He had to jam a hand between them. Gesture at her, likeget your butt in here.
Things are really bothering him, she thought.The fake emotion, the lovey-dovey stuff. The accidental fingering of his mortal enemy in a tent. Maybe the abrupt writing spurt was even that—a kind of lancing of some inescapable and awful feelings.
She couldn’t sugarcoat the situation, however.
“Oh my god. That is—I mean, that’s gonna be a thing.”
“Can you stop it? Can you make everybody delete their phones?”
“I think you know I cannot. But don’t worry, it’ll play well with the public.”
“It’s not really the public I’m concerned about right now.”
He’d been pacing up to that point. He stopped now. Stared at her, until she had to accept he was talking about her. Somehow, that wordconcernedwas for her. Or at least, something about them both, and their bizarre relationship.
In a way she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk about.
Just pretend it didn’t happen, she willed him, as she eked out two tight words.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t seem it. Disappearing like that.”
“I didn’t disappear. I needed a snack. And a sit-down.”
“Yeah, but you seem different in other ways, too. Doyou think I don’t know that you do? Always sleeping in the car now, looking at me with those wild eyes. And you’re too quiet. No yammering a mile a minute, like normal.”
“Okay, first of all, everybody is a yammerer compared to you. You seem to actively resent that I even make you argue about things. And second of all, you know I have a lot on my mind right now,” she said, then gestured back in the direction of the stage he’d just come from. Though as soon as she did it she knew that wasn’t what it sounded like.
He went very still. His face tightened.
“You mean what I did to you. In the woods.”
“Don’t say it like that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”
“Like you’re a monster who mauled me.”
“Well, doesn’t seem that far from the truth.”
“You can’t be fucking serious. You were gentle as anything. Not to mention the fact that you made me do something that nobody ever has before,” she said, but knew as soon as she had that she shouldn’t have put it like that. His eyes widened—briefly and only slightly, but they did.
And he straightened just a little.
Like an animal bristling.
“I shouldn’t have said that. Let’s just forget that I did,” she ordered him.
He didn’t listen. “Might be a little hard when it’s lodged in my brain like a ten-inch splinter.”
“Sorry,” she tried. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to, I just—I didn’t expect you to—”
“Doesn’t matter why, I don’t care if you did. That’s not what struck me.”
“Then what did?” She said it loud, frustrated now. Hand slapping the ground-floor button, because seriously, why was the elevator not moving? She didn’t know, but it still refused. In fact it didn’t start up until he answered, quietly, to her turned back.
“You said nobody has.”
