“You can do anything but sit? Is that what you’re saying?” She smirks. “I thought you were the bad boy of the group. That’s what the headlines say.”
“Those headlines are mostly accidents and boredom. You throw me in a quiet room with nothing to chew on, and I end up juggling knives. That’s not my fault. And it was definitely not my fault when one of those knives ended up in the movie theater screen in Waco.”
“How was that not your fault?”
“The movie was boring.”
She laughs. “What else isn’t your fault?”
“The hotel fire alarm thing wasn’t me. Steam set it off. The ‘Salem kicked a speaker’ thing was me. It was humming, the ground was wet, and I was bored. The ‘bathroom fight’ was some guy blocking a kid from washing his hands.”
“And the stapler story?”
“True. But it was a tiny stapler.”
She snorts. “A terror with office supplies.”
“I contain multitudes.”
The milkshake lands. So does the coffee. The fries come after, hot and perfect. Lou dips one, considers it, then nods. I feel stupidly proud for having picked this place.
“So. You brought me to the desert to be normal. How’s it going?”
“Brutal. I’m trying.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“Don’t lie to me.”
She leans back. “Okay. You look like a guy playing a character in a beige sweater.”
“I’m allergic to beige.”
“No shit.”
Small bites, small talk. Jukebox burbles out a track I know by muscle, some old soul song we used to cover before we could afford lawyers. The room smells like coffee and grease.
I can do this. I can do normal.
I wipe salt from my fingers and put the napkin down so I don’t shred it. “I don’t know how to be good at stillness. I’m training for it. Drumming on tables is my patch.”
“You don’t have to be good at it. You just have to stop setting things on fire to make the boredom go away.”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Her phone buzzes on the table, face down. She flips it, sees a headline she doesn’t share, and flips it back. I pretend I didn’t clock it.
I’m hoping it’s not about me. “I didn’t handle it well.”
“Handle what?”
“What he said about you.” I keep my voice flat. “He said it like a dare. So I took the dare. That picture is me failing at stillness.”
Lou studies me across the table. “You don’t have to defend me. I’m not that girl.”
“I know. But I don’t know how to not take the gauntlet when he throws it.”
“Do you think that’s partly me, partly residual stuff from kicking him out?”
