Chapter 18
Lennon
I’m in the passenger seat in Connor’s car on the way to a thrift store, and all I can say is that I’m floored.
Absolutely fucking floored. The audacity of this guy.
To look me in the eye and tell me he’s attracted to me.
Who does that? He wasn’t even nervous or spluttery.
He was dead fucking calm. Cool and collected as you please.
He should have been stammering at least. Or red in the face or something.
But no. I literally don’t think I’ve ever seen someone looking more sure of themselves.
I’d be a fucking mess if I said something like that. My voice would do that weird wispy thing I hate, where it shakes and everyone in a two-mile radius can hear that I’m nervous. I’d be all clammy, sweaty-palmed, and itchy-scalped from the stress.
And that’s very normal, by the way. That’s exactly how you should react to putting yourself on the line like that and making a gargantuan ass of yourself.
You should mind. You should be deeply ashamed, and you should know, the second you utter the words, that ten, fifteen years from now, you’ll still be waking in a hot sweat when you think about what you’ve said.
Connor stops at a red light, keeping his eyes focused on the road ahead and his hands on the steering wheel. His grip on it is light. Relaxed. His car is spotlessly clean. There isn’t so much as an empty soda can under the seat or an errant receipt in the center console.
It’s freaky.
On top of that, like everything he touches, it’s permeated with his scent. Cypress with a hint of black pepper, like his shampoo. More than that, though, it smells like him. Like his skin. Like his smile and his laughter.
As he drives, he prattles on about plans of attack and the psychology of negotiating. “Don’t look too interested in anything. If you like something, just touch it when I’m looking at you, and I’ll take it from there. The price on the sticker is not the price we’re gonna pay.”
Hell. I’m definitely in hell.
I’m of the opinion—always have been, always will be—that everyone in the entire world should simply agree to put the right price on the sticker to start off with.
Just tell us the price of whatever it is we’re looking at, and we can decide if we can afford it or not.
It’s simple. I’m happy to pay a little more to avoid getting caught in the torture of a prolonged negotiation.
Connor keeps talking and talking, so enthusiastically that I start longing for sleep or a coma just to escape.
I watch his lips move as he talks. They form words with care, top lip not quite making contact with the bottom when he pauses before starting his next sentence.
He smiles for no reason, and this close to him, I see a dimple I’ve never seen before.
It’s not in the center of his cheek like it should be.
It’s a little lower, and it seems to form when he’s thinking about smiling more than when he’s actually smiling.
I can only see one side of his face from where I’m sitting, and the longer he drives, the more it feels like a matter of urgency that he turns to face me so I can see whether he has a matching dimple on his other cheek.
I’m vaguely carsick by the time Connor puts the car into Park. Not because I couldn’t stop looking at him the entire way here, but because I’m someone who gets carsick easily.
From the outside, the first store looks exactly like what I expect from a thrift store. Faded gold lettering on the door and a profusion of mismatched items in the window. All of them are brightly colored. None of them my taste.
Connor opens the door and holds it for me, stepping back all gentlemanly and shit, and lets me go in first. It annoys me.
I pretend not to notice so he doesn’t get any ideas about doing it on a regular basis.
We amble through the store so slowly that I start feeling like I’m going to lose my balance. Connor makes it past the racks of clothes with what I now see is relative speed, but when he gets to the furniture and home goods, he really slows down and looks at every single thing.
If he likes something, or doesn’t like it, or thinks it’s interesting in any way, he stops and eyes it up and down. He moves his head from side to side, examining it from all angles, before moving on. It happens at least a hundred times.
I start sighing loudly.
“How ’bout this?” he asks, showing me a repulsive item I can only call a glittery pig hoof. “Anna said you needed something unique.”
His tone and expression are serious when he says it, but the dimple near his mouth dips and gives him away. He’s looking directly at me when it happens, so I can see that the dimple isn’t part of a set. There’s only one.
“So what are you thinking for the nightstands?” he asks as we continue to work our way through the store.
Before Anna barreled into my life, if I added up all the time I’d spent thinking about nightstands, I’d come up with exactly zero seconds.
Nada. Not one. “I, uh, I don’t like timber with a red undertone.
I like brown wood that looks like wood. And I like nightstands that you don’t really notice.
I want people to be able to come into my room and leave without noticing that I own nightstands. ”
“Gotcha,” he says, nodding as though all that makes a lot of sense. “Ashy tones and a classic-contemporary design.”
I stand in one spot, rapidly losing the will to live, as he continues the world’s slowest quest. By the time my eyes are crossing from boredom, he waves me over.
There’s an excited gleam in his eyes. Thanks to the garish yellow paint on the wall behind him, his eyes look more green than blue. Pale green, but vivid all the same.
“What do you think?” he asks, gesturing surreptitiously to a couple of nightstands in the back corner of the store.
They’re made of a brown-gray wood and are neither modern nor old-fashioned. They aren’t too big or too small, and if I turned my back on them right now, I’d hardly be able to remember a thing about them. “Perfect,” I say.
Connor haggles and cajoles the sales assistant into giving us a thirty percent discount, and just when the poor guy thinks he has a deal, Connor asks him to throw in a couple of wicker storage baskets for free.
To my shock, the man agrees.
“Not bad, huh?” Connor says as we carry the nightstands and baskets to his car.
“Mmph,” I grunt as I put his back seat down and wrestle my purchases into the trunk.
When everything is in, he slams the trunk and locks the car.
“One more store, please.” He clutches his hands together at his chest and gives me a look that’s meant to be straight up adorable.
Sadly, it is. I hem and haw and make my displeasure known.
“How ’bout this… If you come with me to one more store, I won’t tell Anna we didn’t get the baskets at the container store? ”
I can tell he’s in a negotiating frenzy, and I have enough common sense to know when I’m beaten, so I give him an eyeroll and the slightest of nods.
“Yay,” he cries.
I consider telling him that guys our age don’t say yay no matter the circumstance.
I don’t though. I can’t bring myself to say anything because he’s so happy I’m going with him to the dumb store that he’s practically skipping.
He’s smiling so big that all I can see when I look at him is a dimple and teeth.
As we walk—me normally, him with a gait that can only be described as frolicking—I notice him reach for me a couple of times. Or at least, he starts reaching for me, but stops himself, hand in midair, before touching me.
I’ve seen him enough with his friends to know it’s no big deal. He’s touchy-feely with everyone. Still, I notice it. I can’t decide if it’s more or less problematic that he’s stopping himself from touching me.
Is it because he doesn’t know me that well, or because he’s attracted to me?
“You’re going to love this place,” he tells me. “Other than my dad’s store, it’s my favorite shop in the city.”
The store in question is different from the first one we went to.
This one has gold lettering on the window too, but there’s nothing faded about it.
It’s pristine. Perfect. The display in the window is moody and interesting.
A little like Connor’s shelves at home, things have been put together to tell a story.
They draw the eye in that slightly creepy, mysterious way old things often do.
There’s a bell on the door that chimes when Connor opens it for me. He waves me in again, a little more gallantly than the first time. I give him a look I fully intend to be withering, but I guess I don’t get it right because Connor’s cheek dips from the effort it costs him not to smile.
The store smells like old books and beeswax furniture polish.
Connor is so happy he’s all but vibrating.
He darts from beautiful thing to beautiful thing, using both hands to touch the things he likes best. I remember him telling me that if I touch something, he’ll know I want it, and wonder if that means he wants everything in this store.
When he’s not looking at me, I study his features.
He looks calm, like always, but there’s a thread of excitement that pulls his cheeks up.
His breathing is fractionally shorter than usual.
He’s as happy as I’ve ever seen him, and all he’s doing is walking through an antique store.
Seeing him like this gives me a pit in my stomach. A heavy feeling deep in my gut. I try to remember what it was like to be like this: completely, perfectly happy about little things. I let my mind wander, not too far back, not as far back as the bad thing, but far enough.
I come up with nothing.