“Accepting general handsomeness and finding someone attractive are not the same thing. Come on—you know that.”
“Your handsomeness is pretty far from general, Holden.”
He went very quiet after that. So quiet she wanted to glance at him and check if he was okay. She’d managed to inch her gaze away during this conversation from hell, but really what good did that do her? Without his massively expressive face she could hardly understand a thing.
She could hardly understand it anyway, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was that he’d been wondering if she found himgross. All this time she’d been thinking of her massive virgin status and her terror of big men, sure that he must understand. He understood everything else. Yet somehow, he hadn’t understood this in the slightest. He even expressed the sentiment again, just to drive it home.
“I don’t care if it’s general or not. I only care how you feel about it. How you feel about me as a person,” he said, and oh her heart ached to hear the words.
It was impossible not to offer him something, after that.
Even if the something was completely stupid.
“I feel...nice. I feel really nice,” she said, then did her best not to wince. He couldn’t see because she’d dipped her head behind twelve copies ofThe Terminator, but it seemed like a good idea to try anyway. If she didn’t, he’d probably hear that discomfort in her voice when she next tried to speak.
And things were already difficult enough as it was.
“So what was the problem, then?” he asked, but she couldn’t come out with the right answer. The right answer was hideous and humiliating, so instead she had to shout a false one really loudly.
“The problem was that I’d just met you!”
“Are you sure that’s it?”
“I’m absolutely not sure at all but let’s just go with it.”
“I don’t think I’m going to be able to go with it. We hadn’t just met when I touched your cheek in the closet, or brushed against your arm on the way out of the kitchen. But you kind of reacted the same when those things happened too.”
“Okay, well what about if I tell you that I was just afraid?” she tried, because at least that was partially true. She was afraid—but maybe not entirely of the thing she then pointed out. “You’re a big impressive movie star and I once had a crush on you. The whole thing was just a bit too crazy and overwhelming—I mean when it happened to Annie Wilkes she bludgeoned his feet with a mallet.”
“Is that who you think you look like here?”
“I’m praying I don’t. That’s why I’m making jokes.”
“You don’t seem like a crazed fan for fuck’s sake. Iwishyou seemed more like a crazed fan because good goddamn am I a crazed fan of yours. For once in my life I’m the one who wants to write someone’s name on my fucking pencil case and it’s killing me, it’s absolutely killing me.”
Dear Lord in heaven, had he really just said that?
She had to double check, just to be sure.
“You want to write my name on your pencil case?”
“I do, I really do,” he said, tone so wistful she could hardly stand to hear it. Every muscle in her body seemed to melt the moment he spoke, and her resistance went with each one. Everything just ran right out of her and all over the floor.
“Well in that case I do too,” she tried—tentatively.
But he didn’t make her regret it. Not one little bit.
“Then why are you still standing over there? Come on over here, honey. Come on and come to me before I die of wanting you to.”
She tried, she really did. Her heart wanted nothing more than to march to where he was—but then her heart wasn’t really the problem. The fact that his words were starting to sink in was. He’d saidpencil case. He’d saidcome to me before I die of wanting you.
She simply wasn’t used to things like that. She barely understood what romance entailed, and there he was rolling great waves of it right over her. It was incredible she was still standing, never mind actively moving toward him.
“I can’t. I can’t. I’m too nervous now.”
“Sure you can. Here, take my hand. I’ll pull you through like Morten Harket from A-ha in that music video where he takes her out of the real world and into a drawing,” he said, which made it both worse and better all at the same time. Now she was close to swooning, but at least her power to make normal words was back.
