Chapter 16 #3
“There’s no way you’re thirty-five.” I lean closer to her, studying her face, only to find some cute beauty marks scattered over it. “What’s your secret? Is it the lemons?”
She laughs. “It’s called sunscreen and spite.”
“Spite keeps you young?”
“It’s very motivating.”
“Noted. I’ll add it to my regimen.” I grin. “So you’re saying you’re eight years older than me and Paul is… what, twenty years older than you?”
She punches my shoulder lightly. “Dick.”
“Ow. Brutal.” I make a show of rubbing it. “I’m calling HR.”
“That didn’t even hurt,” she points out. “And you don’t have HR.”
“I’m delicate, and I’m HR.” I’m smiling now, and she’s grinning back at me, and somehow the heaviness from a minute ago has lifted.
I take her injured hand, rubbing my thumb over her unscraped knuckles. “For the record, you don’t look thirty-five. I genuinely thought you were my age. Which is either a great compliment to you or a terrible insult to me.”
“Why not both?” She watches my thumb, then pulls her hand back carefully. “So…. you don’t really know him? Paul?”
“Not well. I work for his brother at the logging company and for his aunt.” I gesture around the kitchen. “But we don’t cross paths much.”
What I don’t say is that I knew him as a kid, just not in a way I’m willing to explain. I have vague memories of sitting in his small office back in high school.
Teachers kept sending me there because they needed somewhere to put me.
I was behind, and I was taking up space in a classroom where I couldn’t keep up, and the easiest solution was to route me to the quiet room down the hall with the guy who wouldn’t get frustrated when I couldn’t read the sheet he handed me.
Only Paul never handed me a sheet.
Sometimes he brought me a lemonade, which I could have never afforded back then, and probably where my borderline addiction started. Sometimes he’d slide a comic book across the desk without a word, which I’d flip through while he pretended to do paperwork.
Not once did he make me talk.
He was nice. One of the few adults who didn’t make me feel like I was broken or stupid. Right up there with Mabel.
Lennon hums softly, looking thoughtful, eyes flicking down to her tumbler before she shakes it, and the sound of ice clicks inside. Her whole face lights up. She twists the lid open and peers inside, letting out a delighted little sound. “Oh my God.”
I lean over to look. “What? Did he hide diamonds in there?”
“He filled it with water and ice.” She beams at it like it’s a puppy.
“That’s what those things are for, right?”
She brushes her thumbs over the gold stars. “Nobody ever does stuff like that for me.”
She says it like it’s a small thing, but the way she’s looking at the tumbler tells a different story.
I clear my throat and force a teasing grin. “Sounds as if someone has a crush.”
She looks up, one eyebrow arched. “Says the guy who can’t form sentences around Sydney.”
“That’s different.”
“How?”
“I-it’s… strategy,” I say, knowing it sounds ridiculous.
“Strategy.” She’s trying not to laugh.
“Yes. I have a plan.”
“Your plan is to stutter and hover?”
“It’s a work in progress.” I cross my arms, fighting a smile. “And for the record, I can form sentences around her. They’re just not good sentences.”
“Oh, well, as long as they’re bad sentences, that’s fine then.”
“Exactly. See? You get it. We’re both hopeless. At least we have that in common.”
She laughs, shaking her head. “I guess we do.”
Lennon takes a sip from her ice water, then glances toward the dining room. “So… what is the plan then?”
“Hmm?”
“With Sydney. What are you going to do about it? You can’t pine from afar forever.”
“Since when are we talking about me?”
“Since you started teasing me about Paul. Come on. Don’t you at least want to know what it’s like to kiss her?”
“I already know what it’s like to kiss her.”
Lennon’s eyes go wide. “What?”
I scrub a hand over my face, regretting my admission. “Forget I said that.”
“Absolutely not. Try again. Slowly.” She sets down her tumbler and gives me her complete attention. “Explain.”
I exhale and lean back against the prep table. “Almost a year ago, Mabel let me throw a Halloween party here. Also, my birthday. People got drunk, I got drunk, and somehow Sydney and I…” I gesture vaguely. “You know.”
“No, I don’t know. Use your words.”
“We hooked up,” I say flatly. “Happy?”
Her mouth falls open. “You… wait. You slept with her?”
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Unfortunately?” Rather than being confused, as I would expect, she appears delighted by this. “Oh, this is so much better than I thought. Tell me everything.”
“There’s not much to tell. I was drunk, it was Halloween, there were fake cobwebs involved—”
“Fake cobwebs?”
“Don’t ask.” I run a hand through my hair. “Look, all I remember is that it was… good? I think. Everything’s kind of a blur, but I have these flashes of her saying I felt good. I was probably too drunk to realize she was just being nice—”
“Or she meant it,” Lennon interrupts.
“She didn’t mean it,” I say. “Because the next day, she acted as if it never happened. Full factory reset. Ice queen mode activated.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” I cross my arms. “And I’ve tried everything since. Jokes, small talk, I even bought her coffee once. Nothing. She just gets colder, and I get more pathetic.”
Lennon’s smile does something caught between sympathy and amusement. “Aw. Poor baby.”
“I even tried the casual doorframe lean,” I admit. “You know, like mysterious hot guys do in movies?”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes. Turns out, when you’re six-seven, you can’t lean in doorways. You have to duck. I gave myself a minor concussion.”