Chapter 13
Pace
I dusted my hands outside the salon. I had been determined to do this right for her, and I felt pretty damn good about how that all went, if I did say so myself.
I glanced down at my toes, wiggling them to admire the shine of the nails and the soft skin.
I wobbled a little, unsteady in the flimsy foam temporary flip-flops they gave me, my boots tucked under my arms and my jeans still cuffed around my calves, wet up to the knees.
I beamed at Sophie, who was looking down at her own feet.
They were pretty little things too. And her ankles and calves.
I felt like an old-timey scoundrel the way I had been noticing her lower legs.
Sophie was just nice to look at, with all her soft edges and smooth skin.
She didn’t say much or smile a lot, so when I managed to make her do either of those things, it made me feel extra special, like that specific Christmas cookie Mom only made once every few years.
“That color looks good. I did a good job,” I said, gesturing to her toes.
“Yeah, and it won’t keep me up at night if the blankets fall off my feet.”
That wasn’t the first time she made me chuckle unexpectedly.
She was sneaky with her dry humor, flicking my funny bone when I least expected it.
It reminded me of the sharp wit that had struck me when I read the list, before I knew who she was.
The two fuzzy images of this woman were lining up to make one complete image. And I enjoyed the whole picture.
Without discussing it, we began to walk in the direction of the town square.
“I still think you should try that orange for spring,” I said.
“Yeah. And I can go barefoot hunting and still be safe.”
“You’ll just have to walk on your hands.”
“It’s as likely as me hunting,” she said with a lift and drop of her shoulder.
We shared a smile. And score, another point for me. Look at her, out and about, having a great time right here with me. I couldn’t wait to see what was next.
“I wasn’t kidding about getting the rest of the crew to do this. I’m going to suggest this for the next guy’s night,” I said.
“Now that image should go in next year’s calendar.” She tugged her massive bag higher up her shoulder. “I can see you all lined up, wrapped in soft robes, with your massive man feet and bulky legs overflowing from those dainty little tubs.”
“Massive?”
“Well. In comparison to their usual clientele, I imagine.” Her face had turned away, so I wasn’t able to tell if that had been a flirtation. I liked to think that it definitely was.
Today was the most fun I’d had in a long time. Helping Sophie was going to be way easier than I thought. Plus, I got to hang around someone pretty, smart, and funny. This was a win all around.
It was a nice late-September day; the sun shone bright, and I felt bursting with possibility.
We’d come to a stop near where we first met up. She flicked a look side to side and then behind her. She tucked her hair behind her ear as she turned back, not quite meeting my eyes. I might have been staring at her with my excited face on. Levi had mentioned that it could be a lot sometimes.
“That’s one item off your list already,” I said proudly.
“Yeah. I think I’m going to need at least a week of hiding under my weighted blanket to recoup.”
Oh, her and her exaggerations.
“It wasn’t that bad.” I tugged off my hat. “Was it?”
“No. It wasn’t.” She sucked in her lips and looked again at her pretty toes, wiggling them like I had to see the shimmer. “But it was a lot for me.”
For the first time since leaving the salon, I noted the strain around her mouth, the hunch of her shoulders, and the heaviness under her eyes. She looked like she just hiked the Cozy Creek Long Trail.
The smile started to melt off my face. I’d thought it had gone well. I thought I freaking nailed it.
“The water was really hot. And she trimmed my nails too short. Down to the skin and it burned,” she admitted when I was quiet too long.
We looked again at her feet, where the soft skin was still more pink than the rest of her body, from just below her knees and down.
She added, “I did not care for those hot stones; it felt like my skin was going to melt off.”
I could feel my eyebrows pinched together as she spoke. “Why didn’t you tell them to stop?” I asked with incredulity.
She waved away the thought like it was absurd. “I didn’t want them to think they were doing a bad job. Plus, it’s just easier to go with the flow. I didn’t want to upset the people with the tiny scissors cutting my skin.” She said it with an attempt at lightness but fell short.
All these excuses, instead of just saying, I was too scared to ask for what I needed.
“No. It’s not. Just say, ‘Ouch, please no more lava rocks on my skin.’ Boom, easy,” I explained.
Her ears turned red, and she looked side to side again. “Yeah, well. If any of that were easy for me, I wouldn’t be here in the first place.” Her jaw twitched from where she was grinding it. She hiked her bag up again; she was definitely leaning to the side. What all was in there?
Her mood was shifting, and I couldn’t understand why. I thought things had gone well, but a panic rose in me, like when I saw Levi going offline at the end of a hangout session. Why couldn’t I make them stay? What about me was so exhausting?
“You have to speak up for yourself, nobody else is going to.” I thought maybe if I could offer her coping strategies, then she wouldn’t want to leave. I didn’t want her to go yet.
She took a deep breath in and out, and I got the sense she was fighting back something she wanted to say.
Instead, she said, “Thank you for what you did in there. I know you did all that to make sure there was no attention on me.” She looked up, collecting herself, but moisture gathered in her eyes. “I appreciate you playing the fool.”
The words cut through me. Like a sneaky little jab just under my ribs.
“I wasn’t playin’,” I mumbled. I wasn’t trying to do anything, but I had been embarrassed about wearing the jeans and boots. And then she’d been so rigid with fear, my mouth just opened, and all the schmooze came out. “That’s been my life. I don’t know how to turn it off,” I said lightly.
She looked at me closely. “Must be nice,” she said.
“Yeah,” I said. Being the resident ass was a blast.
The air shifted. The mood had flipped, and I couldn’t understand what I’d done wrong. I was getting defensive. I wanted to do everything right for her, but I kept misstepping.
I wish she’d just talk to me. Tell me what she needed. My palms itched, and it was like all those months of trying to talk to Levi . . .
I couldn’t think about that. I didn’t want to remember that failure. I had to help her here and now.
“Here’s the thing about life. Sometimes—a lot of time—you just have to be uncomfortable to get comfortable.
You have to do the wrong things. Say the wrong thing in order to learn what feels right.
And then you might still be wrong. Life can be awkward and weird, and you can’t take it too seriously.
” I shook my head once. “Don’t worry so much.
I don’t know what the right balance is, but I know I feel better when I just let myself be embarrassed and a little cringy,” I said.
That was pretty good; a couple of those lines could be inspirational quotes on the internet.
I didn’t understand why she shifted restlessly from foot to foot. Her features darkened as I spoke, and I knew it had been the opposite of what she needed.
“Just that?” she asked sarcastically.
“Just that. It’s easy. I find life works best when I’m not thinking.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” she said. “I wish every day that I could just turn off my brain. I wish every day there was a switch I could flip to slow things down. So that only one tab was open at a time.” Her voice was tight.
Her hackles raised. There was something I wasn’t understanding.
Probably better to move forward and change the subject.
“What’s next?” I asked.
Her eyebrows shot up in surprise. “Excuse me?”
“On the list,” I said. I felt the back of my neck burn. This wasn’t going how I meant for it to. Everything I said was being taken the wrong way. “What do you want to do next?”
Her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head like I’d missed something obvious. “I told you, Pace, this is it for me today. I really do need to go home now.” Her words grew tight as she spoke.
“We can’t be done. We literally just started. If we keep at it, we’ll finish with the list before Halloween. Wouldn’t that be even better?” I felt frantic with the need to keep her here.
Instead of looking excited about the prospect, her shoulders lifted higher and higher as she retreated into that cocoon of her own making. She shook her head again.
“Christmas felt doable. Halloween is too much pressure.” Her breaths quickened, and her gaze wouldn’t come near me. “Pace, today was a lot for me. I’m exhausted.”
I couldn’t help it. I felt stupid for the “distraction” at the nail salon.
I felt like I wasn’t understanding what her needs were.
And I hated how upset she was. I was doing that to her.
It was a sort of torture to see that I was causing her pain, but to not understand what I did wrong.
Why was it so easy to see what everybody else needed but not her?
Around us, several people were watching curiously. Were they thinking that this was what I did? Drop the ball, like I had for Levi? For Kaylee? I never seemed to understand what people needed to keep them around.
I lashed out, desperate.
There had to be some reason that she couldn’t handle any of this. This wasn’t just normal shyness.
“I just want to be your friend and help you,” I said.
Her mouth opened and closed. “I’m still getting used to that fact,” she said cautiously.
“My whole life after I moved in with Grandma El, I was invisible. No friends, no cliques. Just the chubby, weird kid who knitted with her grandma after school. Kids sense otherness better than most. They avoided me. But I wasn’t bullied.
That’s not why . . .” She shook her head and trailed off.
“It’s so complicated. I’ve talked about it with my doctor.
That could be part of my issues but probably not entirely why.
Trauma, family history, genetic predisposition.
We just don’t know enough of the why. You don’t need to know all this.
I’m just trying to explain that my grandma and her friends loved me and raised me without judgment, and I felt safe at home. ”
“At home,” I repeated after her torrent. It made sense, like Levi, that home was a safe space. Free from the eyes of the town.
She lifted her shoulders and dropped them, pinching her mouth to the side before saying, “Exactly.” Her eyes left mine again.
She wrapped her arms tight around herself.
“But if you are looking for a simple reason to explain why I’m wired this way, to help you understand it and wrap it all up neatly, you’re not going to find it.
I’m extremely ordinary, as is my very common anxiety issue.
” Her head was turned away, nostrils flared as she spoke.
I wanted to say that there was nothing about her that was ordinary.
I longed to hold her in my arms and squeeze her anxiety out of her like toothpaste from a tube.
But with every passing second, I understood less of what she needed for comfort.
The desire to hold her took me so strongly, I had to ball my fists to keep from reaching for her.
“I didn’t—” I started.
“I know it sucks. It’s humiliating to be an adult going on thirty who finds one errand a day to be so depleting that I need to go lie down. But that’s the reality of what you’re dealing with here.”
“I’m sorry, Sophie,” I said, knowing it wasn’t enough to undo my screwup.
“If this is some game to you or a way of being a Good Samaritan so you can get all your fireman badges, then you don’t have to bother.”
“No, that’s not—”
“I’m a big girl. I’ve been dealing with this my entire life. But if you think that one outing is going to fix me and I’m suddenly going to be okay, I’m just going to disappoint you, Pace.” Her voice broke. “I’m constantly disappointing myself. I don’t want to add anybody else to the list.”
I stood there shell-shocked and embarrassed.
I couldn’t even apologize again, it would sound too hollow, a mockery of the depth of my shame.
She thought that I always knew what to say and how to act around others, but when it really mattered, when I really cared about the person, I always came up short.
She lifted her eyes heavenward, tears balanced. “I know you were trying. I know. But some things are just too broken to fix.”
She turned and left me standing there.
How did I ever think I could be enough for her?