Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
It seemed like the best thing to do was just not to think about it.
Never even mention it. Throw herself into the job at hand, like nothing had ever happened.
But there was one very major problem with this.
The job at hand involved spending every second of every day with the man nothing had happened with.
And he seemed not only intent on being as oblivious and blasé as that casual goodnight had suggested, but actively fine with carrying on as he had before.
Playing the game he had, before the woods.
Being all pretend solicitous. I guess that really was just part of it, too, she thought, as he barely reacted to her laying out a little picnic in her lap on the way to the next stop.
She’d gathered together some things at the last gas station they’d hit, and now she placed them all atop a napkin.
A bag of pretzels, two apples, a muffin.
And she knew he was really deep into the game when he didn’t even say anything about the boiled egg.
She started to peel it, carefully, and instead of raging about the smell or the mess he suddenly slowed to a stop.
She looked up to find he’d swung them onto a stretch of dirt that overlooked what seemed like a pit.
But then she sat up straighter. She peered over the dashboard.
And she saw the bowl of deep green just beyond the sort of cliff face they were perched on. A valley, she realized, a deep and beautiful valley filled with creepers and trees and bushes. Soft and lush looking, in a way that made her want to turn to him and exclaim like some soppy teenager.
It’s so easy to forget this isn’t real, she thought.
About ten seconds before he said:
“Well, this is even better than that blog about local sights described.”
And then what was she supposed to think?
She wasn’t sure. She just had to sit there, egg forgotten in her hands, gazing out at this incredible view as the idea of him actually reading such a blog and then following its advice swirled around her mind.
Weirder than that, really, because after a moment he took that egg from her.
He finished peeling it himself, in his high holy car where no food was ever supposed to trespass.
Absentmindedly, too—like it wasn’t even a big deal.
How are you doing this, she wanted to ask him as he handed the peeled egg back to her.
And he took a bite, too, when she offered it to him.
He ate an apple and drank coffee from a flask and just generally shared an actual road trip picnic with her.
He even got out of the car after they’d eaten, and took it all in.
And when she got out, too, and tried to take a picture, he didn’t stop her.
He said, “Go stand in front of it so I can get you in, too.” Then he did just that.
He waited until she was awkwardly posed with the rising sun behind her, and he held up her phone, and snapped it.
And just as she was about to cross back over to him, he held up a hand.
He took something out of his own pocket.
She didn’t know what to say when she saw what it was.
A disposable camera. Somehow, he had a disposable camera.
They didn’t even make them anymore, she was sure of it. But he had it, and he held it up so quick she didn’t have a chance to say no, wait, what. Instead, she posed for him, too. For a shot that would probably look mad as fuck—her hair was in her face, she had one hand awkwardly in her pocket.
Though he didn’t seem to care.
He almost looked satisfied once he had it.
She watched him put the camera away, carefully, in the glove compartment, once they were back in the car.
Do you know you’re doing these things, she wanted to ask him, and even more so when they got to civilization and he opened the third door of that day for her.
Gaze always on other things, completely unaware of how tense she was.
Because she was tense. And more important: it was not in the bad way. Oh no, no, no, the universe wasn’t kind enough for her to be feeling it in the bad way. No, this was in the good way. A way that said something has now been awakened in you, and you are completely fucked.
By the second gentle touch to the small of her back, she was about ready to kill him.
Twice she almost said, Are you trying to make me behave like that again?
Even though she knew how completely impossible that was.
There wasn’t a single reason why he should.
He hadn’t gotten anything out of it, after all.
But he still laid a hand low on her back.
He still grew confident enough to clasp her hand, before they even came out at the next event in Paramus, New Jersey.
She found herself looking down at it like it had grown three heads.
Then up at his face as he stared out onto the stage he was due on, searching for some clue as to what he thought he was doing.
But all she saw was dedication to this.
He even seemed more confident about it once he got out there.
He cracked a mild joke. Spoke of love without blanching.
Just generally looked looser through the shoulders and chest. She didn’t once see him fold his arms across it.
In fact, at one point he actually leant back in the soft, plump armchair they had provided, both of those arms relaxed at his sides.
As if he were suddenly capable of enjoying something comfortable.
While exposing himself completely to the gaze of two thousand people.
It was weird, and it got weirder. Steadily weirder, with each stop they checked off her list. She tried to sleep through the long and strangely tense drives, and would wake to him humming, or even singing. Sometimes he’d encourage her to stir with a hand on her knee—perfectly innocent, of course.
But not to her subconscious.
No, her subconscious said, he’s going to slide that hand between your legs, and make you come in that good, hot way.
He didn’t hate the mess you made, or figure it was one and done.
It wasn’t a game, he’s just waiting for you to say the word again.
And then she’d realize she had started rocking.
Squirming. At one point she swam up from sleep to find a moan almost on her lips, desperate and greedy.
Though it wasn’t just the touch that did it, and she knew it.
It was the dreams. The constant dreams. The ones she wanted to say were brand new to her.
But now they were happening, she had to admit they had been in her before.
She remembered once, in college, after a particularly heated conversation.
She had argued that sex could be vital to a story, to character, to plot.
He had insisted it was always just there for frivolous reasons.
Then that night she had fucked him, in her dreams.
Pinned him to that war table in the workshop.
Rode his dick until he called out her name.
Told her she was right. Begged her for more.
A fucked-up fantasy of winning an argument, she had thought, she had told herself.
But she could admit it now: it had still made her come in her sleep.
That was 100 percent the feeling she had woken up to, no matter how she had tried to reduce it down.
And rationalize it.
It was just because the conversation had been about sex, she had reassured herself.
But she had to wonder now. Doubly so, when he wasn’t doing anything sexual at all.
He was just being kind, he was just being soft.
Taking her to restaurants she liked, plucking fluff out of her hair, playing the general part.
And then they got to Detroit, and suddenly things were a little less general.
Because before that point, he had stuck to vague sentiments.
The sort of things he’d written in his dedications: she’s the love of my life, she is my sun and moon and stars, why do birds suddenly appear every time she gets near.
That kind of thing. But at the next event—a tall and narrow building that was mainly for business conferences, in the heart of the city—the moderator asked him a specific question.
And he answered specifically.
Very specifically.
“The first time I saw her she was extolling the virtues of a movie called Demon Knight to a guy who couldn’t have seemed less interested to hear it.
All hands and eyes and words a mile a minute.
Passionate about the idea that the value of something wasn’t just in whatever standard had been set by some old dude a hundred years ago.
Passionate about everything—except taking care of herself.
One of her laces was untied, as it almost always was.
She’d missed part of her hair with the brush, her cardigan was on inside out, the strap on her book bag was almost going, most likely because she’d spent her new-book-bag money on something someone else needed.
A total disaster, in other words,” he said, then, just as she was about to roll her eyes from her place in the wings of the stage, he met her gaze.
“I thought she was the most attractive woman I’d ever laid eyes on.
And I say attractive on purpose, because sure, she’s beautiful, she’s gorgeous, but it was more than that.
More than just looking at someone and seeing that everything is pleasing to your eye.
I was drawn to her, drawn in by her, in a way I’d never experienced before. ”
And then what was she supposed to do?
Half of what he had said was true. The guy was Trent Parker, who hated any movie or book that wasn’t critically acclaimed.
The book bag thing was partly right; she’d given her good one to Jenny Wong, the girl who’d been struggling without one.
And she remembered storming past him on her way out of the library.
So he had definitely seen her.
But the rest? Saying she was beautiful?
The way he framed it—like she had attracted him?