Chapter Six #3
It reminded her of movies about aliens that made themselves human, and learned human things, but didn’t actually know how to be human.
Being human was baffling to them, full of bizarre, unspoken rules and hidden things everybody took for granted.
They didn’t understand someone running a red light didn’t mean that red lights should always be run.
They just hit the gas when they got to one.
Like in the movie Starman , she thought. That kind of thing.
Then she tried to express some of this in a way that made it clear how okay it was to her.
How kind of cool it was, when he put things the way he just had.
“Honestly, all of this feels not normal for a normal guy. Or, at least, not normal for most guys. I once went on a date with one who told me romance novels were rotting my brain and giving me unrealistic expectations of men,” she said, thinking only of the way that showed approval of him.
But he was frowning by the end of it.
“Okay, and this date. Do you have his address?”
“Yeah, I think somewhere.”
“Great, go get it, then.”
“But what for?”
“Nothing. Just to give him a little talking-to. And not about weird stuff like how I’d like to yank his eyeballs out through his butthole.
More about how low these expectations actually are.
I mean, on page twenty seven of one of them, the supposed hero calls the heroine, and I quote: an evil shrew hell-bent on destroying my happiness ,” he said, his finger tracing the line he’d clearly written down in his notepad.
After which she really wanted to get into the eyeball thing.
But of course she knew if she did how breathless she’d probably sound.
Like she thought he was really wanting to defend her honor. So it seemed better to stick to lessons in love via the medium of romance novels. “Yeah, but that’s before they like each other,” she said, and he accepted it.
By aiming an incredulous eyebrow her way.
“So you’re supposed to not like someone first.”
“Well, no, not necessarily. It’s just wonderful when the person you thought wasn’t for you turns out to be your soulmate all along.
That suddenly you realize there’s more to them.
That they don’t hate you. That maybe they’re just angry that they like you and don’t really know what to do about all of their feelings.
Like they’re not good with feelings, you know?
But they’re trying,” she said, sure as she did so that everything she was saying made total sense.
Until she got to the end, and heard the rising longing in her voice, and realized she was gazing up at his big, handsome face, and that he was staring back in this strange new way.
Like something was slowly dawning on him.
You just made it sound as if you’re talking about you and him , her mind hissed at her, and god, the panic that descended when it did.
She immediately turned away—more to hide her flaming face than anything else.
Then when that didn’t seem like enough, she bustled behind the counter.
She acted like she had better things to do.
None of this was meaningful to her in any way at all.
Only he followed her.
He walked right around the counter and almost came behind it.
And he was talking fast, suddenly. He was saying a lot of urgent-sounding things.
“And how would you know when that happened? If you were the guy, how could you tell that you were making someone realize that? I mean, speaking practically about this. Because in the books, it’s usually like—they stop a scoundrel from sullying her good reputation by revealing she showed the duke her ankle, you know?
Or they secretly prevent the closure of her miniature schnauzer hospital.
Neither of which is really possible, considering nobody cares about ankles now, and I’m fairly sure miniature schnauzer hospitals aren’t a thing,” he said, in such a passionate tumble she actually went still and wanted to turn back to him. She wanted to see his face.
Because for a moment, she actually thought she’d been right.
He did mean her. He did mean him. He wanted her to show she had realized he didn’t hate her, somehow. He was trying to say she was the one. But the second that idea occurred, the second he impressed it upon her, she got that feeling again.
That zoning-out feeling she’d had when he’d touched her ankle.
Only this time, it was bad. It wasn’t just remembering how things had been, when she’d imagined monsters in the dark.
It felt like monsters in the dark were here, now.
The store seemed to dim; she was almost certain she heard a strange, unsettling sort of scratching coming from just outside the walls.
Somewhere from upstairs, Popcorn started barking.
Like he was trying to warn her, even though that was nuts.
There was nothing here but him possibly saying he liked her.
And her trying to suggest it was okay if he did.
“Well, that’s the problem in real life. You can’t ever be certain of things like that.
You can’t ever know if you’ve done enough, even if you’ve done wonderful things for her and been so kind and shown that you’re a good man who possibly likes her, she might be too shy to say anything to you.
She might be the kind of person used to believing affection is there, only to find it was all one-sided.
She might be too used to things going the wrong way.
So in that case you would have to tell her.
You would have to ask her out,” she said, but it didn’t help.
That sound was louder now.
It was so loud she almost put her hands over her ears.
Honestly, it was almost a relief when he abruptly cut in, and the sound shut down dead, as if it had never been there.
Even though he didn’t have anything good to say.
“That’s kind of you to say, but honestly she barely knows me.
And I don’t think I seem anything but ornery when we interact.
And even if she did think I was all those things, and made that clear to me somehow, I wouldn’t be able to ask her out.
I have no idea what she likes. I wouldn’t know where to take her, what to do, what to wear, how to be,” he said, almost as if he wanted her to know for sure that it wasn’t her at all.
They’d spoken.
He already knew what she liked.
He’d been kind as anyone had ever been to her.
He had to know that. But he’d shut her down. And who could blame him?
She was a weirdo who imagined things. So now it was time to put that fanciful idea aside and focus on the other things he had said.
The things he needed help with. Because that’s what friends did.
Friends did not care if there were no romantic possibilities anywhere.
It didn’t sting to think there weren’t. They were just happy to be of service.
“Well, don’t worry,” she said, as she turned, a cheerful smile on her face.
“Because I know how to do all of those things. And I am more than happy to show you the best way to do every single one.”