Chapter Two #2
“Demi Moore with a buzz cut?” I wave a hand at her confused expression, like oh, don’t mind me, I’m unable to emotionally connect with people, so I just make TV and film references nonstop. “Old movie, never mind.”
“I wore earrings,” Maisie mumbles, her hand fluttering to one ear, where a minuscule gold hoop twinkles.
The tops of her cheekbones are the color of sun-ripened peaches, and I realize belatedly that she’s embarrassed.
This gorgeous Star Wars rebel commander sitting across from weird, out-of-touch me is embarrassed.
And it’s my fault.
“They look…lovely.” The compliment comes out awkward and halting. I place my stupidly big hand over hers for a quick second, seriously when did my hands get so large, then retract it just as fast. “You look lovely, I mean. Also very prepared.”
I mean the last part as a bit of a joke, but for the first time since she arrived, Maisie looks pleased and strangely hopeful. “Thanks. It’s kind of a…hobby of mine.”
“Being lovely?”
She laughs, the melodic, twinkling sound seeming to surprise us both. Immediately, I want to make her do it again.
Could Sandeep be right? After the amount of shit I gave him for catfishing this poor woman, that would be awkward.
But maybe meeting new people is what I need at this point.
It’s been so long since I’ve had anything to give anyone, it’s felt wrong to impose the weight of my existence on others.
But there’s something about the way Maisie’s winter-blue eyes lock on to mine that feels like a hand on my shoulder, shaking me gently awake.
Startling, and a little scary, but undeniably arousing.
Not in a sexual way, of course. Or romantic. She’s just interesting.
“No.” She smiles shyly. “Being prepared is, though.”
“Oh, yeah?” I ask, a bit distracted by the zing of all my systems coming online for the first time in years. “For what?”
Excited, she starts to say something, but then flinches back like her hand was slapped. The easy smile disappears, and her blush has traveled all the way to the small, pale V of her exposed chest. Dammit, what did I do wrong now?
“Can we start over?” Her voice is tentative.
This lovely, strange, anxious bird of a woman, like if I made one quick move right now, tiny invisible wings would lift her away in a blur.
My heart does that strange thing again, that squeezing thing, as our server takes our orders.
Of course Maisie’s nervous—the new virus has everyone spooked—and yet, here she is, in her cargo pants filled with god knows what, attempting small talk with a stranger.
I feel sorry for her. That’s what this is.
Sympathy from one lonely person to another.
An unexpected urge comes over me to wrap her in my arms and give her a long, comforting hug.
God. I could use one, too.
“Sure, starting over now.” I sit up straighter, and this time when I try to smile, it works. “Hi, Maisie. I’m Everett.” I reach for my glass of water.
“Hi, Everett,” she recites, as if from a card. “Tell me about your trauma.”
The sip of water I just took tries to exit my mouth like a fountain, and I choke it back.
“Trauma?” I croak. My brain fizzes over the exchange of messages between Sandeep and Maisie, but he never mentioned Louise, that I’d been married, or anything like that. Can she just…tell?
“It’s very brave that I’m asking this,” Maisie informs me, frowning while my coughing fit continues. “You should feel very safe.”
Sitting here, hacking up the spoonful of water intent on killing me while diners start to stare, facing strange questions from a—okay, I’m calling it—strange woman as two of the black-shirted staff narrow their eyes at me?
No. I don’t feel very safe. I feel like I want to escape this conversation, this attempted date, really the last three years.
“I’ll go first,” Maisie says, lifting her chin. “Someone I cared about died, and I felt bad about it.”
She looks at me expectantly until I finally manage to wheeze out, “Um. Me, too?”
At this, she leans over the table to touch my arm. It’s an awkward plop of the hand, right on my wrist.
We both look at it.
“I feel, so, connected. To, ah, you.” Her eyes flicker up to mine but don’t quite settle there, grazing somewhere around my forehead instead. “Do you feel the…connection between us? Because of our”—she swallows—“dead people?”
The server takes this moment to deliver our food, and Maisie lurches back in her seat.
I’ve never been so glad to see a rutabaga in my life. Ugh. This date was a bad idea, but I tried. I came here, I got dressed, I even showered. Nobody can fault me for giving up now.
Before he leaves, I tap him on the arm and mouth, Box. Check. Now.
When I turn back to the table, Maisie’s holding a rose. The red bud is slightly crushed, and the stem has been broken to fold into thirds, presumably to fit into one of her large cargo pockets. It hangs limply from her fist.
“This is for you,” she pronounces, then lays the flower’s mangled corpse in front of me.
“Like me, the rose is beautiful and sweet, but it’s guarded, too.
Covered in thorns from all its trauma, unable to let others in, unable to trust. I am but a rose.
” She pauses this speech long enough to wince down at the poor flower.
“So, you should watch out for my thorns.”
My eyes widen. “Oh my god. Are you—”
“I’m not here to make friends, Everett!” she rushes out, panicked. “Are you sex-positive?”
“You are!” An incredulous laugh bubbles out of me. “You’re reciting Shayla’s speech from episode, what? Two? Of Dreamsdate?”
Maisie hangs her head, defeated. “Bits from episodes one through four, actually. I’m not good at dating. Shayla is, though, so I thought…I’m sorry, this was stupid.”
The server reappears then with two boxes for our untouched food, the check, and a sympathetic smile. Maisie glances at him in surprise, then at me with horrible, heartbreaking understanding. He stands there, waiting, until I clear my throat.
“We’re, ah, not ready just yet. Thanks.”
“God, I really messed this up,” Maisie says into her hands. She leans her whole face into them, refusing to look at me. “Just go, I’ll pay.”
My eyebrows pinch together as I regard her slumped shoulders.
Maisie was so nervous about tonight she memorized lines from a reality dating show?
All the discomfort I’ve felt in the last ten minutes evaporates into a tender, gentle regard.
I may not be interested in dating this woman, or any woman ever again for that matter, but in this moment, I do feel strangely connected to Maisie.
Not knowing how to talk to others or what to say.
That was never a problem for me before Louise died, but ever since, it’s like a curtain fell between me and everyone else, muffling their voices, obscuring their faces, preventing me from finding and connecting with them at all.
Is that how it’s been for Maisie since she lost her someone, too?
Was reciting lines from Dreamsdate her painfully awkward way of trying to reach out and grasp my hand through her own curtain of isolating grief?
I can’t leave her here like this. Louise would never forgive me.
I clear my throat again. “Not until we discuss how Shayla picked Jeremy over my boy Fawkes.”
Maisie peeks out between two fingers. “I—hated Jeremy.”
“Jeremy is the Antichrist and has the personality of a heel blister.”
She hiccups out a laugh. “Fawkes isn’t much better, though.”
I lean over my rutabagas. “At least Fawkes doesn’t go to Guy Fieri’s tips specialist.”
She frowns. “Who’s Guy Fieri? And what’s wrong with his tip?”
“Oh, god, don’t say it like that,” I groan. “I’m sex-positive, but not that sex-positive.”
“His tip is sexual?” Her forehead wrinkles. “What?”
I arch an eyebrow. “Just the tip?”
She stares at me, waiting, and now I’m the one blushing.
“Mm, never mind.” I smile, feeling soft and sorry for this strangely clueless person. “Maybe we should start over a third time?”
Maisie exhales a big sigh of relief. “Yes. This time, with no reality-TV speeches.” She shakes her head. “Why do they call it reality TV when it all seems so fake?”
“You don’t watch a lot of TV, do you?”
“No,” Maisie admits. “I don’t understand most of it, to be honest. I wasn’t raised around TV, but I do enjoy baking shows. Do you like TV?” she asks tentatively, as though she’s not sure this is a good date question but is going to try it anyway.
Luckily for me, it is.
“I love TV. It’s my job. Movies, too, but I’ve had a harder time getting into them lately. Dreamsdate has me in a choke hold, though.”
Maisie’s eyes trail down my jaw to my throat, then bob back up again, flustered. She frowns. “I thought you were a professor.”
“I am.” I rub my chin, not baiting her per se, but curious to see if her eyes track that movement, too. She looks at me so intently, like she’s studying me. “I’m a TV and film studies professor. Pop culture is my profession, but I specialize in horror movies.”
“You…teach TV? To children?”
“I teach story,” I say, a smidgen of my new goodwill toward her disappearing. “To adults.” I tilt my head to the side. “Well. Technically adults.”
We share a smile at that. I ask her about actuarial science then, which is actually interesting, though I don’t make that joke because she’s probably heard it a million times.
The science of determining the probability of bad things—no wonder she’s anxious and copes by practicing lethal martial arts in her free time.
A loud crack! sounds against the glass storefront, and Maisie snaps to attention, her hand darting to her belt.
Jesus, is she armed? I whip around in my seat along with everyone else and see a man with wild eyes smack his hand against the glass door again.
“Let me in!” he yells, just audible through the growing murmurs of the diners. “Let me in!”