Chapter 4
Don’t Make Me Scream
Oh yeah. Mark, I remember.
A book goes sliding off my chest and falls to the floor with a dull thud as I sit up, cradling my arm. He’s taller from this angle, my brain uselessly supplies.
“Shit,” Mark repeats more softly, coming to crouch before me.
“What the fuck, dude!” I bark out somewhere between normal conversational volume and a full-on shout.
I bend my knees, pulling my feet in, then shove myself away from him, until my back is braced against a nearby shelf, my right arm still cradled in my left.
“You just make a habit of sneaking up on women in bookstores and scaring them?” I ask.
“No,” Mark says as he begins gathering my scattered books, his mahogany hair falling across his forehead as he looks down. There’s stubble from yesterday contouring his jaw. His eyebrows rise when he sees the title of the book I was holding when he snuck up on me.
“Give that back,” I snap, snatching Scary Stories to Tingle Your Butt: 7 Tales of Gay Terror by Chuck Tingle from his hands.
“So you weren’t following me?”
“No, I wasn’t following you! Why would I be following you? I’m not the one who snuck up on you!”
“I thought I saw you following me a few aisles ago,” he says before setting the now-stacked books beside me.
“Get over yourself,” I grumble. “It’s a bookstore. I’m here to get books, not to troll for creepy dudes.” I try to pick up the stack of books using my somewhat-injured right arm. “Ow,” I hiss, a new wave of pain shooting down it.
He closes his eyes and takes a breath as I awkwardly reach across my body, trying to pick up the books with my uninjured arm. “Are you okay?” he finally asks when he opens his eyes. I’ve resorted to taking the books from the pile one by one and stacking them in my lap.
“Yeah. I’m just dandy,” I mutter sarcastically.
“Let me take you to the hospital.”
“No thanks. I’m not letting you take me anywhere.”
“Your arm could be fractured. You should really have a doctor look at it,” he says, his eyes focused on me. They’re hazel and flecked with green and amber.
“It’s not fractured. It just hurts. I’ll be fine. You can go.”
“You don’t know that. You need to see a doctor.”
“I am a doctor. And, oh look. I’ve just consulted with myself. According to Dr. Reed, I’m fine.”
“You’re a doctor?” Mark asks disbelievingly.
“Jesus. Yes. I’m a doctor. Are you always such an asshole?”
“What kind of doctor?”
“None of your business,” I tell him, wrapping my left arm around the books piled in my lap and then turning to pull my feet under me as I clumsily stand.
He grabs my shoulder, pinning me in place once I straighten up. “What kind of doctor?” he repeats.
“What the hell? Get your hands off me!” I try to slide to the side, to move out of his grasp, but he doesn’t release me. “Let go, or I’ll scream,” I warn.
“Tell me what kind of doctor, and I’ll let go.”
“The kind that went to medical school.”
“What kind?” he repeats, drawing the words out.
“I’m a psychiatrist, you dick!” I snarl, and his hand drops.
“So you know functionally nothing about skeletal injuries,” he asserts.
“I guarantee I know more than you,” I scoff.
“I doubt it.”
“Whatever.” I push past him, winding my way through the labyrinthine aisles toward the registers and the doors.
“Let me take you to the hospital.”
“I already told you. I’m not going anywhere with you,” I throw over my shoulder.
“Okay,” he says, exhaling loudly. “Let’s start over. My name is Mark Eriksson. I’m the Black Bears’ head coach. Please let me take you to the hospital so you don’t sue me.”
“The head coach for the what?” I ask as I stop at the intersection of a few aisles, trying to remember which way I came from before turning left.
“No. Whatever it is, I don’t care. You could be the leader of the Roswell Aliens for all the difference it makes.
Go away. I’m fine. It doesn’t matter if you come in peace. ”
“Here,” he says, shoving his phone in front of my face. “This is me.” He shows me a picture of him standing behind the wall of an ice rink, surrounded by a bunch of hockey players.
I sigh. “You’re not going to go away, are you?” I ask.
“Not until you let me take you to the hospital, and they take an X-ray of your elbow.”
“Fine. Whatever,” I say, making a show of giving in. “I need to pay for my books first, though.”
Mark picks up his pace, moving ahead of me and spinning around to walk backward as he lifts the books from my left hand. “I’ll get them,” he says. “I have to pay for mine anyhow.”
“I don’t—” I begin, but he cuts me off.
“It’s the least I can do. I did sneak up on you after all.”
“Yeah. You did. Why?”
“Like I said. I thought you were following me,” he states, as if that explains everything.
“So you suffer from paranoia then? Fear of persecution, perhaps? I can recommend someone if you’re ready to seek treatment,” I reply with a smirk.
“Ha. Ha. No. Like I said, I’m the head coach for the Black Bears, and—”
“Yeah. You mentioned that.”
“And sometimes fans can be a little… invasive.”
“Fans? You have fans? You can’t be serious.”
“Clearly you’re not big on sports,” he says drily.
“Not even a little bit,” I tell him as we reach the register and he sets one large, combined stack of books—his and mine—on the counter.
“Yes. I have fans. Or stalkers. It’s hard to say where the line is, or if they understand that there is a line,” he tells me as the cashier rings up the books.
“Mhmm,” I murmur as he passes his card over.
A minute later, he’s rushing to get the door, and a small satisfied grin creeps across my face before I quickly wipe it away, replacing it with a look of general annoyance.
Like I thought, Mark isn’t interested in some adoring hockey fan.
I think he might have a thing for not being fawned over, generally speaking.
It seems like arguing might be his version of flirting, which I can definitely work with.
He holds the door for me and then leads the way west, over stained and uneven pavement. The sky is grey overhead, and it’s much cooler today than it was yesterday. It’s finally beginning to feel like fall, and it won’t be long before the unrelenting drizzle starts.
We walk along in an uncomfortable silence for several minutes before I say, “How far away did you park? I’m not following you down any sketchy alleyways.
I don’t care who you are or what newspaper your picture is in,” I tell him even though I know exactly where he parked.
It didn’t seem that far earlier. My arm is really starting to hurt.
The pain wasn’t that bad while I was sitting on the floor of the bookstore, but now that I’m up and moving, and my blood pressure is elevated, the pain is increasing.
It’s now a dull throb, pulsing outward from my elbow in sync with my heartbeat, and I’m beginning to think I did actually fracture something.
It’s probably an olecranon fracture if it’s anything.
Hopefully not. Hopefully, it’s only a bone contusion or a subperiosteal hematoma.
He smirks. “Why? Is your arm starting to hurt?”
“You’re mocking me? Seriously? You know I can still sue you?” I gripe.
The smirk turns into a grin. “It’s not much farther. The black car ahead on the next block,” he says, pointing.
“Fine.” I fall back into silence.
When we reach the car, I go around to the passenger side, awkwardly fumbling for the handle with my left hand. Mark appears beside me. “Allow me,” he offers.
I consider refusing, but the angle combined with the slope of the street is making it difficult to open the door, so I step aside and let him do it for me. He grins again, as if he knows I don’t like it, which he does seem to enjoy.
I climb in, and he shuts the door behind me.
Fortunately, I can at least buckle my own seatbelt.
I wonder what Vaughn will have to say about all of this when I talk to him.
Either he’s going to laugh and call me an idiot, or he’s going to be impressed by my dedication to landing the mark named Mark.
I look out the window to cover my momentary smile as Mark slides into the driver’s seat.
“Don’t go to any of the downtown ERs,” I tell him as he pulls away from the curb. “I don’t feel like sitting around for five hours waiting for someone to come take an X-ray.”
“So ordered,” he says, navigating away from downtown.
Robert Johnson begins playing on the stereo, and I close my eyes and quietly sing along to Cross Road Blues.
“You’re a blues fan,” Mark comments.
I shrug, saying nothing. I’m in the process of becoming a blues fan. I’ve been giving myself a crash course over the past few weeks, and I actually really enjoy it. I have yet to find a blues artist I don’t like.
“The books,” Mark supplies, and I hope I’m not blushing.
The damn books. Or, rather, the damn book.
The one that had the audacity to distract me long enough for Mark to sneak up on me and then land directly on my chest when I fell.
The one that he very obviously read the title of and definitely had thoughts about.
“The fact that you know who Robert Johnson is, let alone the lyrics to Cross Road Blues. You are a blues fan.”
“Okay. Yeah. I’m a blues fan. So what?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you have any ibuprofen or Tylenol?” I ask. I was only singing to distract myself from the fact that my nervous system is catching up to how much my elbow hurts.
“Check the glove compartment.”
I open it and begin rummaging through it.
Vehicle registration, insurance, mouthwash, deodorant, toothpaste, hand sanitizer…
“Do you live out of your car or something?” I ask, glancing at him before returning my attention to the glove box full of miscellaneous items. Band-Aids, antihistamines…
Ah. Advil. “Can you open this?” I ask, passing him the bottle and noticing a faint blush across his cheeks.
“Sure,” he murmurs, bracing the steering wheel with his knee while he removes the lid, then passes it back to me.
I shake seven into my hand. “Have you got any water? I’m shit at dry-swallowing pills.”
“Just the bottle I’ve been drinking out of,” he says, pulling an open bottle of water from the door.
“I’ll take my chances. Give it here. Please.” He unscrews the lid before handing it to me. His hands are big enough that he could palm a basketball. “Thanks.” I swallow the pills. “What’s with the mouthwash, deodorant, and toothpaste? You rent a lot of by-the-hour no-tell motel rooms?”
“No.”
“Okay… so?” I prod.
“I like to be prepared.”
“Uh huh,” I reply but let it go.
“What’s with the butt tingling?” he asks.
I snort. “Of course you’d ask about that,” I mutter.
He shrugs. “Who wouldn’t ask about that?”
I wait until we hit a red light, and he comes to a stop, and then I turn to stare at him. After a few seconds, he meets my eyes. Once I’m sure I have his full attention, I say, “I prefer reading my porn to watching it.”