he hadn’t given her the fifty bucks he should have done. The register was overflowing. Bills spilled out when she opened it.
He’d left her a thousand dollars.