Chapter Seven
SEVEN
After a hundred halting steps and regular pauses for deep, shaky breaths, I manage to make it across the street to the Grind.
It’s mid-afternoon, well before the early evening I need caffeine to get through this all-nighter rush, so I don’t expect it to be busy.
I could use a place that’s quiet—not silent—to untangle the knotted skein of my thoughts.
And since I have the absolute worst luck—or maybe, in this upside-down world, the best?—Fisher is waiting at the counter.
He doesn’t immediately notice me when I limp up and join him in line. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I say, only half joking. “Let me get your coffee. I owe you one—or two.”
“You don’t—” he begins automatically as he swings to look at me. “My God, Elle, what happened? Are you all right?”
Interesting question, that.
“Fine,” I lie. “Just tripped on the stairs. And don’t act like you’re surprised to discover I’m a klutz.”
My attempt at humor does nothing to smooth the notch of concern between his brows, and his gaze is so intense I’m relieved when the barista steps up to take our order.
“Pumpkin spice latte for here,” I say, daring him with a sideways glance to tease me about it. “And …”
She shifts her attention to him. “The usual?”
“Yes, thanks.”
The usual, as it turns out, is a large black coffee to go, which is ready almost immediately.
Much to my surprise, he doesn’t try to stop me when I shuffle to the register.
Maybe he figures three dollars is all the payback I can afford.
Or maybe he thinks if he lets me do this one thing, I’ll finally leave him alone.
“If you don’t mind,” I tell the barista, “I’m going to wait sitting down.
” I limp my way to one of the large booths in the back, where I sometimes camp out and pretend to work when the library feels like too much pressure.
My whole body protests when I sink onto the thinly padded, cracked vinyl seat, but the pain is nothing compared to the stabbing ache I feel somewhere in the vicinity of my soul.
Still, I drag the loaner laptop out of my bag and open it as if I have a plan.
I’m considering my options—A doctor? Maybe the college counseling office?
Or a priest with exorcism experience?—when Fisher approaches carrying my latte in one of those comically oversized cups, like you’d see on a rerun of Friends.
I’d assumed he had already left.
He places my coffee on the table, careful to arrange the handle so it’s easy for me to reach, then stands there for a moment longer than feels natural, so I can’t avoid looking up. “Thanks,” I say, for what feels like the millionth time. “Did you want to sit down?”
“Can’t. I’ve got work,” he explains, gesturing with his to-go cup.
But he doesn’t go. He leans one arm against the high back of the opposite seat and partially unzips his jacket. The collar of a royal blue t-shirt and the top third of a Superman logo appear, and emotion floods through me—relief, but more than relief—at the sight of something so perfectly ordinary.
I know I called his shirts stupid and ridiculous, but I’ve since developed an aversion to familiar things suddenly disappearing.
And though I haven’t seen this particular t-shirt before, it’s utterly, absolutely Fisher. I mean, the ego you’d have to have to wear something like that!
Not that he isn’t strong. My brain may be prone to losing important information, but I can’t seem to forget the way his broad shoulders felt beneath my hands.
To be honest, I haven’t really tried.
Right now, however, I’m mostly thinking about the alarming day I’ve had and how safe he made me feel the last time I was flailing around in the dark.
But good God, that would be a dangerous road to go down.
To distract myself, I try mentally mocking his whole Clark Kent vibe.
That observation only ends with me gnawing on the inside of my bottom lip, though, because I catch myself kind of wishing I’d had a chance to see what he looks like underneath his t-shirts …
and that mental image reminds me of the bare-chested model on the cover of my missing romance novel, The Duke’s Debt, and oh, did you know?
Any Regency romance where the guy unbuttons his shirt is technically historically inaccurate because at that time men’s shirts were taken off over the head.
And then I picture Fisher pulling off his shirt, doing that sexy one-handed, behind-the-back maneuver, and—
“So, how’s it working out?” he asks, nodding toward the laptop.
I jerk in surprise and hope he didn’t catch me staring at the evidence of his workouts.
Attempting to hide my embarrassment behind my enormous cup, I take a sip of my latte. “Oh, fine,” I tell him when I’m relatively certain I won’t sputter. “I’m going to ask my parents to float me a loan so I can buy my own, though. I don’t want to take advantage of your generosity.” Again.
“No rush.” The notch reappears between his brows. “You sure you’re OK? You seem—”
“Yup. Perfectly sure. I was just about to …” I pause to rummage in my bag, emerge with the flash drive, and hold it up like a prize. “… Rename and organize all these files.”
He drums his long fingers against the side of his cup. “If you want, I could help you with that.”
Oh, it is tempting. A few taps on the keyboard from him, one stern look, and I’m certain those files would straighten up and get in line. Plus he has already seen the chaos that is my hard drive and apparently it didn’t give him a stroke.
But no. He doesn’t want to clean up any more of my messes, remember? He told me so himself.
I shake my head. “This is a long-awaited opportunity for my neat and orderly side to shine.”
Because it occurs to me that I may have been thinking about this Austen anomaly all wrong.
If we start from the premise that the solar flare was some sort of cosmic rewrite, just like Fisher said, then sure, it shook up my world, but maybe something good can still come of it?
Maybe those changes can pave the way for new and improved Elle?
Wishing I’d paid more attention to what he told me in the computer workroom, I say, “We should talk about what happened Friday night.”
I catch his amused smile—a reaction, I’m sure, to the notion of me having a neat and orderly side—only as it slips from his lips. Belatedly, I realize he must think I’m referring to the kiss.
His dark eyes hold mine as, to my shock, he slowly nods his agreement.
For just a moment, I think he’s going to sit down after all; that we’re going to hash things out in the middle of the Grind on a Tuesday afternoon. Then he says, “Do you like sushi?”
If I was shocked before, now I’m flabbergasted.
Before I can answer, he continues, “because I know this spot in Minneapolis—”
“Saké, Ramen and Roll?” Cassie and I must go there once a month, and not just because it’s three doors down from a little romance-only bookstore, Blush & Bloom. “I love that place.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up Friday at six.” And with a salute of his cup, he’s gone.
Did I … Did I just agree to a date with Fisher Davis?
Ironically, the prospect of a (second?!) date with a dark-haired, arrogant man who has a tendency to piss me off drives all thought of the disappearance of Pride and Prejudice from my mind.
I drink my pumpkin spice latte without really tasting it and totally ignore the files on the flash drive.
I also forget about my various scrapes and bruises, and when I finally stand up to head home, my muscles are so stiff from sitting I almost fall down again. Fortunately, it’s nearly dusk, so no one has to bear witness to another consumptive heroine blush.
As I approach the unobtrusive, rather battered door that leads up to my apartment, I’m still lost in thought.
So it takes me a beat longer than it ordinarily might to spot the guy in a trench coat peering through the front window of Vintage Treasures.
(Mrs. Merriweather once told me she chose that name because labeling the merchandise antique would raise people’s expectations, and no one would shop there if the sign said old junk.)
“Closes at five,” I say, pointing at the placard in the corner of the window, hoping he’ll take the hint and move on. But just in case, I shift my keys so the sharp part sticks out from between my clenched fingers. Creeps are everywhere, even Grantham, Minnesota.
He turns and squints at me from beneath the brim of his ballcap, which casts his face in shadow. “Elle?”
“Yeah?” I try to sound noncommittal even as I tighten my grip on my keys.
“I’m Bill,” he says.
When his first name obviously doesn’t mean to me all he’d hoped it would, he adds, with a pause between each new nugget of information, “Bill Conklin. The new youth minister at your parents’ church.
I’m in town for a conference at the college.
Your mom asked me to stop in and see how you are.
Sorry if I surprised you. She told me she’d call and give you a heads up … ”
I reach with my free hand toward my back pocket. But my phone’s not there. I left it on the charger this morning.
His story, though, has an undeniable ring of truth.
It is exactly the kind of thing my mother would do—and she probably left me a voicemail all about it.
“No, it’s all right,” I insist, sounding mostly genuine as I surreptitiously rearrange my keys so I can open the door.
I am a child of the hospitable Midwest, after all. “I just, um, forgot.”
Once upstairs, Bill drapes his coat over a chair in the living room, then takes off his hat.
I’d guess he’s about thirty, though his hairline is receding and he has a little paunch, which makes it harder to judge.
I watch with something like horrified amusement as he sits down without waiting to be asked, then props his feet on the ottoman.
It’s a hideous relic from the 1980s, and its only redeeming quality is how well the brown- and rust-colored upholstery hides orange cat fur.
Bill’s shoes can’t hurt it—but still, what kind of person makes themselves comfortable like that in a stranger’s home?
“I’ll be right back,” I tell him, slipping into my room to change out of my torn pants before I have to explain what happened to another soul.
(You see, I was trying to process the disappearance of one of the most important figures of English literature as well as the fact that my advisor is, inexplicably, now a man, so I wasn’t really watching where I was going …)
When I return to the living room, Cassie is already there, and I shoot her a furtive, apologetic glance. I fully expect her to duck out as quickly as she possibly can.
Instead, after I introduce them to one another, laying a special stress on the youth minister part as a sort of warning, she smiles, nods towards his White Sox cap, and says, “Tell me you’re only wearing that because you lost a bet.” (She’s a Cubs fan, in case you couldn’t guess.)
His too-earnest answer? “Oh, I never gamble.”
I disguise my snicker as a cough and wait for Cassie’s withering retort.
“It’s so refreshing to meet a man who takes his position as a role model so seriously,” she says.
Of course, Bill doesn’t realize he’s being mocked. He can’t know that Cassie doesn’t even like kids, and it’s clear he’s not the type to recognize the signs of a woman whose patience in dealing with paternalism, sexism, and all the other isms is wafer-thin.
The three of us talk for maybe half an hour—or rather, Bill talks.
About how his father was a practical man and wanted him to become an accountant instead.
About the two-bedroom townhome he lives in, with rent paid by the congregation.
About his vital role in shielding the youth of suburban St. Paul from fun trouble.
Cassie listens with apparent avidity.
I wait and wait for her to puncture his ballooning self-importance with one sharp barb. I mean, this is a woman who wears—wore—a WWJS bracelet (What Would Jane Say?) because she so admired Austen’s iconoclastic, biting wit.
The moment never comes.
Eventually, the cat who may or may not be called Tiger strolls by and allows Bill, a stranger, to scratch between his ears, and I’ve had all I can take.
I slap the tops of my thighs, stand, and say, “would you look at the time”—the universal Midwestern signal to a guest who’s overstayed his welcome.
Fortunately, Bill takes the hint. He gets up, albeit with a greater show of reluctance than I would like, and reaches for my hand, clasping it between his soft, moist palms. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Elle. I’ll be sure to give your folks a good report”—based on what, I’m not sure, since I’ve hardly spoken two words. Cassie walks him to the door.
The moment it’s shut behind him, she turns to scold me. “Why were you so rude? He seems like a perfectly nice man.”
And maybe he is—but the Cassie I’ve known for years finds niceness deeply suspicious because it’s almost always fake.
As I toss myself into the chair he vacated, an awful thought flashes into my mind. “You don’t suppose that was my mom’s idea of a set-up, do you? You know she won’t be happy until she’s married me off.”
Once, that statement was something Cassie and I would have groaned at together.
Two independent women, both pursuing advanced degrees, about to enter a job market so unpredictable we might end up almost anywhere in the country.
Marriage can’t be our priority right now.
Settling down is something other people do.
But Cassie’s expression is strange. “Well, maybe she’s got the right idea.”
As she passes by me on the way to her bedroom, I’m forced to reconsider the merits of my original premise: I’m in the middle of an alarmingly vivid hallucination. I’m bound to snap out of it soon.
I don’t find that explanation as satisfying as I once did, however.
Because now if it’s right, then my date with Fisher wouldn’t be real either.