“Okay, lucky coincidence. Can I get you a burger?” She looks taken aback. “When you get off work?”
This is a fail, too much too soon. Her eyes are back to scanning the street. She says, “I’m kind of agoraphobic. Do you know what that is?”
“Isn’t that when you can’t leave your house? You might be cured.”
“Read up. Jeez, do you seriously want to debate this? I think I know what I’ve got.”
“Sorry, rude.”
“So rude.”
I touch her shoulder. “What happens if you get to work late?”
She rolls her eyes. But she doesn’t walk away.
30
Cat
He’s standing in the shade in the Food 4 Less parking lot. Hunched over his phone like he’s afraid it’s going to jump out of his hands.
Then he sees me. Springs up. Comes bounding over. Okay, not exactly bounding. Too puppyish for him. Moving very fast and very intentionally.
Toward me.
I tell myself this is okay. It’s an I-found-him thing and, therefore, meant to be. This is an example of the universe providing.
I get that it’s providing the exact thing I’m supposed to avoid.
A human guy.
But it’s like stumbling over a lucky penny, shiny and heads up. The universe doesn’t rain lucky pennies. When it does, you pick one up.
No! Don’t pick him up! Turn! Walk away!
The space between us is closing, like air being squeezed out of a rapidly collapsing lung.
Then he wants to know if I’m following him.
Way too self-confident.
“You wish!” My head is so buzzing, I’m talking on autopilot. “How do I know it’s not you stalking me?”
“I do wish.” J frowns. “Why would I stalk you? You’re not that friendly. And stalking entails lurking—correct me if I’m wrong—and there’s no lurking going on.”
“Great. No lurking.”
Then he wants to go out for a burger. I try to tell him how I can’t. How I’m agoraphobic, which I might have gotten slightly wrong.
But it’s obvious I want to.
It’s like my muscle memory of a come-on smile is too much to overcome.
Great.
I’m transforming backward. Turning right back into the self I can’t be anymore. The self who hops into the back of a guy’s car on a quiet country road because she likes him too much.
The self with no judgment and bad taste in boys.
J tilts his head. “If burgers are out of the question, do we want more ice cream?”
“Seriously, why are you here?”
He groans and looks put out. It’s not his worst look. “Because this is the only place other than Starbucks on Hill where I get any kind of reception.”
“What’s wrong with the Starbucks on Hill?”
J shades his eyes with his hand. Makes a big deal of surveying the parking lot. Looks cute. “Is this your personal domain? Cat-landia, is it? Should I have my passport stamped on my way out of the lot?”
“Stay! Jeremiah, I don’t want to interrupt you.”
“Jeremiah!” He hammers his right fist against his chest. “Shot through the heart. Remind me of my name, and you’ll have to make it up to me.”
I’m debating whether it would be weirder to walk away or weirder to stay, act somewhat cold, and induce him to walk away. Which wouldn’t be a problem if I hadn’t crossed the street in the first place.
“It’s just more ice cream,” he says. “You do eat, right?”
J, you have no idea how much I eat. I ate potato chips for breakfast. In the past week, I’ve baked Mrs. Podolski three pies, two breads, and snickerdoodles.
He says, “You want a sundae? I have Nutella at my place, and cherries.”
Oh God, Nutella! My favorite food group. And he wants to feed me cherries.
No way. I have Nutella at home. I have cinnamon bread I baked Mrs. Podolski to spread it on. I can buy cherries.
What am I doing?
Walking down the street with him is what.
Yes, but if he’s stalking me, why didn’t he follow me all the way home? I live alone in a tiny garage behind Mrs. Podolski’s house. It has a window you can open by pushing it with your pinkie.
If he were here to finish me, I’d be finished.
J says, “Or do you want to cut to the chase and get some beers?”
“No chase! No drinks!”
“Kidding,” he says. “I figured if I couldn’t buy you a burger, most likely I couldn’t get you drunk.”
“Do girls follow you home when you say stuff like this?”
“All the time.”
I sock him on the arm. This seems to make him happy. Everything I say or do seems to make him happy. Just glancing at me makes him grin like an idiot.
He says, “Use your words. You’re unusually violent for a short person.”
I sock him again.
He lives on the ground floor of an old green wooden house, subdivided into apartments. I figure, worst case, I can kick out a window.
31
Jack
I’ve got her.