Funny Story, page 10
“Here.” He draws me in against his chest, so that we’re almost fitted together like we’re on a sled, him in back, me in front, and his arms folded around mine, blocking the worst of the wind.
I shiver again as I nestle back against him, snapping a few more pictures.
Honestly, my head is swimming from all these unfamiliar sensations, and I’m not sure whether I’m still taking pictures for any reason other than not quite wanting to acknowledge how good it feels to be curled up against him. It’s been so long since I’ve been curled up against anyone.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” he says.
I lower the phone in front of me, and glance over my shoulder at him. “I know that.”
“You were probably right,” he says. “They’re probably not even jealous. And even if she was, so what? As it turns out, it doesn’t make me feel any less like shit.”
“It makes me feel less like shit,” I say.
His brow lifts skeptically. “Does it?”
“Okay, not exactly,” I admit. “But it makes me mad that she, like, thinks you need her approval to move on, or something. If she was so in love with Peter, she never should’ve strung you along like that, but she did, and she dumped you in the worst possible way, and then for her to just insist that you view her kindly—to try to make you not mad, instead of just letting you move on . . . it’s selfish.
“So maybe it’s immature and stupid. But it does make me feel a little better, to think that maybe she’ll see these pictures and remember that, even if she’s not overall an asshole, she was the asshole in this scenario, and she didn’t appreciate you, and she should have. Even if all that meant was letting you go before telling my boyfriend she was in love with him, instead of keeping you on the back burner in case Peter turned her down.
“It makes me feel a teensy, tiny bit better to think she could see a picture of me sitting in your lap and staring adoringly at you and remember that you deserved that all along.”
His smile unzips slowly, from one side of his mouth. After a long moment, he leans forward and presses a kiss to my temple. “Thank you,” he says, arms tightening around me.
My body warms as if I’d cannonballed into a heated pool. “It’s just the truth.” I turn my eyes to the water, my blood humming with nervous energy.
We’re done taking pictures, but neither of us moves. It feels too good, to be wrapped in someone’s arms, protected from the wind and listening to the lake’s easy rhythm, feeling Miles’s breath move through him until mine syncs up without even trying.
“This is nice,” I say, sort of dreamily and entirely unintentionally. The few times I’ve smoked weed, this has always been the primary effect: a feeling that the cord between my brain and mouth has been snipped, and I have no control over what I’m saying.
Miles nods against the side of my head. “It is,” he agrees.
“Miles,” I say.
“Hm?”
I—and the weed—tell him, “I think you might be the nicest person I’ve ever met.”
“I’m not being nice when I tell you not to move away,” he says. “I like hanging out with you. And you’re the best roommate I’ve ever had by a landslide.”
“You mean I’m clean,” I say.
“Learn to take a compliment,” he says.
“See?” I say.
“See what?” he asks.
I turn to look at him. “Even when you try to be mean, you’re nice.”
His eyes seem to spark when he smiles. “I’ll try harder.”
We go back to sitting there, touching, watching bonfires dance and the water roll.
10
SATURDAY, JUNE 1ST
77 DAYS UNTIL I CAN LEAVE
Miles and I pass the next week without so much as brushing shoulders in the kitchen.
I don’t think either of us is actively avoiding the other—it’s more like, we both suddenly remember we don’t know each other and have nothing in common beyond our hilariously bad breakups. We’re back in the territory of polite nods, separate dinners, and conversation made via monosyllable.
When we got home, he made a big show of scribbling WANING BAY TOURISM on the calendar, drawing an arrow down the Sunday column, but since then, he hasn’t added anything else.
By the time my Saturday morning shift rolls around, I’m convinced that his adamancy about showing me around was a by-product of the joint we shared.
I’m out the door before he’s even up, the sun and birds out full force, though the air remains crisp. I’m early, as usual, so I decide to walk to work and even stop in at a whitewashed coffee shop overflowing with hanging plants to grab a hot chai.
It’s strange; I’ve driven this way dozens of times, but on foot, I notice new things:
A Tudor house with a lush flower garden and a wooden sign advertising it as a Montessori school. A hobby shop called High Flyers, whose theme seems to be a mix of kites and THC. Then I turn down a residential street, reading the yard signs as I go: one about Bigfoot, another promoting an upcoming arts fair, then a crooked For Sale sign in the shaggy, overgrown lawn of a taffy-green bungalow.
Its white picket fence is in disrepair, some slats entirely missing, and its diamond-paned windows are crawling with ivy. It looks like something from a storybook: magical and cozy, yet somehow wild, mysterious in that irresistible way of fairy-tale houses.
At work, I help Harvey swap out the programming corkboard for the week. Waning Bay Public Library is a small enough operation that it’s usually all hands on deck. You do whatever needs doing, regardless of job title.
While pinning a flyer for Build Your Own Terrarium Night, Harvey says, “You’ve been in brighter spirits this week.”
He bears more than a passing resemblance to Morgan Freeman, and his voice, although raspier and not quite so low, has the same kind of gravitas. It’s a voice that makes you want to do him proud.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I’ll be better. About not bringing all of that into work.”
Harvey harrumphs, pushes his gold wire-frame glasses up his nose. “It’s a library, Daphne. If you can’t be a human here, where can you?”
At his kindness, I feel a sting of guilt about my job search. About knowing there’s a technical services librarian position open in Oklahoma, a place I know nothing about that can’t be learned from the musical Oklahoma!
“We’re lucky to have you,” Harvey goes on, hanging the sign-up sheet for Friday’s Dungeons & Dragons tournament. “Just keep bringing your whole heart in for those kids. That’s all.”
The sting redoubles.
Harvey pats the wall, then ambles back to the office, while I move on to dismantling the origami Dinosaur Day display to make room for the Pride Month display. Afterward, I help Ashleigh finish the Juneteenth and Loving Day displays, while she fills me in on her first real date with Craig, delivering each startling tidbit of information in a perfect monotone while I try not to pee myself from laughing.
(When they got to his house after dinner, he made her sit with him in the car for twenty unspeaking minutes while the Phish album he’d put on finished playing, then did the exact same thing after he drove her home.)
“I’m glad someone’s enjoying this,” she says, but I can tell she’s enjoying telling it too. It’s fun and a little thrilling, feeling like we’re kind of, sort of real friends now.
When I get back to my desk, I field a few calls, after which I teach roughly five hundred kids how to sign in to an online game for the five hundredth time.
By then it’s the peak of my workweek: Saturday Story Hour.
Bonus: it’s a warm, cloudless day, so we can take this activity outside.
When we’re settled in a ring in the grass out front, I ask, “Who’s ready to hear a story?”
Hands go up around the circle. Shameless excitement. Open expressions of feelings.
It’s funny: As a kid, I had no idea how to interact with other kids. I felt most at home with Mom and her friends. But as an adult, I find kids so much easier to understand.
They say how they feel, and they show it too. There are fewer ulterior motives and unwritten rules. Silences aren’t unbearably awkward, and abrupt segues to different subjects are the norm. If you want to be friends with someone, you just ask, and if they don’t want to, they’ll probably just tell you.
I clear my throat and open Snappsy the Alligator to get us started, scanning my rapt audience as I begin to read.
Arham, of course, wears his trademark Spider-Man costume. A three-year-old, Lyla, has spaghetti sauce all over her face and dungarees. She’s also sucking on a lemon wedge like it’s a pacifier.
Basically, all is right with the world.
Halfway through our second story, I notice someone approaching from the parking lot, seemingly carried on a burst of summer air and sunshine. He’s gazing at the covered breezeway to the front doors like he’s never seen anything like it, possibly never seen a library, period.
His eyes slice sideways toward us, and I lose my place in the sentence. Miles’s face lights with a grin. He lifts his chin in greeting and draws to a stop just beyond our little ring.
I clear my throat and glance down at the picture book in my hand, finding my place in the sentence to begin reading aloud again.
When I next look up, he’s still there, looking enraptured.
By this story. About anthropomorphic mice. Learning to do gymnastics.
I wish I hadn’t been quite so committed to doing voices for all of the characters before he showed up, because now I’m obliged to keep at it.
So I use my high-pitched squeak for the littlest mouse’s dialogue, and my low grumble for the portly older mouse with the distinguished mustache. Every time I scan the crowd, Miles’s smile is a little bigger, goofier. He keeps looking around at the kids, parents, and nannies, like, Can you believe this shit? Wild!
When I reach The End, the toddlers’ caregivers give the mild applause appropriate for a late-afternoon library trip, whereas Miles sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles, which somehow instantly turns all fifteen kids from sleepy angels into rowdy buccaneers, drunk on distilled-belowdecks rum. A couple of moms eye my scrubby, wolfish roommate curiously.
He is blissfully unaware, ambling toward me through the crowd as the other patrons gather their diaper bags and sticky-handed children to pull them toward the parking lot.
“I had no idea you could do that,” he says.
“Oh, yeah,” I say, starting back toward the front doors. They whoosh open and we enter the cool, musty quiet. “I’ve been reading since I was six. I’m getting pretty good.”
“I mean the voices,” he clarifies. “You were such a convincing elderly magician mouse.”
“If that impressed you, you should see me do the old woman who lives in a shoe,” I say.
“I’ll clear my Saturdays,” he says.
“I was kidding,” I say.
He grins. “Not me.”
I gesture toward the stacks. “Can I help you find something?”
“I was hoping you could spell out every word of a love poem to me,” he deadpans.
“That guy already called today,” Ashleigh pipes up from the reference desk.
“Yeah, I’ve hit my limit on daily X-rated flower metaphors, so that’s the one thing I can’t help you with,” I tell him.
He shrugs. “I’ll try again on Monday. Actually, I was on my way in to Cherry Hill and I just wanted to double-check we’re still on for tomorrow. Would’ve texted, but I forgot my phone at home.”
“Tomorrow?” Ashleigh looks up from the gel manicure she’s giving herself, complete with a little light-up device plugged in between her computer and the printer. Harvey left already for his daughter’s fortieth birthday and the front desk quickly descended into lawlessness. “What’s tomorrow?”
“I wasn’t planning to hold you to that,” I tell Miles.
He scoffs. “It’s on the calendar. It might as well be etched into the annals of history.”
“It’s pronounced anals,” Ashleigh says.
Miles looks to me, brow lifting.
I shake my head. “It’s definitely not. And you really don’t have to ferry me around. I can just, like, buy a map.”
He rolls his eyes, slumps forward on his forearms at the desk. “Just be ready at one p.m., okay?”
“Okay,” I say.
He looks between me and Ashleigh. “Should I expect you at Cherry Hill tonight?”
“I’ve got Read-a-thon stuff I need to work on,” I say.
“And my kid’s having friends over to play video games,” Ashleigh says. “So I’ll be shoveling pizza rolls in and out of the oven until dawn. But he’s at his dad’s again next Sunday night, if you guys want to do something then.”
“Should we expect Craig too,” Miles teases, leaning across the desk, vaguely flirtatiously.
Ashleigh shudders. “No, no, we should not. Daphne can fill you in on that. I can’t bring myself to utter it aloud again.”
“He had too much Phish,” I explain.
“Like an aquarium?” Miles says.
“Like posters upon posters of Phish. The band,” I say.
“What’s wrong with Phish?” he wants to know.
“Nothing, in moderation,” Ashleigh volunteers.
“But he also had commemorative mugs and action figures and cardboard cutouts. And . . . I want to say sheets?”
“Hand towels,” she corrects me. “I don’t begrudge a man a hobby, but if you’re forty and your apartment has a theme, I just don’t see it working out for us.”
“Well, shit,” Miles says. “That rules out pretty much everyone I know.”
“I’ve seen your place,” Ashleigh says. “I didn’t see a cohesive theme. Unless it was major depressive episode.”
“When did you see my room?” Miles asks.
“I picked Daphne up there,” she says, apparently happy to admit to her snooping.
“Actually, the theme is, you’re never invited over again,” I tell Ashleigh. Then, to Miles: “What time do you need to get into work?”
“Shit!” He pitches himself forward over the desk to check the time on my computer. His eyes flash back to mine, and he points for good measure, which really accentuates the Popeye-style anchor tattoo on his bicep. “Tomorrow. One o’clock. Don’t be late.”
“I never am,” I say.
* * *
Miles is fifteen minutes late.
I tell him this when he enters the apartment.
“I know,” he says. “Sorry. I went to get coffee, and the line was really long.” He holds out a paper cup to me. I recognize the stamp on it as being from Fika, the shop I stopped in to on my way to work yesterday.
“Thank you,” I say.
He doesn’t answer, just waits expectantly for me to take a sip, I guess.
“I don’t really drink coffee,” I say. “Unless I’m super tired, it makes me too jittery.”
His brow furrows, his lips knitting together. “You had one of their cups on your desk yesterday, so I assumed . . .”
“Chai,” I say.
He taps his temple, like he’s nailing the information to his head.
“Should we go?” I ask.
Outside our building, the sudden daylight briefly scalds my retinas. I lose all sense of direction, somehow running directly into Miles when he was just beside me.
He catches my upper arms and turns me toward his truck, half a block up the street.
“So where are we going,” I ask.
“Shopping.”
“Really?” I turn toward him, the wind whipping my hair across my face. I catch a fistful and push it out of my eyes, pinning it to my forehead. “Are we doing a makeover montage?”
He looks down at himself. “Are you trying to tell me something here?”
“I mean, when you showed up at Story Hour yesterday, I caught Mrs. Dekuyper looking between you and a Big Bad Wolf picture book, like she was trying to spot the difference.”
“Yeah, right,” he says, “she thought I was hot.”
“You don’t even know which one Mrs. Dekuyper was,” I point out.
“They all thought I was hot,” he says. “Women of a certain age love me.”
“You must remind them of when they were young,” I say, “and Abraham Lincoln was People’s Sexiest Man Alive.”
He unlocks the passenger door of his truck and hauls it open with one hand, while he scratches his bearded jaw with the other. “You think I should shave it?”
“I think you should do whatever you want.” I climb onto the ripped seat.
“But you think the beard is bad.” He closes the door, the window rolled down between us.
“I think the beard is sheer chaos,” I say. “But not inherently bad. It’s your face, Miles. All that matters is how you feel about it.”
He sets his forearms atop the door. “Well, Daphne, I’m less sure how I feel about it since that snarky Big Bad Wolf comment.”
“Don’t take my opinion too seriously,” I say. “You already know I have terrible taste in men.” And honestly, the beard’s growing on me. Chaos suits him. “Where are we going shopping? Family Fare?”
“Better.” He pushes the lock down, then rounds the truck and gets in.
“Tom’s Food Market?” I say.
“Better,” he repeats.
“Oh, I know!” I cry. “Meijer.”
He looks over, the engine starting with a sputtering cough. “Do me a favor,” he says lightly, “and unlock your door.”
“Why?”
“So I can push you out as I peel out of this parking lot,” he says.
“You would never,” I say.
“I would never,” he admits, and pulls onto the road. He turns us away from town and the water, toward the countryside.
