“You just never expect it, you know? You never expect to be a bad person.”
Dell only sighed. It made dust from the rug tickle his nose. “Mae.”
“I hate knowing that she hates me. That she’s probably always hated me, ever since, and I deserve it.”
“Not to bruise your ego,” Dell said, “but this was what, twenty years ago? I bet you Becks has probably moved on, Mae. She’s okay.”
“No, I know she is.” Mae frowned, nose crinkling the tiniest bit. “She’s married. I know she’s fine, but it doesn’t change—” And then her whole face crinkled, and she turned it away, facing the front window instead of Dell. He stared at the mop of her pink hair, his mouth parting in disappointment.
“Hey.” Awkwardly, ridiculously, he shuffled his stomach over the rug like a worm. Hesitating only a second, he reached a hand out to rest on her shoulder. Let it trail down her back, the warm fabric of her cardigan, before it came to rest on the rug next to her. “Mae. It’s okay.”
“Maybe the fact that I’m opening a store without her would only make her hate me more.”
“I don’t know,” Dell said. “I don’t think so. I think…” Dell thought back to his own past partners, the things he wished for them, whether things had ended well or not. “I think it might make her happy but in a…bittersweet way, maybe. A complicated way. But that’s how life is most of the time. And anyway, you’re notreallyopening the store for her. I’ve never met Becks, never knew Jesus, but I’ve seen how happy this all makes you. Just you.”
A long pause. Dell weighed the pros and cons of touching her sweater again.
“Will you still be this nice to me when we’re upright again?”
Dell chuckled. “Can’t guarantee it.”
“I can,” Mae said quietly. “I think maybe you’ve always been nice.”
Dell was quiet.
“It’s kind of funny,” she said after a few minutes, voice different, far away sounding. “Books inspired me to get out of the small town I grew up in. And here I am, over twenty years later. And books have brought me back to another one.” And then, before he could respond: “Will you let me sell some of your stuff in the shop? Some of the things from your online store?”
Dell groaned. God, he didn’t feel like thinking about his woodworking right now. He didn’t feel like thinking about anything.
“Dunno.” His own eyelids drooped irrevocably toward the floor. “I should probably check on the dogs. Mae,” he murmured, “can you drive us home?”
“What?” Mae laughed, and fuck, Dell was glad to hear it. “Why can’t you? Dell, you’ve only been chugging orange juice for the last two hours. More orange juice than a grown man should probably consume, really.”
“Aperson”—and Dell knew he wasn’t drunk, but he was tired enough to slur his words anyway—“can drink however much orange juice they want.”
“Well,I’vealmost consumed an entire bottle of champagne, so no, I cannot drive us home.”
“S’okay,” Dell said to the rug. “I live here now.” And then, “I’ve been sleeping like shit.”
Mae was quiet. Until she said, “Do you have trouble sleeping after a trigger? Or just all the time?”
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “And yeah.”
Another minute passed by. Dell was almost fully unconscious.
And then. A set of fingers, in his hair.
“I’m sorry,” Mae whispered, voice close.
Dell wasn’t sure if Mae was apologizing for causing the trigger, or just for the pathetic state of his circadian rhythms in general. Either way, who gave a shit, because Mae’s fingers felt incredible.
They stretched through the short strands of his hair, repetitive, soothing, before they dug in a little deeper, massaging his scalp.
Dell groaned out loud into the rug. It was possible he was drooling.
“Fuck,” he mumbled. “Feels so good.”
He was cocooned in the scent of grapefruit: sharp and clean.
