Something that he would ask this other girl, maybe, about stuff that wouldn’t even make sense to her. Most likely she had a cute hobby, like knitting socks for cats, and he’d always wanted to know what kind of wool she used. He was like that, after all. The kind of man who genuinely would find value in something, simply because it was what the woman he loved enjoyed.
And she appreciated that, even as it stung just a little.
In fact, it stung quite a lot. She had to busy herself with her glass of milk and the straw in it. She stirred the ice cubes inside, then went to take a sip in the silence that followed. In fact, it was only when she realized how long that silence was going on for that she looked up.
She met his gaze—not far away, as he thought of some other girl.
But steady, and on her, and full of this strange sort of considering.
Like he was weighing some option she’d never be able to understand. Then finally he sat back against that plush pink seat. He almost nodded to himself. And he started in on whatever he had been holding back. “You used to carry a book around with you all the time. It had a green cover, it was old looking. I think there was maybe a tower on the front. Sometimes I’d see you reading it in The Spinning Top, so lost in it that you let your eggs get cold. You’d grimace when you finally remembered your coffee and took a sip. But I’ve never been able to figure out what the title was, and always been too afraid to ask. Even now I don’t know if I should—feels too much like a movie where the guy accidentally reveals he’s a weirdo stalker. But, man, getting to finally know seems worth it,” he said.
And not even in a casual, half-irritated way, either. Likegoddamn, this nothing little puzzle has been irritating me for years. No, no—he said it low, and long, and steady, the way a man might if asked to read a much cherished and never told story aloud. Even though it couldn’t possibly be anything of the kind.
It was all just nothing.
“It’s silly,” she burst out, half-laughing, incredulous. “It’s not even a good book. Or even really a book at all. It was just the novelization of a movie I loved when I was a kid, and not a particularly great one either.Return to Oz, it was called.”
He kept looking at her steadily, however.
Dinner forgotten, everything forgotten.
“Yeah, I don’t care if it’s a worthwhile read.”
“Then why do you want to know so much?”
“Because it mattered to you, kid. I want to understand why it did.”
Do not tell him, she ordered herself. But the problem was, of course, that he already knew. Or at least, he knew enough. He’d seen how she had been in his bedroom and guessed all that about her father. And truthfully, she wasn’t even sure it had been guessing.
She knew some people around town knew about the hospital stay. They rumbled about her having mental problems, hallucinations, that she’d been sent to Belmont to get better.
The only problem came when they thought of it in a bad way.
But he didn’t. So why not? “Because they send Dorothy away in it. They send her away for believing in Oz, even though Oz was real. It was all real and she was right and then they do that to her. They try to take it out of her, all her magic and all her wonder. But then she manages to get away. Someone helps her get away,” she said, doing her best not to sound heartbroken.
Knowing all the while that she did anyway.
“So you like it like the romance novels. It gave what reality didn’t.”
“I don’t know. Sort of. I mean, I did get out of there. I even think sometimes that somebody came for me, too. Though I don’t remember much about it now. It all seems like a dream, the same way all the magic things were just dreams. Just nothingness, I guess. Just the vague impression of calling for help and being sure nobody would come because nobody ever did. And then someone saying…” She shook her head. “This is silly.”
“Tell me it anyway.”
“They said,On your feet, soldier. You know, like Kyle Reese says to Sarah Connor? Which I know definitely can’t be real, but it felt so much like it was. And then it was like I was carried, but that can’t be true either because I came to alone, in my hospital gown. The place burning down behind me. Some paramedic clicking his fingers in my face. Afterward they said the boiler went, but I don’t know, I don’t know. All I do know is that even though I got out, it feels like—”
“You lost Oz anyway,” he finished for her.
She couldn’t reply with theyesshe wanted to, however.
She was too busy trying to swipe away the tears before they finished falling.
“Maybe talking about the weather was a better idea,” she said, and tried to laugh. She speared some dessert with her fork, and ate. She sipped her milk. She wanted to get on with this date. This date that was supposed to be for him.
But that he had somehow made for her.
He was still making it for her, even now.
“I know you don’t really believe that,” he said in that same storyteller’s tone. That lovely rich tone that had her looking back up at him before she could even stop herself. And then he continued, once she had. “I know you know that I welcome every single thing you share with me, even when it’s hard.Especiallywhen it’s hard. Because then it means you trust me, as much as you’ve never been able to with anyone else. So next time you need someone to catch you when you fall, you know you can count on me. And when you recall it, you won’t have to doubt a second time that it was real.”
