“Could be that it still is. But, maybe sometimes, people just need something extra to take them the rest of the way. Maybe they need to feel like they’re doing something, too.” He paused, and this time she knew his word measuring was all for her. All of this was all for her. “Or possibly, they just need to see with their own eyes that the world isn’t always as cruel as it often seems. That you can trust in something, and not have it let you down.”
He means himself,she thought.He means that he’s thesomething.
Then had to swallow the lump in her throat.
“I think I have seen that. I think I do see that.”
“Good. Because the world wants you to.”
“I know. The world is kinder than I ever imagined anyone could be.”
He fell silent then—though, she couldn’t tell why. It seemed like he hadn’t realized the subtext of the conversation. Like he didn’t know it sounded as if he was talking about him. Or, at the very least, he hadn’t been prepared for her to agree like that.
But she couldn’t say for sure.
In fact, that was the other problem with her dreams of one day being shrink.
“Sometimes though, I just don’t think I know people well enough to do it anymore. I’ve lost my knack for understanding motivations and secret feelings and all of that shit.”
“You think so? You seem pretty good at it to me.”
“I don’t see how you could know. You’ve got me more figured out than I’ve got you.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” he said, and that seemed to be the end of things. He fell silent. Her apartment building was right around the corner she’d pointed to. In a second, he would pull into the spot outside, and that would be it. Or so she thought.
But then he spoke again, once they were parked.
Abruptly, quietly, without looking at her.
“The forcefield you said I have. How thick would you say it is?”
“Probably the equivalent of three buses circling you at all times.”
“Pretty substantial then, huh. Nothing is getting through that sucker.”
“I’m fairly convinced I could stab you, and the knife would ping off.”
“So, if I had secret feelings, nobody should ever know any of them.”
“I don’t see how anybody could.”
“That’s what I thought.” He paused just long enough to kill the engine. Then when he spoke again, it was into that suddenly silent darkness. “Why do I read romance novels?”
“I don’t know. I thought you didn’t want to talk ab—”
“Yeah, and now I do. So, come on. Tell me.”
“Maybe there’s nothing to tell.”
He shook his head at that. “Oh, I know you know that’s not true.”
“It would just be a guess.”
“So let me hear it.”
She would have hesitated, if he hadn’t sounded so adamant.
But then, maybe he knew that. Maybe he knew he had to push, to stop her second guessing and doubting and all the other things she did now.
