Chapter 12
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The comedians around here are almost too much.
Crisis
Dearest Crisis,
The first time I laid eyes on you, my heart leapt, refusing to pump oxygen through my veins. And, still, my lungs starve for air as I find myself continually plagued by breaths I don’t realize I’m holding. You have me enchanted, hypnotized, hopeless. I hesitate to share that I am deeply, incomprehensibly, and inconsolably in love with you, but I cannot hold it in any longer.
Would that you’d spare me one kind and genuine word, I might never recover.
Therefore, allow me to beseech your favor.
Should you appease my plea, I would write you novels of adoration, committing oceans of words to the description of my feelings for you. I beg you to end this suffering. Let us learn one another during the time we have here together.
Please leave your reply in the hanging feed bucket on the stall to the left of your room when you exit. I shall check it this evening.
With hope,
Your Secret Admire r
I quite completely cannot help myself as I finish reading the letter that mysteriously appeared slid under the crack of our room door this morning.
Snorting, I buckle as I cackle.
Looking as exhausted as he was yesterday, Viktor startles, swallowing hard. “What is it?”
Rolling my eyes toward him, I smirk. “A love letter.” I rip the page in half.
He flinches.
My brow arches. “What?”
Wetting his lips, he makes his side of the bed, pulling the sheets and blankets up to tuck beneath the fluffy dog bed. “Why would you rip up a love letter?”
“Because.” I tear the typed words in half the other direction, gather the pieces, and do it again. “It’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen. Love letters from secret admirers , first and foremost, are cowardly. If someone really likes me, they should tell me themselves in person. Secondly, we’ve been here three days with the majority of those days spent in this little room. When would anyone have the time to ‘fall in love with me’?” My head shakes, and I let the pieces flutter into the trash under my desk. “I bet it’s a prank from that idiot yesterday who was messing with that woman.”
“What if it isn’t?” Viktor asks.
“Trust me.” My eyes roll. “It is.”
I’ve had plenty of “love letters” in my life. I remember the first one. How flattered I felt. I went home, kissing the envelope, cradling it in my arms, crying.
Someone liked me . Someone wanted me .
Even though everyone called me a hazard, someone was willing to brave the storm that just being around me often wrought .
Heartbreak isn’t the right word for what happened when I showed up in the appointed place at the appointed time and found myself surrounded by laughing girls.
No.
Fury is.
But who got in trouble? The gang who sewed hope into the very fibers of my sobbing, lonely soul—then ripped it away, taking the bleeding scraps with them? Or the bawling girl who hit the monster who was laughing the loudest?
Justice is such an illusion.
And I’m sick and tired of leaving it in other people’s hands.
As I gather my clothes for the day, I find Viktor unmoved on his side of the bed, staring at the trashcan as though I just ripped up a puppy and chucked its limbs inside.
The despondent horror riddled with speckles of unease strike me funny, so I hedge, “Viktor?”
His back straightens, and he looks at me, eyes wide.
“Everything okay, sir?”
Swiftly, he drops his gaze and gathers his bathroom necessities. “It’s just…” His eyes close. A moment passes. He opens them again, staring down at his toothbrush kit. “You’re a pulchritudinous woman, Crisis. I don’t find it hard at all to believe that a love letter to you would be genuine.”
Beggeth thy pardon? Pulchritudinous? Okay, Mr. Writer Vocab. Let’s calm down.
Since when is taciturn Viktor Bachelor a sappy romantic? He’s more of a I’d kill for this obsessed love bordering on psychopathic romantic in his books. That’s part of the reason I loved them so much. His characters cared at a depth I once dreamed I could have.
No matter what struggles they faced or what their worlds did to try and keep them apart, they always pulled through. For each other. And—in the end—their love would be blood-stained but unbreakable.
Side note: what part of me—exactly—is physically beautiful ?
Viktor can’t possibly find me—mouse-brown hair, boring brown eyes, frumpy pear-shaped me—to be the kind of beautiful that would possess a man to send me a genuine love letter. Maybe he’s ill. Only mentally ill people use words like pulchritudinous in casual conversation.
“Do I need to drive you to the doctor?” I ask, setting my clothes down and circling the bed to check his temperature.
He reels back as I reach, but my fingers connect with his forehead anyway since he has nowhere to run in this small room.
My eyes narrow. “Your face is looking a little red, but you don’t seem to have a fever.” What a perfect time to plug my magical, delicious, and probably-not-toxic battery acid smoothies. “I was planning to head into town today during that writing class scheduled after lunch to check on some business and see Potato. I can pick up the ingredients for your morning juice while I’m there.”
He shudders.
I beam. “I know you’ve missed it a lot if your body’s going into withdrawals without it.”
This is excellent. I desperately need the morale afforded me by watching him gag on every swallow early in the morning. I should add a spoonful of peanut butter again. The only other time I did, he nearly threw up, so I dialed it back, but right now I’ll have the excuse of trying to jumpstart his poor body back to where it was before he took three days off.
“Crisis, please,” he whispers .
I like the way that sounds on his lips. Please . It’s almost as though he’s not my boss at all and he must petition my mercy. I grin, merrily, forgetting stupid love letters of all kinds for the time being. “What? It makes a lot of sense. Missing your morning routine is probably why you’re still not sleeping well, too. Don’t worry. We’ll get you back to normal in no time.”
“If the letter were genuine, how would you reply?”
My joy falters. Why are we still talking about the letter? I just put that stupid thing from my mind. “I already said. Love letters are cowardly enough without hiding your identity. If it were from a real ‘secret admirer,’ nothing would change. I’d ignore it. I’m not interested in a guy who can’t talk to me himself in person.”
Viktor’s brow furrows. “So you’re not interested at all in a shy guy?”
“I’m pretty sure that’s a Mario enemy with a high chance of fleeing a battle. So, um, no. I can’t say that I am.” Men are supposed to protect and care for their women. Heaven knows I need a guy willing to protect me from all the horror that stalks me day in and day out.
Gentle, Viktor presses, “What would get your attention?”
I take a firm step back, eyeing my boss , who has never made me feel unsafe before, not even while we’ve shared a bed these past few days. He stays on his side; I stay on mine. Internally, I giggle, knowing he’s got a cartoon sloth dog bed for a pillow, and I drift peacefully off, content. “I’m not certain discussing my preferred type of love confession is business appropriate, sir.”
His eye, it twitches, but he pinches the bridge of his nose and nods. “My…apologies.”
I tiptoe myself back to my side of the bed and scoop up my neglected clothing. “No worries. ”
Many worries, actually.
All of them.
An infinite number of worries.
What has gotten into this man?
Sleep deprivation?
Hm.
Being sleepy is miserable.
Excellent. Misery for him, then. Smiling again, I say, “I think I’ll head off earlier this morning, pick up breakfast at Honeycomb, and start my tasks. Text me if you need anything while I’m near home. And make sure you meet your word counts while I’m gone. Lest I be very, very disappointed. And forced to email your editor. Again.”
He tenses. “Please stop emailing Desmond every time I’m short on my word count goals.”
“He loves our chats.”
“That’s no excuse.”
It is, though. It really is. “Don’t force my hand.”
Defeated, he mumbles, “I’ll…do my best to make you proud.”
As he should. With that, I see myself into the hall, dwelling on naught but reuniting with my darling fish.