“It’s fine. I’m fine. I’m fine about it.”
“Well, I’m not. I don’t like it at all. In fact it makes me feel a little sick.”
“Itdoes? How sick? Sick like you need to lay down? Sick likeyou need some ginger ale and one of those sticks in your mouth? Sick like I need to call an ambulance? How far is the sickness along, is it close to your brain? Or your heart? Which is the most important again? I don’t remember. Lemme just grab my guide to medical problems with human bodies,” he said. Or, rather, he rambled it in an increasingly agitated manner.
He even started to head inside his bedroom to retrieve whatever weird-sounding book he was talking about until she touched his arm and waved in his face. “Jack, stop, stop, for goodness’ sake, stop. I didn’t mean that literally. I meant it in the, you know,I’m sad that people are awfulway.”
“Okay, but you being sad isn’t any better. How in the fried ham bone do I get you out of sadness? I have no books for that.”
“You don’t have to have any books for that. Honestly, you shouldn’t even be trying to soothe me. I don’t need any soothing.Youdo,” she insisted—much to his amusement. He scoffed, and his scoff then turned into a chuckle, and the chuckle gradually slowed and sank until finally he seemed to realize:
She wasn’t chuckling with him.
“You can’t be serious,” he said.
“Why on earth not?”
“Because… I mean, well… look at me. I don’t need something like that. I’m a slab of meat, a granite rock face. Nothing gets by this wall enough to need whatever it is you’re suggesting here.” He gestured at the ideas he clearly imagined she was having. Shook his head, like they were the most absurd things in the world. Though even as he did, she could see his bluster fading. She could make out the considering look, slowly taking over his face. Then he glanced at her, his gaze just a little bit anxious. “Just for the sake of argument, though, what is it that you’re suggesting here?”
And now she had to shrug and act casual while her hearttried to punch out of her body and smother him in love. “I don’t know, to be honest. Depends what the wall would be okay with tolerating,” she said, then watched that anxiety drop, too. All in one go, right down into what could only be described as hunger.
“Anything you would be willing to give,” he burst out with, like a man finally being offered a drink after a thousand years lost in the desert. He even half reached out a hand, as if expectingthatto be the soothing thing. A businesslike shake, or maybe a gentle squeeze.
Though he couldn’t even seem to keep anticipating that.
He pulled the hand back after no more than second. Made a fist, and then cupped his other one around it. Like he needed to hide what he’d been going for. Like even that was too much to hope for. And it tore at her so brutally that for a moment she couldn’t remember how careful she was supposed to be about these things. She somehow forgot a lifetime of curbing her effervescent affection, hertoo muchmanner, her need to help and comfort and be kind.
She just shoved her arms around him.
And only afterward realized what she had done.
Somehow her leg had ended up between his. Her entire chest was crushed against what felt like his stomach—maybe even lower than his stomach, if she was being honest. Plus she’d somehow let her face make contact with his chest. She’d pressed her cheek there, like couples did in movies while in bed together.
All of which was mortifying on its own.
But then there waswhoshe had done it to. A man so gruff and closed off that sayinghellowas often a step too far for him, familiarity wise. He rarely ever called anyone by their actual name; she’d never seen him shake a single person’s hand; if someone satone row down in the theatre he’d move to the other side of the place.
One time she’d seen him leave in the middle of a movie because his seat wasn’t far enough away from someone else.The Sixth Sense, it had been. She’d wondered forever afterward if he still thought Bruce Willis was alive in it. And now here she was, superglued to his body.
She wasn’t surprised when he immediately went rigid.
Or that he seemed to jerk back—not so hard that he managed to get free of her, but enough that it was really obvious. She almost pulled away then and there, and only stopped when she realized what he was doing with his arms. He had flung them up when she barged into him, far away from her body. And at first they hung there, stiffly, like he’d been turned to stone.
But then they started to tremble a little.
Like it was a monumental effort to keep them up and away from her.
Until finally he seemed to break. “Uhhhhh, hey, hey, hello, I don’t know what I’m doing, kid. I don’t know how to do this, I don’t know where to put my arms or my hands, help me. Help me, please, I’m losing it, tell me what to do before I do something hideous,” he suddenly burst out in a voice that got more frantic with every word he spoke. By the time he got to the end he sounded almost incoherent.
Which was a relief, in one way.
She hadn’t done something he was repulsed by.
But in another, it was horrible, it was a nightmare. All she could think about was how he must have gotten this way. So unsure and so unable to do something so simple. So nervous about getting it wrong.Surely his parents must have hugged him at least, she found herself thinking.
However, it made her heart sink to do it.
Because of course the answer had to be no.
