“I don’t like that.” He says it earnestly. I can feel his warm breath drape across my mouth.Closer, I think.More.“I want people to be nice to you.”
I’m touched by this show of simple, righteous indignation. Is he starting to feel protective of me?
I don’t respond, too overwhelmed. I think Reid senses this. He stands, sweeps all our wrappers into the paper deli bag, then reaches out his hand for mine.
I walk him the three blocks back to his office. He keeps hold of my hand as we navigate around the crush of suits and tourists milling around Midtown. I leave him at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to his building—it’s imposing, faceless, and it makes me sad to think of him buried in there, another cog in a machine that’s too big for me to understand—but he nobly puts his jacket back on, straightens the lapels, and rearranges the cuffs of his shirt.
Before I leave, he kisses me on the forehead. “See you tonight.”
“Grisham, Steele, Crichton.”
“Steele,” I say without pause.
“Wow. Not even a little bit of hesitation.”
“If I can only read one author for the rest of my life, they need to have a healthy catalog. She’ll keep me entertained. OK, here’s one for you: Stephen King, Jay McInerney, Thomas Hardy.”
“Doesn’t Jay McInerney only have, like, two books? I’m going with Stephen King.”
I shiver. “I’d go with Thomas Hardy. I can’t do horror.”
Reid and I are deep in the stacks at the NYU bookstore.After lunch, I went home, opened up the envelopes that had been inflicting so much misery upon me for the last week, and discovered that, actually, now that I’ve faced it, I could sort of look forward to my first day of classes: Brit Lit at noon and a portraiture workshop at three. My sophomore-year self had looked out for my junior-year self, keeping my mornings open until eleven at the earliest and my Fridays free, other than a Psych 101 lecture at one that I could skip a couple of times if I wanted to, or at least bury myself in the back of the cavernous lecture hall unnoticed by the professor.
When we got to the bookstore, Reid and I collected all the titles I needed surprisingly quickly.Works well with others, I thought, watching him scan my list and navigate between each section of the store. Never in my life have I found efficiency so sexy. We’ve rewarded ourselves with a trip to the quiet basement.
It’s near closing time now, and only two or three other people are down here, loitering around the memoir section, too engrossed in their own browsing to notice us.
Reid is walking ahead of me, but now he turns, gives me one of those upside-down smiles that I’ve started to collect like currency. “Really? No horror?”
I rebalance the pile of books under my arms. Wordlessly, he holds his hands out and does a little beckoning motion with his fingers. I give him the pile, which he carries easily against his side.
“Yeah.” I follow him farther into the stacks. “When I was ten, I caught a few minutes ofPsychoon TV, and it scaredthe shit out of me. After that, I had to shower with the curtain partially open. I really wanted my mom to sit with me in the bathroom, but she’d never coddle me like that.”
“You still showering with the curtain open?”
I laugh. “No.”
“Ah. Too bad.”
And now I’m imagining Reid leaning against my bathroom sink, fully clothed, watching me naked with water streaming over my body. The look in his eyes is satisfied, smug. He reaches out to run his knuckles across my nipple, then across my hip, lower to my thigh...
Reid—the real Reid—interrupts my fantasy. “OK, so we won’t be watchingMiserytogether. How do you feel about supernatural stuff?”
He pulls the corner of a book off a high shelf, considers it, then slots it back into place. I have no idea which section of the store we’re even in now. I’m too focused on the way his shoulder blades shift underneath his white shirt when he reaches for a book, how his scent flares and intensifies in this enclosed space.
“I’m OK with supernatural stuff. I’m not scared of monsters; I’m scared of humans.”
“So maybe there’s a chance you’ll like my screenplay.” He says this to the shelf, like he’s too shy to address me directly.
“You wrote a fantasy script?”
He laughs. “You seem surprised.”
“I just didn’t know you were that kind of nerd.”
“I am one hundred percent that kind of nerd. Butthis isn’t, like,Lord of the Ringshigh fantasy. My brain doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. I’m thinking of it as a dramedy with fantastical elements.” He glances at me and I smile, waiting for the elevator pitch. “A guy moves in with his girlfriend and discovers that her roommates are vampires and she’s their human familiar. But he can’t tell her he knows.”
“Secret vampires!”
