Chapter Eight #2
“How am I supposed to understand what’s too personal, when I’m talking to a man who thinks finding out that he likes raisins in his oatmeal is? I didn’t even mean to find that out. It was just an accident. You dropped the box and I picked it up.”
“You picked it up to torment me.”
She sighed. “Jesus, Miller, listen to yourself.”
“I’m trying to but you got me all turned around.”
“Okay. How about this: we define personal as our traumatic backstories.”
“You mean like that time that dipshit put you in the fucking hospital?”
She flinched when he said it, and she could see he knew it, too. The moment he clocked her reaction, he came so close to visibly and silently cursing at himself that she could actually identify the shape of it forming on his lips and in his expression. Like he’d crossed a line.
Even though he really hadn’t.
The whole incident hadn’t been anything, truth be told.
Just a bar fight. A thrown elbow. She didn’t remember much.
And there were no more horrible memories with Christian beyond that, either, because he’d bounced shortly afterward.
Not even a note, just suddenly in California—or so she’d heard.
Hardly a harrowing chapter in her life. Certainly no more so than her mother saying she must have been swapped at birth, because she wasn’t like any of them at all. Or her father agreeing.
And her brother nodding his head in the background.
But she wasn’t about to let him know that.
“I see, so these rules are only going one way. You get to ask about my traumatic backstory, but I am not allowed to ask about yours,” she said, thinking as ever of the phone call, the swimming, the faint curled scar just below the little finger on his right hand.
The one she used to find herself looking at whenever he scribbled something in front of her.
And now there was another one, too.
Right over the largest knuckle of his right hand, crisscrossed like a kiss.
He beat a man to death and got off on a technicality, Stacey had once said.
But she knew that couldn’t possibly be true.
He hated violence. He turned his face away when heads got crushed during zombie movies.
Had talked constantly about never raising a hand to kids, to women, to people with nothing.
She’d seen him that time with the homeless man underneath the Parkside bridge.
The one who lunged at people if they got close.
Somehow Miller had been the only one who never got mad.
He could talk him down. He knew how to defuse situations. So what happened then, she thought. Why those scars, why the sense that your right hand doesn’t work as well as your left sometimes. Why does it seize up, why do you have to rub it, why is your grip funny when you lift that coffee?
She couldn’t ask, however. She was too busy rolling her eyes over his excuse for asking about her. “No, but when you throw me like that—” he started, and they about spun right out of her head.
“First of all, I did not. Second, well, what if you throw me? Then next thing you know I’m probing you on the innermost depths of your life.
Making you talk about your evil parents and bad uncles and that time someone broke your heart so badly that the only food you’ll allow yourself to eat has to be boiled to within an inch of its life,” she said, careful not to hit any of the guesses she’d ever made about him.
But close enough that his eyebrows actually tried to rise.
And his whole body went completely rigid—until his brain caught up.
“Fine. Fine. You get a clause: it’s only fair game if we introduce it ourselves.”
“I accept. But also have no idea how we’re going to remember all this.”
“Why don’t you put it in one of your files or schedules or spreadsheets?”
“They’re for real things. Not imaginary nonsense you need to cope with me.”
He made an irritated sound. “It’s not coping, I don’t need to cope.
I just don’t like people in my business messing up everything and getting me all turned around.
A thing that you’re very good at, I might add.
Which is probably why you’re refusing to take this seriously,” he said, but she didn’t get a chance to protest. He added, “So I will,” then reached into the inside pocket of his fleece-lined jacket.
The one he hadn’t taken off when he sat down.
Like he needed it as an extra layer of armor.
And what he drew out of it—she almost gasped.
“Do not say a word about my glasses,” he said, as he slid them on. Eyes on the notepad he’d also produced, like he could avoid her reaction if he just didn’t look at her. Even though he had to know that was ridiculous.
“How can I not? They are adorable.”
“They are an aid to help me see.”
“Right, but they’re half-moons. You’re currently looking at me over them.”
“I have to. If I don’t, you turn into a blue-and-pink-and-black swirl.”
“Technically speaking. But speaking as someone who doesn’t care about being technical about this, you look like a kindly professor in a movie about inspiring kids to read,” she said, and was pleased with herself for doing so.
Until she saw his answering expression. He looked completely and utterly taken aback.
Only in the good way. The way that said she’d accidentally complimented him.
And the idea of accidentally complimenting him made her heart jerk in her chest. She had to add a sharp edge before he started thinking that she found this professor super attractive and awesome.
“Those kids would be really disappointed in you for making a list of draconian rules,” she said.
Though it surprised her when he just went with it.
Like the idea hadn’t crossed his mind at all.
“Maybe I’m the tough-love kind.”
“You’d need a leather jacket for that.”
“Leather is awful. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter.”
“Do you ever just feel like not being super practical about everything?”
“That’s a personal question. Now, rule number five. No eating in the truck.”
“Right, because we wouldn’t want the sloppy, disgusting mess to ruin the decor.”
This time, she didn’t just get a look over the top of his glasses.
He took them off. Probably to really drive home the lecture he was going to deliver about revolting eating habits.
After all, he was one of the reasons she had realized she had them.
She had caught him glaring at her once as she devoured a burger.
Seen him staring darkly at the smear of jam between the curves of her Cupid’s bow.
And she’d noticed how he had watched her lick her fingers.
Like he had desperately wanted her to stop.
It had surprised her how little she had felt the urge to, really.
But it surprised her more when he replied, “You think I’m saying this because you’re a disgusting mess?
Have you always believed that? When did you start?
What did I say to make you think so? Be very specific,” he said, so fierce for a second she had to sit back.
And not because he had stressed her.
Because he had shocked her.
“You’ve just always looked at me like you thought so.”
“Well, I don’t. I just don’t like food in my car.”
“You didn’t like the way I ate my breakfast, either.”
He jabbed at the table with one finger. “I got that breakfast for you.”
“But you could hardly look at me as I ate it.”
“It’s impolite to stare. Especially when someone does something so—”
“Does something so what? What exactly do you think I do it like?”
Like you love it, she supplied, when he didn’t answer. Like you enjoy it.
And it made so much sense to her, as soon as she had the thought.
He didn’t know how to be so into something.
He hated letting go, indulging, devouring things whole.
So why would he like seeing someone else do that?
How could he ever understand? He probably viewed it like an alien would, when seeing a human do things it couldn’t.
Though it still shocked her when he abruptly seethed.
“It doesn’t matter. Just know disgust at your sloppiness isn’t why. Got it?” he burst out.
Then when she went to answer, he tapped the paper he’d written on.
Rule number four: no talking about personal things.
And she obeyed. She fell silent. Even though it only occurred to her, once she had, that it didn’t apply. They’d been talking about her, not him. Her eating habits, her sloppiness. Not him, nothing to do with him.
Why on earth, she thought, as he lifted his paper between them, did he think it was about him?