of furniture and finds a barstool. He pulls the plastic off it, drags it up to the window, and sulkily sits down. Water drips from his shirt onto the cement floor, and a shiver runs through his entire body. He rubs his arms to keep out the chill.
Even though it’s the end of September, climate change hit us with some late storms—probably the outer bands of Hurricane Diana. There are mounds and mounds of boxes behind the plastic-wrapped couch, so I figure there has to be a blanket (or at least an old towel) in one of them—and hopefully no snakes. Or spiders. God, I hate spiders.
I glance over his way as he sifts through the junk. Do you actually mean it? I want to ask. That I wasn’t the reason you didn’t tell me who you were?
But I don’t know how to begin, so I busy myself looking through the boxes, opening one after the other, finding Christmas ornaments and Valentine decorations and Fourth of July banners from years and years past. I take out the head of a Santa Claus—just the head, not the body—before dropping it back into the box and moving on.
Creeeeeepy.
What is more unsettling, however, is the silence between us. Usually we’re bickering—or at least snapping at each other—but this sort of heavy quiet is the worst.
Vance must think so too, because he finally says, “I didn’t mean for you to get the wrong idea. It’s not because of you I didn’t tell you.”
“You don’t have to spare my feelings—”
“I’m not,” he replies, turning to face me. He’s wringing the bottom of his shirt out, like he’s nervous. Him—nervous? Lightning must’ve struck me while I was outside. I must be dead. “I recognized the birthmark on your neck. It looks a little like a rose, so that’s how I remembered it. It’s cute.”
Cute. I touch my birthmark beneath my ear, so glad it’s dark enough for him not to see me blushing like mad. I dig further into the box and find a blanket.
“And I realized that I had already been terrible to you—well, that I’d just been terrible, period—and I didn’t know what else to do. And, I think a part of me was afraid that if you found out it was me, you would go to the tabloids, and I do not need that right now. I’m here because of the tabloids. But…” He takes a deep breath. “I think the real reason was, though, was that I was afraid that if you found out it was me you would be…”
“That I would be…?” I insist, turning to him.
He hesitates and sits down on a pool chair. “…Disappointed.” His voice is so soft, like the whisper of a secret. I drag the blanket out of the box and crouch in front of him. He hesitates a look at me, cornflower blue eyes framed by blond eyelashes.
“That’s funny,” I say with a soft laugh, “because I thought you were disappointed that it was me.”
He shakes his head. “No, never. You’re perf—”
I toss the blanket over his head. It’s an instinctive reaction. Like flinching away from a punch. Or screaming at a spider. But this is different. It’s a compliment I want to hear, but don’t, because while he sounds sincere, I don’t know how much of him I trust.
At least not yet.
“Your man-nips said you were cold,” I say, probably the least romantic thing I can think of, and leave him with the blanket.
He pulls it behind his head. He looks like he wants to say something else, but thank God he drops the romantic act. “Where did you find this?”
“In a box labeled ‘Dead Grandma’—kidding. Over there.”
“It looks dirty.”
“It probably is.”
He frowns, but it’s too cold not to take it. He wraps it around his shoulders even though he clearly doesn’t want to.
I shiver, but there was only one blanket in the box and I gave it up for the cause.
“You’re cold,” he says.
“Nah,” I reply. There’s a refrigerator into the corner, and though it’s not plugged in, it’s stocked, and I take out one of the sodas. A Coke. I don’t know if sodas expire but why not. I drag up a barstool next to him and look out the window at the pouring rain. He eyes the Coke. “Where did you find that?”
“The fridge. Wanna try it?”
“Definitely not.”
I shrug and pop open the tab. There is a little less fizz than usual. I sniff it. It doesn’t smell rotten. I take