A holdover leaf from autumn fell from a tree as if to prove the graveyard’s bareness.
“Void?” I turned around, confused, only to find him still leaping manically across the graveyard.
He swatted at his arms. “Spider!”
Oh, right. Afraid of spiders.
But this wasreallyafraid.
Void jumped around, his mechanical voice altered into something higher, like he was screaming. He hopped on one foot, then the other, swiping at the fabric.
He bent down on another swipe, and I got a flash of the back of his neck. He had rich, dark tanned skin, like an olive tree in the sun. That was dusted in something white. Flour? And a birthmark that looked a little like a horned goat.
I stepped toward him, like I should help.
At my touch, Void snapped up. “Is it gone?”
“Oh…” I hadn’t seen it, but that struck me as the wrong thing to say. “Um. I think so.”
“You think so?” He spun around, as if he’d catch the spider on his back. “Fucking spiders.”
chapter
twelve
SHAY
I watched my sister’s jumping spider play invisible bongos.
The week passed without word from Void. Which shouldn’t be surprising, as we’d agreed to this ahead of time. One night, no strings attached. Not to mention that while I’d gotten an orgasm, he’d gotten traumatized.
After the spider cockblock, Void walked me back to my car. And that was it, the last time I saw him.
For the most part, I’d let it go.
Really, I had.
I didn’t check my stories to see if he’d watched (he hadn’t). The memory of me lying in the graveyard after getting the best orgasm of my fucking life totally didn’t haunt me at night. I didn’t start reading a book only to replace the hero with his gravelly, mechanical voice then spend the rest of the night unable to sleep.
Nope.
That was not me.
By Saturday, and yet another book club, I’d tried very hard to banish the memories to the same part of me that imprisoned thetime I bled through my pants in junior high.Ididn’t do it. Some younger, uncooked version of me did.
“Something in the book world died the day we stopped getting half-naked men on the cover,” Eames said.
“Objectively insane, because half of them never even matched the hero,” Lithie said.
I tried to focus on the current bookish argument heating up Eames and Lithie. Something about illustrated book covers versus the man-chesty covers.
It wasweirdto go from talking to someone every night to total radio silence. Impossibly, I’d gotten attached to the stranger at the end of the line.
Maybe he’d thought I was all bark and no bite. Saying I wanted all this stuff, then chickening out.
“It’s a half-naked chest, it doesn’t need to?—”
“I have something to confess,” I said, cutting off Eames’s argument.
