Chapter 5 #2
I know I’m nothing to sneeze at, as my mother used to say.
When I was a child, she dragged me off to John Casablancas modeling school hoping I would make her proud, but when I turned into a teenager, her willowy French side subsided and my father’s stocky Scottish side started coming through.
I no longer qualified as underfed; ergo I couldn’t model.
But even though I’m not in great shape and parts of me have gone soft due to my lifestyle, I still have my height (5’9”), thick brown hair with natural reddish highlights, and a face people have described as being “doll-like,” which I think means I look innocent…
until they realize my big brown eyes are usually staring daggers at you and my pouty lips are forever twisted into a sneer.
If anyone were to ever invent a Resting Bitch Face doll, however, I think they could model her on me.
“I’m sorry again for just coming up like this and giving you a startle,” he goes on. “I assure you, I’m not naked.”
I move a little closer to him to get a better view, as if to see if he’s telling the truth or not. I can only see him from the chest up and he’s shirtless—his pecs and shoulders are as sculpted as his face, which tracks—but I don’t dare look further down.
“I’ll have to take your word on that.” Meaning, I’m not getting any closer. “So, what can I help you with?” At least I’m talking again.
He doesn’t answer right away. He just looks at me through the window with the same easy stillness he seems to carry with him. There’s something about it that bothers me, tickles a fearful place deep inside, and I don’t know why.
“I heard the police were here today,” he finally says.
I blink at him. “How would you—”
“—Mhairi,” he interjects. “I stopped by the village.”
Is she the village switchboard or something in a great game of telephone? The cop tells Mhairi, Mhairi tells Alasdair, Alasdair tells me…
“And you came over to…”
“To say it wasn’t me. In the woods.”
“You came all the way over here to tell me that?”
“Aye. I’d rather you weren’t afraid of me,” he replies, but he doesn’t elaborate.
I’m not sure what to do with that, what to do with any of this conversation I’m having with this man through the window, but the words in my aunt’s letter keep haunting me.
“What if I am, though,” I say, my voice going quieter than I want it to. “Afraid of you.”
I don’t even know why I’ve said these fears out loud, that is something I would normally keep to myself. I don’t like the idea of anyone knowing I’m afraid of them, especially a stranger. It’s far too vulnerable for my liking.
“Then I’d mind,” he admits softly.
“That’s not a reason for me not to be afraid, though.”
Meaning, maybe throw me a few bones, tell me something that would make me think otherwise, you know, the way a normal person would? His demeanor is definitely not doing the “might be a serial killer” rumor any favors.
“No,” he eventually says. “But I’m patient.”
Apparently so. Also, another odd fucking thing to say.
He’s still looking at me through the window.
I look at the sunset, because looking at his face has started to feel like a thing I’ll pay for later, but I can’t keep my eyes off him for long.
Most people, in my experience, fidget when they’re holding a stranger’s eye too long.
They shift. They glance. They fill the silence.
He doesn’t do any of that. He stands at my window and just stares at me and lets me look right back at him.
And honestly, it’s easy to do.
What a beautiful, beautiful man.
I scratch my neck and his gaze goes to my hand. The look lingers a beat longer than it should.
“You’re bleeding.”
His voice has changed. Lower. Quieter.
I look down and see that the blood from the angry thistle has seeped down into my sleeve. At least it matches my sweater.
“Yeah, it’s the dangerous part of my job,” I say, gesturing to the table strewn with paper and flowers. I briefly put my thumb in my mouth, sucking back the iron. “I should get hazard pay.”
A dark, perfectly arched brow raises. “Hazard pay?”
“I suppose you might not have that in Scotland,” I muse.
“You aren’t truly Scottish if the landscape hasn’t tried to maim you in some way,” he jokes, but his eyes haven’t quite left my mouth from when my thumb was in it, and the noticing of that is a small drop straight down the inside of me, the warmth spreading at my core.
Oh hell no. What is my body doing?
He shifts his weight, his chin lifting so that his gaze can settle for a moment on the sketchbook on the kitchen table behind me.
“So that’s your job? Drawing?”
“Mostly.”
“Drawing what?” His eyes come back to mine. They have a quality, in this light, of being slightly too aware. “Just flowers?”
“This and that.”
He doesn’t follow up. He doesn’t have to. There was a certain tone to that question. How he could possibly know I’ve drawn him I don’t know, but I suppose if I was a man with the body of a god and I walked around naked, I’d assume someone was drawing me too.
I should ask him to leave. I mean, we’re talking through the window. The sensible move at this point is well nice to meet you, thank you, goodnight, I’m going to lock my back door and go and be unsettled in private.
The other sensible move is to ask him if he wants to come in.
Out of politeness. Out of the social pressure any American woman of my class and upbringing has been raised to feel, that says the man at the door has come over in the rapidly cooling air, and is being civil, and the least you could do is offer him a cup of tea. The man swam the way here, did he not?
But I don’t say that. Because the police were here today.
Because Effie wrote don’t let him in, and whether or not she meant this particular man, I’m not going to ignore the woman who lived here for sixty years and warded her windows with salt.
I don’t know this man from Adam, and that matters more than the fact that I want to invite him in.
Because, oh, I do. I want to invite him in.