Chapter ElevenFischer #2
She sighs, fiddling with a thread on her dress.
“My half siblings and I used to go to her grave every year and have a whole party. We’d bring food and cake and celebrate her life, and even the field behind the cemetery would be full of sunflowers like it wanted to celebrate with us.
We don’t get to do that very often anymore, at least not together, but we all try to visit her as much as we can.
Sometimes I think she even talks back when I talk to her headstone. ”
“I haven’t talked to my mom in months.” I don’t know why I say that.
It makes me sound like a terrible son—I probably am—and ungrateful that my parents are still alive.
Crazy thing is, they live only a couple hours away from Sun City.
It wouldn’t be hard to go visit them, but I can’t even manage a phone call now and then?
I think the last time I actually saw my parents in person was a couple of years ago.
Micah reaches over and settles her hand on my arm again. “I know it’s not my place to say anything, but if you want my advice? Don’t waste the relationships you have with people. You never know how long you’re going to get them.”
“Yeah.” I really should try harder with my family than I have the last few years.
“Are you close with your brother?”
But not that hard. I clear my throat, suddenly uncomfortable in my seat. “Closer than I want to be sometimes,” I mutter, even though I know she won’t like that answer. Probably a good idea to change the subject. “What’s your favorite color?”
With a healthy measure of skepticism on her face, she settles deeper into her seat. “It depends on the day, and I like them all.”
“You like chartreuse? Puce? School bus yellow?”
She giggles. “Sometimes, yes.”
“Favorite flavor of gum?”
“They’re all good.”
“If you had to choose.”
“Spearmint.”
I’m not going to think about the pack of spearmint gum I keep in my car at all times. Or the reason I started keeping it in my car. It’s not like Miranda and I ever kissed, but…
I grip the steering wheel tighter. Now I’m thinking about it.
“Favorite holiday?” I ask, cursing the strain in my voice.
Micah curls her legs underneath her, reminding me just how small she is. “Why the sudden interest, Fischer?”
There’s nothing sudden about this, though I can’t tell her I’ve wanted to know everything about her since the day I met her a week and a half ago.
She might drive me crazy with her unfounded optimistic approach to life, but I have felt so much lighter since she started texting me.
She literally makes it easier to breathe, which is something I will never tell Kale unless I want him to gloat for a month.
He’s convinced Micah is my soulmate, which is not only ridiculous but laughably incorrect.
Why would she ever want to be with someone like me?
“Is it so weird that I would want to know you?” I ask instead of answering her question directly.
She shrugs.
When she’s always been so good about being open with her answers, this lack of real response bothers me. Yet again, I wish I wasn’t driving so I could really focus on her. “One bad date doesn’t encompass your entire worth. You know that, right?”
Though she smiles, it’s a fake smile. It’s so different from her normal, happy grin that it almost hurts to see it. “It’s more than one bad date,” she mutters. “It’s all the dates. They never…” She shakes her head. “We don’t have to talk about this.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Do you think I’m shallow?” She keeps talking before I can reply. “Of course you do. You pretty much said so at the park the other day. It’s what everyone thinks of me, and maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m just a surface-level person and that’s why no one ever looks deeper. What are you doing?”
I keep my mouth shut until I bring the car to a stop on the shoulder, gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my knuckles are white.
“I’m making sure you know that I’m not just saying this to say it,” I mutter, taking a deep breath before I turn to look at her.
“Micah, you’re the most interesting person I’ve ever met.
I know it took me a few days to accept that I haven’t been the most personable person, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been fascinated since the minute I stepped into Ember.
You’re not surface-level. You’re not shallow.
I made myself a whole list of questions to ask you on this drive, knowing full well that they won’t cover even a fraction of who you are. ”
Oh no. She’s crying. I didn’t mean to make her cry. I was trying to make her feel better, but I probably said too much, and now she—
Micah unclicks her seatbelt and throws herself over the console until she’s on my lap, arms wrapped around my neck in the world’s most awkward hug.
Does that stop me from hugging her back?
It should. I don’t like hugs in general.
But the instant Micah tugs me forward so she has space to get her arms around me, it spurs my own body into motion, pulling her closer to my chest. I tuck my chin over her shoulder and let my arms find a comfortable position at her back.
She’s tiny. I knew she was small, but holding her like this makes me realize how much bigger I am. How fragile she is. She’s not the sort of person who needs protection, but I want to protect her anyway.
She starts giggling long before I’m ready to let her go, but the embrace loses its magic as soon as her laughter bubbles up. “I’m sorry,” she says, inching back against my window so there’s a bit of space between us. “That was a little crazy.”
“I probably deserved it.” That doesn’t really make sense, but it makes her smile. So, whatever.
“I guess I’m just feeling out of whack after that whole thing with Lila this morning.”
“You don’t have to defend yourself.”
“Thanks for being my friend, Fischer.”
Friend . That’s good. That’s what I should be, even if I’m starting to think I want more than that. There are too many reasons why she’s better off without me, and it looks like she doesn’t think of me beyond friendship anyway. At least now I know where I stand for sure.
She bites her lip, making me wonder how permanent her lipstick is. She always wears such bold colors, and I never see it on her coffee cups. Would it come off if I…
I grit my teeth. Nope. I’m not going there, even in my thoughts. To Micah, we are simply friends, and it needs to stay that way. Friends don’t think about kissing the other person’s lipstick off, even if it’s getting more and more tempting the longer she sits on my lap.
Clearing my throat, I tuck my arm under her legs. “We should probably get going,” I explain before lifting her off my seat and back into hers.
“Okay, Superman. Geez, how strong are you? You just picked me up like I weigh nothing!”
I fight my smile. “I didn’t—”
“Why do you do that?”
“What?”
She points at my face. “Why don’t you let yourself smile? I’ve known you for almost two weeks now, and I haven’t seen you smile even once.”
Why does that make me want to smile? Despite what she’s saying, I fight the amusement that tugs at my lips, if only because now I know she wants something.
I’ll give it to her eventually, but I’m going to be strategic about this.
It’s not that she needs to earn anything from me—that would be ridiculous—but I want to be prepared for her reaction.
“Maybe I don’t have anything to smile about,” I tell her as I nod to her seatbelt. As soon as she’s buckled, I pull back onto the highway.
She scoffs. “That’s just stupid. Everyone has something to smile about.”
“Not me.” Lie . Just hearing her voice is reason enough. Experiencing her optimism. Knowing that this project with the lodge might actually succeed because of her. “Name one thing I should smile about.”
Though Micah groans, as if she’s never met anyone as stubborn as me, she has the most adorable grin on her face. “The sun.”
“It’s too bright.”
“Your car.”
“Bradley Properties owns the car.”
“Your job.”
“I hate my job.”
“Do you?” She cocks her head, more curious than surprised. “Because I’ve actually wondered about that. You’re good at it, but you don’t seem to enjoy it.”
I huff a laugh. “I don’t know if anyone can enjoy working for Grant.”
“He can’t be that bad,” she argues.
“He’s worse than Lila.” Okay, that’s probably not true. There may be days where Grant would rather strangle me than hand me a paycheck, but I can’t imagine him insulting me to a colleague. He may be a pain in the neck, but he knows that I’m valuable.
When Micah doesn’t say anything, my stomach twists in my gut. “Sorry,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t have brought her up.”
She folds her hands in her lap again, as if she wants to make sure she isn’t too exuberant. “Ask me one of your questions,” she says quietly.
She’s currently sitting on my phone, so I’ll have to work off of my mental list. “If you were an animal, what would you be?”
That one question tugs at the corner of her mouth, bringing back her light. “A quokka.”
“A what?”
“A quokka. They live on some Australian islands and don’t have any natural predators, so they look like the happiest animals in the world. They smile for pictures with people and stuff because they don’t have any natural fear of them.”
As soon as I’m no longer driving, I’m going to look up that animal. And see if I can adopt one. I need more smiles in my life, and I only get to keep Micah for so long.
“If you could travel anywhere, where would you go?” I ask.
Her smile grows. “Some Australian islands where these little creatures called quokkas live.”
Dang, she’s good. I have to cover my mouth with my hand and pretend to rub my jaw so she doesn’t catch my smile when I’m not ready for her. “If I was an animal, what would I be?”
She studies me—not uncomfortable at all—and hesitates with her answer. For good reason. “A skunk.”
I frown. “Hey!”
“It’s not an insult!”
“How is that not an insult?”
“Skunks are adorable!”
My breath catches, and I’m lucky I don’t jerk the steering wheel again. “You think I’m adorable?”
“I think you’re exceptionally cute but you purposely scare people away because you don’t want them to know you are actually a softy.”
Exceptionally cute. It’s not devilishly handsome or super attractive, but still. Exceptionally cute. Micah thinks I’m cute. She thinks I am cute. Oh boy. I’m going to fixate on that when I definitely shouldn’t. Ava’s backseat might have been a better option after all.
“I’m not a softy,” I grumble, as if there is any benefit at all to pretending this girl hasn’t completely melted my icy heart by this point.
Micah reaches over, putting her hand on my arm for the third time since we started this drive. I have no idea what she’s hoping to accomplish, but she is pushing the realm of safety here with her touch if she wants me to stay focused on the road. “Would you rather be a porcupine?”
I scrunch up my nose. “I think that’s worse.”
Her laughter fills the car so thoroughly that I know I’m in trouble.
The car is tainted now. Driving is tainted.
My playlist, which plays softly in the background, is going to have traces of Micah Taylor for the rest of my life.
I doubt I will see her after we open the Greenwood, but I’m glad that I get to know her for the next week.
Ugh, that sounds so depressing! Depressing, but true.
Without any projects needing events in the near future, I’ll have no professional reasons to see her.
And despite all of the personal reasons I want her around—of which there are many—I am not the sort of man a woman like Micah ends up with.
I’m not the sort of man anyone ends up with.
It isn’t in the cards for me, and I’ve come to terms with that.
I have not come to terms with the thought of giving up my time with Micah. In the short time I’ve known her so far, she has already changed my life. She brought me to life again.
“Oh! I love this song!” Pulling her hand away, Micah turns the music up a few notches and starts singing along with a voice that instantly has me captivated. She wasn’t kidding when she said she could sing, and each line steals another piece of my heart.
I hope next week never comes because I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready to say goodbye to Micah and her sunshine.