Chapter Eleven #2
Though it only seemed to slow him down. To puzzle him enough to stop and frown.
“What, then? What are you worried about if we do this? What do you think will happen? I see you flossing wrong, and complain about it? You read a book I think is terrible, and I say so? I told you I’m not gonna do things like that.
Because…” He paused, like he was considering.
Though she had no idea what the consideration was about.
All he came out with, after what felt like forever, were a few pretty reasonable, if hesitant-sounding, words.
“Because I’m … I’m practicing. Yeah, I’m practicing being …
you know. Just sort of … gentle, with you. ”
Though she did notice the weird way he said gentle.
Sort of faint, like something he couldn’t bear to put force behind.
“You don’t seem so certain about that,” she said, and he winced.
“Yeah, well, I’m not sure if I can do it right. I’m not sure how it will look.”
“Little rusty, huh. All those big evil dogs that live with you in your prepper compound not really in much need of a hug, I guess.”
She gave him a look.
He gave her exasperation.
One hand palm down, ruling a line through the air.
“Okay, first of all, there are no big evil dogs.”
“So little nice ones, then.”
“No ones at all, damn it.”
“But the other stuff I got right.”
He looked to the heavens for inspiration.
Then back to her, quite clearly empty-handed but willing to give it a go anyway.
“No, of course not. I’m not a maniac surrounded by guns and manifestos.
And I’m not rusty, either. Rusty implies something once ran smoothly and then fell into disrepair.
But there was never any smoothness with me.
I’ve never had the kind of nature that lends itself easily to company.
Or to making people comfortable. Or even to saying the right things so they don’t think you hate them,” he said, so bitter sounding it kind of jolted her.
She’d never thought he really minded being the unpalatable person he was.
Instead, she had always imagined that he was this way because he simply wanted to be.
That he wasn’t like her, with her own unpleasant qualities—curbing excitement so it wouldn’t bother people, turning down the volume on her voice, pretending to like things they did.
He was happy being ornery and annoying.
But it seemed like she was wrong. And in a way that echoed in her so strongly she couldn’t help saying. “Me neither, Miller,” she told him, intending matter-of-fact but hitting sort of soft, and sad. The sound of it seemed to make his face drop, just a little.
Though he covered it well.
“Oh gimme a break. You’re great at it.”
“Because I pretend. Not because I really am.”
“So when you were with those girls in college—”
“Ninety-nine percent doing what I had to to fit in with them.”
“And that organizer back there. The interviewer, Joan. The actress, whatever her name was. When you were so easy with them and got everything to go right and made everything work.”
He gestured behind himself, as if they were all standing right there.
Then sort of mimed all the things he obviously thought she’d gotten right.
But all she had for him was a shrug. “Just bullshit,” she said, and oh, the look on his face.
The whole thing didn’t just drop, this time. It almost slid right off his skull.
And his voice when he spoke was hoarse. Dark, somehow.
“Show me,” he said. No—he demanded. Like she’d said something miraculous and impossible, and he needed to see it now before it disappeared.
Then he did it again, when she just looked at him, flummoxed.
“Show me how you do it. How you know what to say. Pretend you don’t know me, pretend I’m just some guy you met.
Get along with me right now, in whatever way you usually would. ”
So she did. Like flicking on a light switch.
She stepped forward, one hand out.
“Caleb Miller? It is such a pleasure to meet you,” she said, and she actually heard his breath catch.
It took him a second to gather himself, and respond in a way that definitely suggested he wanted to test this weird ability.
He wanted to put pressure on it, and see if it would crack.
First with a snort of derision. Then with words.
“Not sure why. I feel like shit and usually act like it to anyone near me.”
“Oh, I bet you’re much nicer than you think you are. And even if you’re not, well, that’s okay. Life gets the best of all of us sometimes. Not everybody has to be sunny and happy and satisfied with their lot.”
“I’m rich and famous enough that I should be.”
“So you love being rich and famous, then? It’s all you ever wanted?”
“Dear god, no. I wanted to live in the middle of nowhere with a fam— My dog, I would have gotten a dog. I wanted a dog, just a dog. Small one, you know, that wouldn’t need much from me,” he said, but she could tell he knew he’d slipped up.
He looked away, eyes almost rolling, a curse almost slipping out under his breath.
Then he looked back at her, almost accusingly.
Dirty pool, his eyes seemed to say. As if what she was doing was a trap, instead of something she would never have thought would work on him.
What did he care if someone was genial with him?
He didn’t. And yet there it was. “You were going to say family then,” she said, and he couldn’t seem to stop himself wincing.
“No, I wasn’t. Shut up. Go back to the thing.”
“This is the thing. Pleasantries about our lives.”
“Well, that isn’t my life, is it. And it never will be, so.”
He folded his arms across his chest. End of story, he seemed to say.
Even though he had to know she could never let it be now. “What on earth could make you think it won’t be?” she asked, with as much incredulity as she could muster. But he just glanced at the thing that was still between them, and practically drawled his answer, dry as ten-day-old toast.
“The fact that I can’t even shake that hand you’ve had out for five minutes.”
And he was right.
She hadn’t drawn it in, and he hadn’t taken it.
In fact he was further away now from taking it than he had been at the beginning.
But still, she couldn’t let that stand. It now felt like an imperative not to.
Like something really big and breath stealing depended on it.
“Handshaking isn’t a prerequisite for having a relationship and kids. ”
“Maybe not. But other things like it are. Being touchy-feely and tender is.”
“Some women don’t like that either, though.”
“Do you not like it?”
“Depends,” she said, which was the truth.
Though of course that wasn’t enough.
“Tell me what it depends on.”
“If I trust the person. If I like them. If I can be myself with them. If they want to touch me. All of those things go a long way to making what feels like an immutable characteristic within me into something more situational.”
Stop now, she thought. That sounded too much like you’re trying to help him understand something he doesn’t need to. Only it felt hard to, when he wouldn’t.
“But how do you—” he started to say, then cut himself off, frustrated.
She had to finish it for him. She couldn’t just let that be it.
“What? Figure out if it is just the way you are?”
“Yes. Yes, all right, yes, let’s say that.”
“Well, you could start by using that imagination I know you have.”
“To do what, exactly? What could I possibly dream up that would help?”
“The idea of a woman you trust. A woman you like. And then just picture her telling you that she wants you. That she can’t stand another second of needing you.
That all she thinks about is how good it would feel to have your arms around her.
Do you feel differently then?” she asked, and knew, immediately, that she’d gone too far somehow.
The words came out all weird and big. Full of feeling she hadn’t intended to force into them.
By the time she got to the end of the last sentence she was practically yelling them at him.
It was no wonder the air seemed to ring once they were out.
Or that he looked assaulted in the silence that followed.
A second ago you were joking about butts, she thought. But there was no going back now. She’d said something accidentally deeply emotional to Caleb Miller, and all that remained after that was the fallout. Him all frozen, eyes as wild as they’d been at reception.
Then finally, finally.
“Okay, I’m going to sleep in the tub now,” he said, so fast it came out as one word. And after it was out, he made good on that. He turned and marched straight for the bathroom. Didn’t even pause to grab something from his suitcase.
Though it wasn’t as if she could imagine him having much in it.
It was practically a backpack. And most likely nearly empty.
Just a rock in there, for a punishing pillow.
Maybe a second shirt, identical to the first. A spare pair of underpants, if he even allowed himself the luxury of them.
Probably he rides those jeans bareback, she found herself thinking, and hated the fact that she had.
First she had gotten all personal and weird with him.
Now she was thinking of him naked underneath his clothes.
Really, it was no wonder he’d stormed off.
That he was probably in the bathroom now, trying to climb out of the nearest window.
Even though they were ten floors up, and overlooking nothing but cement.
You’ll hear screams in a second, courtesy of him splattering himself on the sidewalk, she told herself.
And that felt so right she almost went and knocked.
Don’t do it, she imagined herself saying.
About five seconds before the door suddenly whipped open.
Violently, it seemed to her—and he looked that way, too.
For a moment he just stood there in the doorway, seething.
Furious with her, and definitely about to show it.
She almost asked him not to murder her, for the crime of making him have a feeling.
It even seemed like he actually might, when he abruptly strode forward.
When he stood in front of her, chest heaving, face a mess of what looked like utter indecision. The way someone would look if they were trying to build themselves up to a stabbing, she thought. And then he reached out with this same mix of aggression and uncertainty, and just did it.
He grabbed her fucking hand.
The one she still had out. The one he hadn’t been able to shake.
The one that seemed to electrify, the moment he made contact.
Every nerve, every inch of skin, every point where he touched her—suddenly it was all alight.
It was all wildly hot. She could feel him to the roots of her fucking hair, in a way that made not one lick of sense.
He was barely doing anything.
His palm didn’t even lie fully flat to hers.
His grip wasn’t even that firm. He didn’t squeeze, he didn’t fully envelop her, he didn’t linger.
He was gone in the space between two breaths.
Yet somehow it just didn’t matter. She could still feel him, even after he pulled away.
The heat of his body, the softness of his palm, the gentleness of it in spite of its size, the ferocity of the contact.
She had to look down at her shaking hand in the aftermath, just to check he wasn’t somehow still there. A shadow touch, left behind in a way that seemed so ridiculous. It shouldn’t have been, it shouldn’t have been.
Yet she knew why it was.
Why it had had more impact than actual sex, with any of a dozen other men.
Because they gave it all away like it was nothing. Just another Saturday night, with someone they barely thought anything of. But he could never think of it that way. It was never that to him. He guarded his every touch like a dragon over a hoard of impossibly rare gold.
And now one small piece of it was hers.