Then he suddenly spoke, and apparently it was.
“I just went with the one who is smiling the least,” he said, and the moment he did all that imaginary heat and tension and weird imaginings went away. She couldn’t even see the pink above his collar anymore. Her sweater felt normal again. Everything was fine, it was fine, and normal, and businesslike.
“Great. Now we can move on to hotels and flights,” she said, with such commitment to being breezy she couldn’t even hear the shake that wanted to be in her voice. And apparently he couldn’t either, because he went right back to his MO.
“Right. Right. And byflightsyou mean something thatjustsoundslike me being trapped in a steel tube, with hundreds of people I don’t know, and then launched tens of thousands of feet into the air.”
“You’re not seriously afraid of flying.”
“Nobody saidafraid. Did you hear me sayafraid?”
“I don’t really have to when your voice goes husky over the wordpeople.”
“Yeah, that’s called being a misanthrope. A fact that you well know when it comes to me. And even if you didn’t, look around you. Do you see anybody pleased to see me? Coming near me? Is the waitress lingering to chitty-chat? No. Because I’ve lived in this town for five years and they all know the score by now. Stay away.”
“I heard it’s more than that. That they have their pitchforks out for you.”
“Well, why wouldn’t they? I am, after all, a horrifying monster.”
He stood as he said it. As if it to make it seem more throwaway, more like a joke. But she caught it in his voice—a hint of something else. Bitterness, she wanted to call it, as jolting to her as that strange eye contact had been. As him choosing Louisa Yates, with her black hair and her black eyes.
And the fringe, she thought, as he threw money down on the table. Not as blunt as hers, more feathery, but still still still. It weighed on her mind as he said, “I’m doing it in a car and nothing else.” And not just because it was a particularly heavy and utterly alien-to-her thought.
No, there was also the fact that said thought would be there, beside her, as they did this.
As they crossed the country, side by side, in a space far smaller than a plane.
Say you’re afraid of driving, she told herself—but too late, too late.
He had already gone.
Then
She didn’t mean to be passionate about the book. She had just stayed up all night reading it, and it left her punch-drunk and overflowing with feelings, in that way all great reads did. And then Professor Dunderson asked why she looked so wild-eyed, why she couldn’t sit still, and it had simply spilled out of her.
Even stranger: it continued to spill out of her long past the point where people’s eyes usually glazed over. For once she hadn’t been concerned that she was taking up too much space, hyper-fixating in a way others wouldn’t understand. As if college and writing classes were giving her someget out of going on about these thingscard. A free pass to at least occasionally wax lyrical about books.
It was only when she was done that she realized her mistake.
Because sure, most people in the room weren’t wrinkling their noses at her, the way many had in high school. The majority seemed to find this completely ordinary, if not as exciting as she did.
But there was one who didn’t.
The guy with the cool comments.
The one who hadn’t turned out to be cool at all.
Caleb Miller. Caleb Miller, who had now three times seen fit to tell her that her stories were unrealistic and lovestruck. And who was currently staring across the table at her, in the ringing silence that followed her passionate waterfall of words about what it meant to her to read that maybe humanity shouldn’t go on if it were willing to sacrifice children, a little girl, a girl like her.
And he looked like every one of them had slapped him.
His eyes were actually big—only momentarily, but still. They were almost moons before he seemed to realize she was watching, and forced them back to normal size. Plus there was this stillness to him, this quiet that she didn’t quite understand, until he got himself back together. His chest moved, and it became clear. He had been holding his breath. Or his breath had caught in his throat.
She was sure of it, even as he sat back in his seat and folded his arms over his body. Blew out in this withering way. Acted like it hadn’t knocked the oxygen out of his lungs. “That sounds ridiculous,” he said, in this offhanded kind of way. And she knew, when he did, that he had meantshewas ridiculous. That his shock had been over just how ridiculous a person could be, in fact.
Becausehewas the thing that was here to remind her this wasn’t different from high school. It was just as cold toward cringe people like her. People who could be a little messy, a little too passionate, a little too willing to tell things to strangers who didn’t care.You need to be more circumspect, more professional, she told herself.
Though she couldn’t quite let him have that much power.
