“What does it say about me, crazy dog lady?” His remark was glib and, she was sure, meant to remind her that if not for Kellen, she’d have some dogs to say good-bye to and not much more. But that wasn’t so much by choice as it was by circumstance. No one wanted to hang out with, date, or even do something as simple as take a walk with someone who talked to dead people—not to mention live with the threat of Satan walloping your ass if you got too close to the medium. Thanks for the reminder.
Her eyes narrowed and her fingers twitched. “Don’t you dare compare us, Clyde Atwell. My life isn’t anything like yours. Mine is all about connecting and even if it’s just with dead people, it’s for a good cause. My situation isn’t by choice. Yours was, filled with cold, sterile labs and some law of averages. I think what yours says is that you think love is a useless emotion that takes up too much of your time—time that could be spent researching the Striped Marsh Frog or something. It says that you don’t think love can be bigger than you are. That you can’t be swept away by it. And now that you’re deader than the extinct Wannanosaurus, you’ll never be able to find out. That should make you very, very sad. Instead all I’m hearing in your voice is dismissal for the silly medium and her idiot notions.”
“Ahhh, the Wannanosaurus. Probably one of the, or maybe even the, smallest bone-headed dinosaurs. Not one of the more infamous either. I’m impressed.”
“Thanks. I’ll tuck that away in my ‘useless bullshit’ files. I think I’m done for tonight.” She threw her inventory sheet on the countertop, then yanked off the full-body apron she always wore in case she spilled a bottle of oil and threw it on the counter.
Rising from the stool he’d been sitting on, he clasped her arm in a light grip when she tried to pass him. “Why are you so angry?”
Yeah. Why was she? Maybe because he’d debased the idea of falling in love to a level that made her feel mocked for believing in it. He’d simplified it, analyzed it, deglorified it to something silly and wasteful. Like it was some chemistry problem to be solved on a chalkboard. And the really horrible thing about that was it was her deepest desire. It was like attacking her dream with an AK-47 and unloading the cartridge.
It was only an opinion, and not one she hadn’t heard before from plenty of men. Why it rubbed her raw because it came from Clyde made no sense. “I’m not angry. I just find this conversation pointless. We have very different views on what love is or isn’t. I’m all about diversity. Vive la ‘behave like a stupidhead.’ I’m good.” And that didn’t sound at all sullen or spiteful. She tried to shrug away from his grasp, but he wouldn’t let her.
Realization spread from one corner of his face to the other. “Ah, wait. I get it. Because I’m not totally wasted, all curled up and fetal over never seeing Tia again, I’m a cold-hearted asshole, right?”
Right. “Whatever.”
Clyde let her arm go, folding his arms over his chest, and loomed because, it would seem, he was gifted like that. “Here’s a little something you don’t know. Tia and I were once involved, yes, but was she the love of my life? No. Was I hers? I doubt that because if that were the case, and your version of love is real, I gotta think she wouldn’t have been skipping off to New York to visit her brother just three months after I annihilated myself. We did date for two years. If your version of love was what she and I had, she’d still be home, sobbing in her pillow and wearing one of my old shirts while her hair got greasy and her hygiene became less of a priority as she grieved me. I liked Tia a lot, but at the point of my death, she was pretty fed up with me and my single-mindedness. She was halfway out the door of our relationship when I blew myself to smithereens. And I wasn’t in love with her, though I did care a great deal about her. I guess if I had been, my work wouldn’t have interfered the way it did. It isn’t that I’m mocking your views on happily ever after, it’s that I haven’t experienced that kind of desire or need with anyone.”
So, yeah. Shit, she’d gone all fist to the sky in protest on him. “Oh,” she muttered with far more contrition than she liked hearing.
“Yeah. Oh.” He stuck his face in hers, craning his neck down at her when he did.
A faint woo to the hoo that Clyde hadn’t been wild about Tia, Hawaiian Tropic hot as she was, made her a little giddy. Dangerously so. She knew what her love-starved mind was toying with, and in her head, she knew that shit had to come to a screeching halt. Loneliness could make you do stupid things. It put your defenses at an all-time low. It was her loins that just didn’t seem to want to play. They needed to be girded. She gave him a coy glance. “Okay. So I made an assumption about you that was unfair. That makes it my turn to apologize again. Sorry.”