Saint

Victoria

In an instant, Saint was on his feet and trudging toward the back of the shop behind another man. They both headed to where the bathrooms were. He returned minutes later, looking slightly disheveled. The man that entered before him had yet to resurface.

“No. I just… like the beach,” he offered, returning to his seat and the conversation as if it hadn’t been interrupted.

“Are you okay?” I asked, noting the way he sighed.

“I’m good, Beauty. Come on with your twenty-one questions.”

“Okay,” I laughed as our food arrived. “What’s so special about the beach?”

“It’s my happy place. The rest of the world is loud and fast. The beach is slow and calming.”

“What else makes you happy?”

“You when you’re not interviewing me…

“I make you happy?” I gushed with my cheeks hiking upward. I don’t know why that bothered me the way it did. Our relationship was strictly physical, but knowing I made him feel that way was gratifying.

“So far, Beauty. Yeah.”

Okay.Moving right along.

“…And sex with you,” he smirked, lifting his fork and knife. “Our bed chemistry is something to be studied.”

“How did you manage to slang dick like that and not get tied to a woman? No girlfriend… ever?”

He just… shrugged. Then, he positioned the fork into the sandwich and began slicing into it.

“Aw. Come on, Saint. You can do better than that,” I fussed. “And are you really about to–”

Yes.

Yes, he was.

Yes, he did cut the sandwich with a knife and eat it with a fork. He stuffed his face to the point that he couldn’t speak between bites. Having watched him for the past few weeks, I knew he wouldn’t speak when eating. Once he’d cleared his plate, he neatly folded the napkin he was using, set it on the plate, and pushed his plate aside.

That was… interesting.

“So, are you just going to continue to ignore my question?”

“A perk of being a wallflower,” he shrugged, motioning for the waiter.

“You? A wallflower? No. You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

Militant, direct, self-starting soldiers were my type. They needn’t be literal soldiers but men who carried themselves like they had a mission to exact. That’s whom I melted for. That’s who Saint reminded me of. Not a… wallflower.

The palpable shift in his energy was evident on his face as he signaled the waiter again. He tossed much more cash than what I knew the meal to cost on the table. Afterward, he stood and waited.

“Are we–we’re leaving?”

Curious eyes bared confusion as I observed him. I didn’t know what I’d said that was wrong. He didn’t say anything to lead me to believe that he was uncomfortable with the conversation. Oh lord, did I marry a man with communication issues?

“Yeah, come on.”

My things were strewn out on the table. My sketchpad, my Sakura Micron pens. I hadn’t touched them since we arrived, but I didn’t expect us to be concluding our lunch so soon. I had to shuffle everything inside my bag and rush to catch up with him. Immediately annoyed, an unmistakable scowl marred my face. Already, Saint was barreling through the restaurant as if his wagon would turn into a pumpkin at the next stroke of the clock.

“Can you slow down, Saint?”

He turned to observe me. It was a brief glance before his gaze flitted elsewhere. “Okay,” he nodded.

Furrowed brows presented in distaste of his haste. Saint was undoubtedly a different breed of man than I was accustomed to. A gentle giant, for sure, he was nothing like I’d expected him to be. Slightly macho but temperate. Soft-spoken but assertive. A little shy? I mean, he’d called himself a wallflower. That threw me for an endless loop. And the awkwardness. Not in a nervous guy with a crush way. More like an I-don’t-know-how-to interact-socially kind of way. It didn’t track for a man that carried himself like Saint.

In the car, there was silence, perturbed only by Sade’s melodic cadence whispering over the speakers. The volume was low enough that you could only hear the beat and not the lyrics. I only recognized the song because it was one of my favorites.

Despite the audio interrupting my thoughts, I was still baffled about Saint’s behavior back at the restaurant. Was I really married and living with an awkward, indifferent, albeit handsome man? I mean, there was a prize to be acquired once we’d ended our arrangement, sure. But could I put up with his seemingly strange behavior? And for a year at that?

The answer to my mental inquisition didn’t come to me as quickly as I would have liked, so I turned the volume up on the radio, permitting Sade to drown out my thoughts. At least, I thought that was what I was doing. As quickly as the Cherish the Day chorus began, it was silenced by Saint, who cut the radio off altogether. He shot me a look as if I’d lost my mind and then dragged the car to the side of the road.

“Don’t ever touch the radio,” he huffed, disrupting his handsome face with what looked like sheer agitation.

“Okay,” I nodded, shrinking back a bit from his glare. When he noticed, his features softened.

“Sorry,” he pushed out, professing his regret and dragging a hand through his perfectly lined haircut with waves deep enough to swim in. “I didn’t mean to scare or offend you.”

“Okay. It’s fine, beast,” I chuckled, laughing off the slip of the tongue.

In lieu of my joke being accepted as the comedy I’d intended it to be, Saint went rigid.

Shit.

I hadn’t even meant to say it out loud. On the tip of my tongue, it made an unsanctioned appearance. It was one of those thoughts that came and left as quickly as it had appeared.

“Beast?” A single bushy brow lifted, repeating me.

“As in Beauty and the Beast. It was a joke.”

“A joke. Okay,” he nodded.

Though not invested in the business of hurting his feelings, his taut features and pursed lips informed that it was a little too late for that. The way he’d repeated the word ‘joke’ was enough for me to adopt the idea that it was profanity in his presence. Beast. What a thoughtless misstep. I didn’t dare wish to see the real beast in him. I knew it was in there somewhere, locked away.

“Saint, what’s wrong?”

From the time he’d returned from the restroom, his demeanor had shifted. Expressionless eyes scouring my face and frame gave nothing away. The enlightenment I’d sought to find him wearing remained absent. I admired his poker face, but not when it came at the expense of hiding his true feelings from me.

“Nothing. I’m good.”

My ever-present discernment confirmed the lie. Something was wrong. In part, I’d committed my first offense with my joke. Though unaware of what else was consuming his thoughts, he was indeed hurt by my remark. But coaxing and pacifying a man to speak was not my ministry. He said he was fine. If he craved to bury the matter, I would lift a shovel and provide assistance.

With his eyes affixed to the road ahead, he fired up the car’s engine, proceeding to drive us out toward Demure’s headquarters. When we arrived, I gathered my things, saying nothing, and exited the car. The drive had been uncomfortable enough after our strange exchange, filled with wounded silence. Desiring nothing more than to be free of Saint’s presence, my movements were swift as the wind as I turned for the front doors to Demure.

“Tori!” He called out to me, stilling my limbs before I could close the car’s door behind me.

“Yes?”

“I–I um… We’ll talk at home?”

I shook my head, feigning confusion. “Talk about what, Saint? You have your quirks just like I have mine, apparently. There’s nothing for us to talk about.”

“Okay.”

And that was that.

Returning to work, I tried to focus on my new sketches, but in truth, I was deflated. Wholly pricked, in offending Saint, I’d somehow offended myself. My conscience wore on me, evaporating my creative juices until there was nothing left. Staring blankly at my sketch paper and unanswered emails, I realized I had to apologize. The number of times I’d ever had to admit my wrongs was infrequent, making the required task ahead of me difficult. With two hours passing at the office and accomplishing nothing, I headed home to carry out my duty.

Saint was in the kitchen when I arrived with what looked like Fruity O cereal spread out across the dining room table. I sat my bag down nearby and joined him in the seat across from him. Void of interest, he didn’t show the tiniest bit of acknowledgment for me when I sat down. His attention was in surplus for the colorful breakfast in front of him. He continued with what appeared to be sorting the different colors into their respective containers with gloved hands.

“You like Fruity Os?” He asked, not breaking his focus.

“I can eat it. Yeah.”

“I normally don’t wear gloves, but people typically think it’s disgusting for someone to touch food with their bare hands.”

“Well… yeah. Maybe,” I agreed, seeking an opportunity to present my contrition. “Saint–”

“Chefs don’t wear gloves when they make our food. Neither do fast food workers. They’re probably the worst when it comes to shit like washing hands, as a matter of fact. Fast food workers. There are approximately fifteen hundred germs per square centimeter on our hands,” he spoke, heavily focused on sorting the cereal colors.

The little-known fact prompted me to glance at my hands before redirecting my attention.

“Saint, I –”

“They’re all different flavors... The colors.”

“The colors of the cereal?” I asked, my eyes blossoming at yet another little-known fact as I wondered how he’d discovered that.

“Mmmh hmmm. That’s why I sort. They always short you on the blue ones.”

“Your favorite?”

“Yep.”

“I’m sorry for calling you Beast earlier,” I barreled out, hoping I’d mustered enough sincerity in my tone as I spoke. “It was a poor descriptor of who you are – who you’ve been to me – and the comment was made in poor taste.”

“Okay.”

Two syllables, he granted me. Nothing more. If I could wrangle his neck with those two syllables, I would. The word itself was so diminutive to what I thought he felt inside. I wanted him to be more verbal and more expressive, but he wouldn’t, and it just… ugh. It drove me up the wall.

There was a fraction of a second where I thought I’d witnessed a pause, but much more likely that I’d imagined it. He continued with his present task, refusing to divert his attention. He was almost finished. Or so I thought. But then he grabbed another bag from what seemed to be several from the floor, opened that, and poured its contents onto the table. I wondered how long he’d been sitting there sorting. How many bags had been deconstructed?

“Can I help?” I asked, prompting his glance in my direction finally.

“Wash your hands first. And if you’re weird about it, there’s gloves in the pantry.”

Rising, I headed for the kitchen sink, where I rinsed my hands clean. After drying them thoroughly, I returned to my seat and began to drag matching cereal bits into a pile. The way Saint stopped to peer at my movements wasn’t lost on me.

“No gloves?”

“No gloves,” I affirmed with a smile.

Relieved, he peeled his gloves away from his hands and continued sorting quietly. It was quirky but also comfortably nice being granted access to this side of him. And I wondered how many people had failed to hold space for him, causing the erection of walls where it was difficult for him to be vulnerable. Causing the stony presence of a beast to be the inaccurate poster of all things concerning him. Despite what I’d said earlier, out of frustration, maybe we did have things to discuss. But we also had fifty more weeks to chat at length. This was only the start of week three.

“I’m autistic,” he revealed after we’d been sorting through cereal for half an hour.

I’d heard of the term, but I didn’t exactly know what it meant. I’d never known anyone who was autistic… Until him. What the hell is autism?

“My brain operates differently from typical people,” he filled in, answering my silent question. “If you’re a PC, I’m a Mac.”

“Is that why you call yourself a wallflower?”

“Yes. It’s the reason why I do or don’t do many things,” he stated simply, scooping several yellow cereal bits into a pile. He discarded them into a cereal Tupperware container.

“When I was ten, I tried to educate my elementary peers on Euclidean geometry. They made fun of me for it. I had difficulty understanding social cues and body language for a long time. I’m better at it now, but I still struggle with… jokes.”

I sat quietly, continuing to sort and giving him the room he needed to just be. Something told me he had never been granted an opportunity to take up space in such a manner. Tonight and every night – every day – as we advanced, I’d try to give him that.

“I don’t like loud noises. I don’t like my food to touch. Sometimes, I have trouble maintaining eye contact and determining how to empathize with others. I like for shit to be clean and orderly. I don’t like to get my hands dirty when I eat unless it’s your pussy, but your shit is far from dirty,” he mused as if recollecting a recent memory.

“I prefer the left hook in the bathroom, Tori, not the right.”

He rolled his eyes, causing me to school a guilty smirk. I’d been putting my towel on the right hook after showering if it was empty, unaware he held a preference for it. Until now, he never spoke out against my transgression.

“What else, Saint? Tell me more,” I implored.

“The towels have to be folded military style. My clothes, too. They have to be color-coordinated. I can’t… change that. I can’t change any of these things. I need them to remain the same, Beauty. It fucks with my head when they don’t.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?” He asked, astounded and robbed of syllables.

“Show me how to military fold. That’s not a problem, I shrugged. “And you curl your toes and rub your head against me during the storms if we aren’t having sex,” I added.

“It soothes me—my nerves, my senses. Sometimes, they get overloaded, and I can’t think straight. Tori… It’s why I live here on the secluded end of the beach. I’m not like everyone else.”

It pierced my chest when he called attention to his uniqueness as if denunciating himself. Immediately, the urge to swallow him in an embrace arose. Not because of pity but because I needed to express that I embraced him.

“And that’s perfectly fine, Saint,” I smiled, watching as he released tension amidst a heavy sigh. “I don’t mind any of that.”

It was my truth. Earlier today had been somewhat confusing, but now that he’d given me some understanding of his behavior, it didn’t bother me as much. In fact, there wasn’t much he did that I’d found cumbersome. It had taken some adjusting to his peculiarities, but they hadn’t disturbed me enough to pack my luggage and go running. Not in the slightest.

It drew me closer.

“You don’t think I’m a creep or a weirdo?”

There it was. The apprehensive energy he carried despite his masculine presence. I wondered how long he’d held that inside, lacking the appropriate person to share it with. I wondered how much rejection he’d faced, causing him to retreat into his shell. My words were measured but genuine as I spoke again.

“Saint, I think you’re absolutely perfect the way you are. Anyone who feels the need to try to dimmish you to make themselves bigger is a weirdo. I want to know how I can be here for you. Tell me how I can be what you need.”

“You’re all I need already, Tori.”

Joy made a dwelling of my soul as he stated his claim. Standing to my feet, requiring to be closer to him, I shifted but paused before moving again. “Can I… hug you?”

Saint nodded, scooting his chair back to give me the room required to throw myself across his lap. “I might be weird about many things, but I’m not weird about that, Beauty. I love the feel of your body against me.”

I sat down sidesaddle, wrapping my arms around him and pulling his head toward my chest. We sat like that, unmoving, enjoying each other’s warmth for a stretch of time as I listened to his breaths.

“Tori?”

“Yes, Saint?”

Expectant eyes met me as I looked down.

“I have to finish sorting, Beauty.”

Chuckling as I lifted from his lap, I planted a kiss on his lips. When I returned to my seat, the look of surprise on his face was telling. My lingering presence was unexpected.

“You mean we have to finish sorting,” I grinned.