The Story Guy (Novella) (6 page)

I ignore the way my heart has changed rhythm. It’s not as if he’s given anything away, but this is him. This is his work, the culmination of his life as a student, the blueprint of the walls that contain him in the daytime. The easy way he shares this task colors in his outline in some ineffable way that drags at me.

More than our obvious chemistry and mutual attraction, this tidbit makes me long to have my arm in his, share a meal, spoon in bed.

His technical recitation isn’t some true revelation, and it throws into relief everything I don’t know about him, but it came so easily that I can’t help but think I might be able to pick his locks. Come across a latch. Like a thief casing a possible hit, I hope I can hide my reaction.

I look down and straighten my skirt. “Aren’t you violating some kind of attorney-client privilege there, counselor?”

“Well, you asked what I was going to do, and that’s exactly it. Unless you have some vested interest in a piece of land you can’t find that has nothing on it but several acres of third-growth forest, I think we’re good.” He swings his leg over the picnic bench, so now we’re side by side.

He’s already looking over at his bike.

“What does GearTattoo mean?” It isn’t fair to keep him like this. Just a little more.

“Wait—first, what are
you
going to do this afternoon, Carrie the Lieberrian?” He looks over, wary, but there are good crinkles around his eyes.

I can’t explain it, but I blush at his question. “Well, have you heard of Suki Malahar?” His face is blank, and he shakes his head. “Suki Malahar is like J. K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer and Neil Gaiman all rolled into one—at least in terms of adolescent excitement over her books.”

“Well, I’ve definitely read Rowling and Gaiman’s books, so maybe I should check out this Malahar.”

“Maybe you should. Anyway, the latest book in her horror series came out yesterday. Tuesdays are new release days in the book world. We often have special programming on Wednesdays after school for our adolescent and young adult readers, so this afternoon it’s all Suki, all the time. A big pile of the books to check out, bookmarks, quiz games, a chance to win some posters of the cover, and cookies. I bet federal contracts don’t have cookies.”

“Or cool bookmarks.” He grins. And when he does that, I still can’t get over how it unfastens so much about him. His shoulders get looser; his hands come uncurled. Making him really smile like that feels like I solved a difficult problem, even if I wouldn’t be able to show my work. To explain exactly how I just know I can coax him away from the center of his labyrinth.

“Well, I’ll save you a bookmark. Besides being a fan myself, I’m excited not to have our regular staff meeting.”

He balances his right ankle over his left knee and starts rolling up his pant leg. He is getting ready to ride away. But he touches my shoulder and points at his lean, hard calf.

“Gear tattoo. If you look here, you can see where the chain has worked the dark grease into my leg over time, this gray arch,” he explains, tracing a shadow in his skin. “No matter how much I scrub, it doesn’t really ever come off.”

I want to trace it, too, but I sit on my hands. “So you must ride a lot?”

“I live close to downtown, so it’s how I get pretty much everywhere. My vehicle
is impractical to keep fueled for commuting, or to park.” He stands up, and I know there is no way to keep him any longer. When I stand, I notice he left his phone on the picnic table. I grab it to hand over, and he sees and starts to reach for it, and then I am overcome by a dangerous compulsion to complicate.

“Just a sec—I’ll sneak myself in here.” I hold the phone close to my chest and quickly find his contact list to add my name. His hand is still outreached, and his expression is worried, but it’s done. “Just because it’s there doesn’t mean you have to use it.”

I don’t mention his surprisingly short contact list. I don’t think there are more than four or five other numbers.

I give him his phone, and our fingers touch. I think he’s going to withdraw, but he leans over and kisses my forehead. His mouth lingers, and then I feel the tips of his fingers brush softly down my forearm, all the way over the palm of my hand, where he traces something I don’t catch, or a random pattern. Before I can step into him again, he turns to unlock his bike and tips its scratched-up frame to his thigh. I can feel the phantom shivers of his touch all over.

Then he straddles his bike, clicks on his helmet, and takes off, peddling faster and harder than I think is necessary.

Friday, 7:56 p.m.

Not a good day. Today is a day that, when I let myself into my studio apartment, the antique Iranian wool rug that reaches almost baseboard to baseboard and the comfy corduroy couch and the art all over the walls and the windows that go all the way up to the cove in the ceiling don’t give me the cozies. They give me the lonelies. There isn’t even a woman-of-a-certain-age cat to slide out of a windowsill and greet me. Not even a goldfish to swish its tail and surface for flakes. There isn’t even a fucking plant. Why don’t I have a plant?

I turn on the stereo, but the music is irritating. Peeking behind the sandalwood screen I use to divide my sleeping area, I see I didn’t make the bed. Which is also irritating. When I rummage around my teeny galley kitchen, all I find is yucky take-out leftovers and a quarter-bottle of amaretto, which I don’t even remember buying, let alone drinking three-quarters of. No real food, no wine. No cats. No plants. No good music, no housekeeper. It’s like the saddest version of
Goodnight Moon
ever.

Work has been a nightmare since yesterday, when the city handed down some upsetting funding realities. No one can answer how these “realities” will affect auxiliary programs, such as tutoring services—the very ones that last year the city touted for increasing inner-city graduation rates, not to mention the ones that pay 30 percent of my salary.

I left the meeting totally gutted, feeling unmoored and hopeless. Shelley had caught up with me in the conference room, where I was staring at a huge stack of boxes of donated tutoring materials that had just been delivered.

“Hey, Carrie, chin up.” Shelley squeezed me around the waist, weirdly perky.

“Why are
you
so cheerful? Part of
your
job’s on the line, too.”

Shelley shrugged, her vintage-y earrings tangling in her dark hair. “I don’t know. I mean, sure, it really sucks, but I’ve already been thinking about talking to the director about easing into three-quarters time.”

“What? Really? Why?”

Shelley squeezed me again. “Well. It’s just that I’ve been getting a lot more involved with the urban homesteaders’ collective, teaching cheese classes here and there, going to more classes. Getting really involved with all these new people in the group. And Will’s bike garage is doing really well and he wants to expand a bit, which takes up time. And … well.” She looked at me and away again, her expression unknowable and frustrating. “Will and I have started talking.”

I searched her face, having no idea what she was talking about. “Help me out here, Shelley.”

“You know.” She smiled. “Babies. And shit.”

I guffawed, but it sounded kind of choked. My stomach felt like it was floating on the outside of my body. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She nudged me with her elbow. “Auntie Carrie. Maybe.”

I looked at the tower of boxes as if it had some answers. Shelley and babies. Babies and Shelley. “That’s—awesome, Shel.”

She laughed. “Try not to knock me over with your enthusiasm.”

“No, it’s—awesome.”

She laughed again. “So you said.” She screwed her faced into a stern expression, which on Shelley just looked kind of like she was trying not to laugh. “I know you love this job, honey, but my point in telling you this is that there are lots of other things to love.”

I cleared my throat. Hard. “I know that. I love lots of stuff. And people.”

“Oh, Carrie. Of
course
you do. You’re amazing. I just mean—” She looked up at the ceiling. Looked back at me. “How was lunch Wednesday?”

I laughed, the threat of tears totally shattered. “No comment.”

“Oh my God! No comment! I can’t remember the last time you had no comment.”

“I know.” Though I hadn’t heard a word or gotten a computer nudge from my no comment since we nearly went up in flames together on Wednesday.

“I’m with Justin. I think this—thing—is good for you.”

“Yeah?” I pressed my hand against my belly, trying to soothe the lurch.

Shelley hip-bumped me. “Yeah. Now get out of here. Go home.”

But now, I’m home, and I am lonely. Hungry. My retreat feels stale and empty.
Story Boy has been radio silent, not surprisingly, and thinking about his kisses shoves a big, fat ache against the worry.

I am definitely getting a goldfish this weekend.

My phone lights up and buzzes from inside my Reading Is Sexy work tote. Fishing for it, I am certain that it’s Shelley, checking on me to make sure I’m not sitting around my apartment alone, obsessing about everyone canning green beans and making babies without me.

Part of my mood can be attributed to undischarged snark.

But when I pull out my phone, it’s a local number, unknown to me. Surely not—

“Hello?” So breathless,
jeez
.

“Carrie?” Him.
Him!

“You called—I actually can’t believe it.”

“Well, I’ve been on IM for a while, and you weren’t showing, and—”

“You have? I’ve been working late.”

“Are you home now? If this isn’t a good time …” He sounds too anxious to let him go. He sounds amazing.

“No—it’s fine. Perfect, actually. I just got home and was really crabby, but you’ve fixed that.” He really has. Tight budgets, empty rooms … I curl up into the corner of my sofa, which is suddenly cozy again. Even the colors in the rug warmed up and got friendly.

“I have? Well. You’re welcome.”

I laugh, because I can hear the almost-laugh of relief in his voice. “What are you doing? To what do I owe this completely unexpected pleasure?”

“I just—suddenly found my evening free, which doesn’t happen often. And I was pacing around my house, half getting ready for a long bike ride, and realized all I wanted was to hear your voice.” He clears his throat. It sounds like he breathed out hard, too. Like he’s nervous, like maybe he’s wanted to do this all along.

Maybe he rides away so fast because he’s afraid he’ll stay. And why would that be so scary?

“Here it is, my voice.”

“Yeah.” I can hear him take a long inhale. “There it is. Tell me where you are.”

The sound of his voice, right in my ear, is almost overwhelming. It feels forbidden, I think. Which it is. He wasn’t supposed to permit this. His voice vibrating against my face through the phone is out of bounds. “Like I said, I just got home.”

“Right, but what can you see from where you are?” I hear a little rustling squeak through the line, as if he has settled into a chair or sofa.

He’s not going anywhere; it’s as if we’re connected by a long, taut string knotted into the bottoms of our tin cans, stretching over all the dark front stoops and backyards between us.

“I can see everything.” Yes. I
can
.

“Everything?”

“Yeah, I live in a studio. I’m on the sofa, and from here I can see the tiny galley kitchen, and the door to the tinier bathroom, and all my stuff, and the screen I keep my bed behind.”

“Are you messy or neat?” His voice is low and easier than I’ve ever heard it. I like unexpectedly free Brian.

“I was just beating myself up before you called about my unmade bed and fridge full of inedible takeout. But it’s a small apartment, and I’ve lived here a long time, so everything has its place. Where are you?”

“Couch. The room’s dark, deliberately, so I can’t see the mess. My housekeeping skills miss a lot more than the bed linens and refrigerator.”

“Ah. Typical bachelor’s pad?”

He’s silent a beat too long, and my heart sends out a brief glaze of ice. “Something like that. My sister’s my roommate and she’s not home tonight.”

“You live with your sister?” I feel we’re on the edge, the very edge.

“Yeah. She doesn’t work and has some health problems, so I help her out.”

And now he is silent, other than the fact that I can hear the period, extremely loud, at the end of his sentence. The phone gives me a little injection of bravery, however. “Are you guys close?”

Another silent beat, and I’m about to stutter over it, but he says, “I’ve always been there for her—especially since our parents split up, and when I was in college, our dad died. Our mom lives in Tampa and we don’t talk with her much.”

His voice suggested there were six stories in that story, though he was trying to act casual.

“Is she older or younger?”

“A few years younger. So why were you crabby?”

Well
. There is reticence, and then there is a bolted steel door. “Boring reasons. Library funding getting dry, friends having a life without you, spinster librarians with a fondness for personal ads getting lonely.”

He laughs, finally, vibrating whatever that sex nerve is in your ear that connects to your pelvis. “Why so lonesome, Carrie the Lieberrian?”

“It’s very sad. There are no bike-riding federal contract attorneys in my apartment.” If my phone had a cord, I would be twirling it around my finger right now.

“That
is
sad. Did you look everywhere? Sometimes they hide.”

“Is that right? Well, since you’re a bit of an expert, where do you suggest I start looking? This apartment, like I said, is very small.”

“How about this. If a bike-riding federal contract attorney were in your apartment, where would you
want
to find him?”

“Or her.”

He snorts, which, if we are having the kind of phone call I think we’re about to be having, is kind of adorable. “Or
her
. But let’s assume I’m a better expert on the male variety of the BRFCA.”

“Berfkuh? What does …? Oh. Har. You’re quick, you. And if you’re so quick, why are you making up acronyms right now? Unless you haven’t figured out that we’re kind of—” I suck in a breath, closing my eyes, shifting my legs against my chest on the sofa, willing him to understand what I mean. Surely he knows what I mean. Surely the only reason he would call me, if he doesn’t want to talk, never wants to talk, is to suspend his rules another way.