Chapter Twenty #2
Were all stalkers so cute? He was sure they couldn’t be. Maybe he was becoming a stalker himself. He could see himself trailing after this man, taking pictures and hanging them up on the wall. Proper stalker behavior. “Can I really stay here? And have you be here too?”
“Well, you’re not kicking me out of my own home.”
There was some purple Pillsbury icing in the fridge.
Hilary got that out too, stacked everything carefully, and kicked the fridge closed.
Maybe Trenton ought to have helped, but the thought wouldn’t occur to him until later.
The whole situation felt like a fantastic kind of show, and again, it was all for him.
Hilary took his treasure trove back to the living room, unloaded it onto the coffee table, and set everything down in a line.
That was when the magic ritual began. First, the cookie was dunked in the frosting, the excess scraped off against the edge of the container.
Next came a small dollop of chocolate syrup as close to the center of the cookie as possible.
Finally, Hilary put the whole thing in his mouth, holding it there while he took a sip of milk in through the corner of his mouth.
It was a masterpiece of excess. Trenton nearly applauded.
“I hope you don’t eat like this every day. ”
“Fuck off. I’m stress eating.”
“Am I the stress?”
“Do you see any other stresses lying around?”
It was no good—dangerous. He liked it all far too much. “You haven’t done this before, right? I’m the first?”
Hilary was outraged. “Just how crazy do you think I am?”
“I don’t know. Enough to stalk a murderer?”
Hilary ignored that. “Do you know how difficult it is to hold down a full-time job and keep tabs on you? How would I even juggle a second target? Do you think I do this for fun?”
“It was fun for me. Whenever you were there. I never have any fun except when you’re there.”
“That’s because you’re a boring toad.” Hilary had settled into proper mulishness.
His mouth was full of animal crackers, and it was showing in his cheeks.
Trenton was fully aware of just how much he wanted to poke at them.
Maybe even to bite at them. Was that psychotic behavior? To want to bite another human?
“Then how boring does that make you?” Trenton countered. “Stalking a toad.”
“I said it wasn’t for fun!”
“In that case, thank you for your service.”
Hilary pointed an elephant cookie at him. “This is your problem. You adapt too quickly.”
“I do?” He would have claimed the opposite.
He’d been working at the restaurant for nearly two years, and he still became flustered every time a customer came in.
It was the same when it came to greeting the cashier at the grocery store.
Or buying stamps at the post office. He’d been that way his whole life.
But Hilary was insistent. “Look at you. Some guy takes you back to a strange place, knows all these things he shouldn’t, and what do you do? You make yourself right at home.”
“You told me to, though.”
“Shut it. You know, I turned down a date to come to the restaurant today.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“Is it so surprising that someone would ask me on a date?”
Not at all. “I’m sure you’re the most popular one there. I meant, do you often turn down dates to come and see me?”
The man stopped, mouth open, and then went such a charming shade of pink that Trenton’s laugh came out after all. Hilary was furious. “I’m not turning down any others, if that’s what you mean. Hell, I’ll start doing the asking out. I’ll go on a date every day this week.”
“But you need to hurry home as soon as your shifts end. How else will you know whether I’m making trouble or not?”
Hilary threw the elephant at him, incensed. It was irresistible bait. “I thought you weren’t giving me any?”
That was it. Hilary was done. He went right to the bathroom, stripping while he was still in the hall and dropping his clothes as he went. He also made a lot of noise getting under the water, muttering the whole time.
The shower therapy was another fantastic discovery, and something Trenton never would have known if he hadn’t been brought to this place.
He stood in the doorway, watching, feeling immense satisfaction, particularly when, scowling like he was going to burn his eyebrows off, Hilary was forced to beckon him closer because Trenton had ingeniously thought to bring the box of animal crackers to the bathroom with him.
“Think you’re real slick, do you?” Hilary asked after cramming a handful into his mouth.
Trenton was on cloud nine. Cloud ten, even. “Just don’t get tired of me. Stalk me forever.”
“I’m already tired of you. Go home.”
“But I thought we were going to Kansas together.”
“Kansas is canceled.”
Trenton got to see Hilary’s bedtime routine as well.
“You should get a tongue scraper,” he told the man while they were brushing their teeth.
Hilary was revolted. “A what?”
“It takes off the white layer on your tongue. It’s the best.”
Hilary almost banished him for that one, but somehow even that look made Trenton immeasurably happy. He was collecting so many new expressions. “I’ll buy you one.”
“Don’t.”
“As a housewarming gift.”
“I don’t need it.”
But even the giddy joy and adrenaline of having so much of Hilary couldn’t hold up for everything. Trenton lost some of his gumption when the big light went off and the little lamp on the nightstand became a spotlight for the bed. It reminded him of something important.
Hilary saw him fiddling. “Need to pee?”
Trenton had to say it. Just had to make it come out somehow. He took a breath. “I’m a virgin.”
If Hilary had been looking for revenge, he now had it. The grin that dawned on the man’s face was so mischievous that, despite the embarrassment, it was kind of infectious. “Thanks for the update,” the man said.
Trenton could feel the heat on his face, but that’s all it was. It wasn’t like the tongue scraper. There was no revulsion on Hilary’s face. And why would there be? Hilary knew everything. Of course he would know that too. “I just mean that I—I wouldn’t be very good.”
The grin was only spreading. “Looking for tips? Who’s the lucky lady?”
Trenton knew he’d opened himself up for teasing, but he still wanted to duck and run. Hilary caught him by the arm. “You don’t need to worry about things like that.”
Trenton hated how much relief that brought.
It made him feel clumsy and ugly. “I’m not unwilling to learn.
If that was what you—I wouldn’t refuse you.
” But that was worse and worse. Now he sounded like some high-handed courtesan deigning to offer herself.
“That is, I’m not—I would be honored to—” The shovel in his hand just wanted to keep digging. He gave up and covered his face.
Hilary laughed, but it was a nice laugh. A kind laugh. “I know I should have interrupted, but you looked so determined to get it out.” He pulled at the hand. “Do you think that’s why I brought you here? What kind of low-minded stalker do you think you have?”
Trenton hadn’t even considered Hilary might take it that way. “No! That’s not—I know you were only being kind. Protecting me.”
“You want to be here?”
Had that ever been in doubt? “Yes.”
“Then there’s nothing you need to worry about. I didn’t bring you here to be my mail-order bride. You don’t have to earn your keep or be grateful or even talk to me if you don’t want to. You don’t owe me anything. I wanted you here, and I have you here now. That’s all.”
But that wasn’t all. And he did owe Hilary, whatever the man said. Maybe Hilary was fine with being a glorified babysitter, but that didn’t sit right with him, and he wanted to say so.
But then Hilary held up the copy of Anne of Green Gables and spoke the magic words. “Have one more chapter in you?”
Hilary was asleep before the end of the second page.
That was when Trenton remembered the man had gone off shift that morning and should have been asleep all day.
Instead, he’d shown up at the restaurant, roped himself into being a server, stopped his stalk-ee from putting more murders on his rap sheet, and dragged him home to play the gracious host for the rest of the evening.
Exhausting didn’t begin to cover it. Actually, Trenton should have been tired himself after everything that had happened, but he found himself looking at Hilary, brain too full of changes to find any sleepiness at all.
It felt wrong to stare at him while he was sleeping, though.
How had Hilary just let him in here to do that?
Didn’t he know how dangerous that was? Inviting a murderer into his home and then sleeping so soundly without so much as a locked door between them.
Trenton forced his attention back to the book.
It had been a long time since he’d read it.
A very long time. So long that the boy who first read it felt like a complete stranger to himself now, and not least because they only shared a few memories between them.
He couldn’t even say for sure what his younger self had liked so much about the book.
Anne was painfully na?ve and drowning in herself.
Why would he connect with a character like that?
But Hilary was Diana for sure. How lovely he was.
No wonder Shirley was obsessed with him.
He wasn’t sure when he fell asleep. It must have been while he was reading.
Maybe that was why he had mixed up dreams of running through fields of tall grass calling for someone, but not hearing his own voice, or even who he was calling, just knowing how important it was to find them, and to find them soon.