Chapter Ten #2
Before he just went ahead and said what he really wanted.
“I’ll take a glass of milk. A big one. Biggest you have.
Put it in a stein with a giant handle,” he told her.
And when it came he didn’t just take a sip.
He took a long, greedy drink, like it somehow wasn’t just milk.
It was a stiff alcoholic drink of the sort he sorely needed to take the edge off.
He even added, breathlessly, on the end: “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff, that hits the spot.
” Like he’d been waiting all his life to gulp something like that in a restaurant.
Now, finally, he got to slake his thirst.
Then wipe his mouth on his sleeve afterward.
One big swipe, like a kid. Or more: the kid she suspected he’d never gotten to be.
That’s why he wants these things , she thought to herself as he looked at her, sheepishly.
And it made her reach for her glass and gulp it, too.
She gave herself a milk mustache, and then did the same thing he had done to get rid of it.
And boy, did that seem to hit the spot for him, too.
He tried to just look at her witheringly, ruefully, but underneath it she could see the delight.
She could feel the delight. It hummed right out of him—and doubly so for the caramel mousses the waitress set down on the table.
She’d never seen an expression as blissed out as the one that rolled across his face once he stuck his fork in and took a bite.
His eyes actually rolled up in his head.
Immediately—like stopping himself from doing weird things he thought people would disapprove of was getting harder and harder.
It was starting to sink in that they might be okay.
“All right, so at this point I was gonna ask you what a normal topic of conversation would be. But now I’m starting to feel like maybe I should just go with what I really want to talk about,” he said, and she almost punched the air.
She was winning. His self-doubt was losing.
“You definitely should.”
“Even if it’s not the weather.”
“ Especially if it’s not the weather.”
“And it doesn’t matter if it’s not about work, either.”
“It doesn’t. But, I mean, you could probably at least mention what you do, considering how fascinating and secretive it seems to be.
My best guess is something do with cutting down trees, and mining, and chemicals.
” She laughed over how silly that sounded.
Shook her head. “You mine the chemicals that come out of trees.”
“Where did you get that from?”
“The word on that hat. And the pen.”
“That doesn’t seem like a lot to go on.”
“Well, there’s also the money you secretly have. That you don’t ever spend on yourself. That you could use to make your life better, but you don’t. Like you don’t want people to know what you do. You just want people to think you have nothing.”
“So what are you imagining? The mined tree chemicals are dangerous? Illegal? Something I don’t dare tell you about?
” he asked, trying to laugh as he did so.
But she could hear the strain in his voice.
It made it easy to let it go when he added, “Look, I wanted to talk more about you. Even if I’m not really supposed to. ”
And not just because it was making him uncomfortable.
The very idea made her start in her seat. For a second she didn’t know what to say. She had to scramble to get ahold of herself, and not gasp please do , simply because of the electrifying novelty of it. “Just being interested in a woman puts you miles ahead of most men, honestly.”
“Yeah, but if most men don’t then maybe that’ll seem really odd to her.”
“It won’t. I promise. If you really want to ask her, ask her.
Forget what you’re supposed to go with, forget romance novels and old movies, forget small-talk rules and topics you feel you won’t mess up.
Think about what you really want to know about her.
Think about what you’ve maybe always wanted to know.
She’s right there in front of you, finally you can ask.
What question would you go with?” she asked, not really sure what she imagined him answering as she did so.
Something that he would ask this other girl, maybe, about stuff that wouldn’t even make sense to her.
Most likely she had a cute hobby, like knitting socks for cats, and he’d always wanted to know what kind of wool she used.
He was like that, after all. The kind of man who genuinely would find value in something, simply because it was what the woman he loved enjoyed.
And she appreciated that, even as it stung just a little.
In fact, it stung quite a lot. She had to busy herself with her glass of milk and the straw in it. She stirred the ice cubes inside, then went to take a sip in the silence that followed. In fact, it was only when she realized how long that silence was going on for that she looked up.
She met his gaze—not far away, as he thought of some other girl.
But steady, and on her, and full of this strange sort of considering.
Like he was weighing some option she’d never be able to understand.
Then finally he sat back against that plush pink seat.
He almost nodded to himself. And he started in on whatever he had been holding back.
“You used to carry a book around with you all the time. It had a green cover, it was old looking. I think there was maybe a tower on the front. Sometimes I’d see you reading it in The Spinning Top, so lost in it that you let your eggs get cold.
You’d grimace when you finally remembered your coffee and took a sip.
But I’ve never been able to figure out what the title was, and always been too afraid to ask.
Even now I don’t know if I should—feels too much like a movie where the guy accidentally reveals he’s a weirdo stalker.
But, man, getting to finally know seems worth it,” he said.
And not even in a casual, half-irritated way, either.
Like goddamn, this nothing little puzzle has been irritating me for years .
No, no—he said it low, and long, and steady, the way a man might if asked to read a much cherished and never told story aloud.
Even though it couldn’t possibly be anything of the kind.
It was all just nothing.
“It’s silly,” she burst out, half-laughing, incredulous. “It’s not even a good book. Or even really a book at all. It was just the novelization of a movie I loved when I was a kid, and not a particularly great one either. Return to Oz , it was called.”
He kept looking at her steadily, however.
Dinner forgotten, everything forgotten.
“Yeah, I don’t care if it’s a worthwhile read.”
“Then why do you want to know so much?”
“Because it mattered to you, kid. I want to understand why it did.”
Do not tell him , she ordered herself. But the problem was, of course, that he already knew. Or at least, he knew enough. He’d seen how she had been in his bedroom and guessed all that about her father. And truthfully, she wasn’t even sure it had been guessing.
She knew some people around town knew about the hospital stay. They rumbled about her having mental problems, hallucinations, that she’d been sent to Belmont to get better.
The only problem came when they thought of it in a bad way.
But he didn’t. So why not? “Because they send Dorothy away in it. They send her away for believing in Oz, even though Oz was real. It was all real and she was right and then they do that to her. They try to take it out of her, all her magic and all her wonder. But then she manages to get away. Someone helps her get away,” she said, doing her best not to sound heartbroken.
Knowing all the while that she did anyway.
“So you like it like the romance novels. It gave what reality didn’t.”
“I don’t know. Sort of. I mean, I did get out of there.
I even think sometimes that somebody came for me, too.
Though I don’t remember much about it now.
It all seems like a dream, the same way all the magic things were just dreams. Just nothingness, I guess.
Just the vague impression of calling for help and being sure nobody would come because nobody ever did.
And then someone saying…” She shook her head. “This is silly.”
“Tell me it anyway.”
“They said, On your feet, soldier . You know, like Kyle Reese says to Sarah Connor? Which I know definitely can’t be real, but it felt so much like it was.
And then it was like I was carried, but that can’t be true either because I came to alone, in my hospital gown.
The place burning down behind me. Some paramedic clicking his fingers in my face.
Afterward they said the boiler went, but I don’t know, I don’t know.
All I do know is that even though I got out, it feels like—”
“You lost Oz anyway,” he finished for her.
She couldn’t reply with the yes she wanted to, however.
She was too busy trying to swipe away the tears before they finished falling.
“Maybe talking about the weather was a better idea,” she said, and tried to laugh. She speared some dessert with her fork, and ate. She sipped her milk. She wanted to get on with this date. This date that was supposed to be for him.
But that he had somehow made for her.
He was still making it for her, even now.
“I know you don’t really believe that,” he said in that same storyteller’s tone.
That lovely rich tone that had her looking back up at him before she could even stop herself.
And then he continued, once she had. “I know you know that I welcome every single thing you share with me, even when it’s hard.
Especially when it’s hard. Because then it means you trust me, as much as you’ve never been able to with anyone else.
So next time you need someone to catch you when you fall, you know you can count on me.
And when you recall it, you won’t have to doubt a second time that it was real. ”