Intrusion (5 page)

“So you don't really feel like I'm being invasive?”

“I feel you're the opposite of that. But I don't mind you thinking that way because quite clearly it helps you be comfortable. If you march across the street to my house and accuse me of stealing your dog, then you're in charge. If you're the aggressor, then there's nothing to worry about, is there?”

“I don't want to be an aggressor.”

“I already said you're not. I find you careful and kind and considerate. In truth, no one has ever done anything so sweet as you did for me the other night. You should have been scared; you weren't. You should have forced me back across the street; you didn't. You touched me even though it made you tremble to do it, and I won't ever forget that. It's the reason I opened the door and let you in even though I hated every second of it. I hate being around new people and I hate trying to have ordinary conversations and I hate knowing you are watching my every expression, but I did it anyway. I did it because you are you.”

This time when I try to respond, I fail. Everything I want to say just falls down inside me. It takes a good minute or so to even breathe properly again, because seriously I think that might be the most romantic thing that anyone has ever said in my presence. Or at least, it seems to me like something romantic. It creates romantic feelings inside me.

But then maybe I'm just like Ted after all. I see some swoon-worthy declaration in the most mundane of things. I want to believe he means it in this big, passionate way, when really he's just being matter-of-fact.

If only he looked matter-of-fact.

If only he wasn't breathing hard.

If only his hand wasn't so close to mine and almost certainly getting closer. He turns his hand in this innocuous-looking way, but when he does his skin sears a stripe over the inside of my wrist. His eyes flash dark and bright at the same time, and I just have to say something. We need to talk about something.

“Do you still hate it?” I ask, even though it takes everything I've got to do it. What if he says yes? What if he says no? What if he goes somewhere in between?

“Part of me does.”

Oh God, oh God.

“And the other part?”

“Wants you here more than anything.”

Lord in heaven, I love the way he says
anything
. His breath seems to catch somewhere around the first syllable, and then that low, low voice of his just trails off into the end of the word. It turns dark and syrupy for the end of the word. I could probably dive into a bathtub filled with that last syllable, and slide around for a thousand years.

And I think he knows it. His eyes are just overflowing with heat and feeling and fuck knows what else. If I was the kind of person to believe in things like that, I'd probably call them
smoldering
. I might write it in my journal: he smoldered at me.

But even without silly words like that, I know something is going on. After a long, delicious moment of intense staring and lots of thinking about what his last words meant, his gaze drops to our two hands on the table. He watches, as his forefinger shifts the tiniest microfraction of a millimeter to the left and just barely oh barely brushes over mine.

Though barely is more than enough.

I could die over barely.

He could probably die over barely. He actually shivers the moment it happens, and those heavy eyelids of his drift down just a little—just enough to let me think I could touch him back. If I was daring I could do it. His skin is still against mine. All I have to do is lift my finger a little and oh, oh, oh.

The resulting sensation practically eats my nerve endings alive.

Is it any wonder I lean forward?

Wouldn't you lean forward for this?

I bet other people would go way before I do. They would have probably moved in the moment he brushed his finger against mine, or maybe when he said that thing about
wanting
. I see it all the time in movies—people make declarations like that and then they just kiss as though everyone knows when that should happen.

Other people agree by telepathy.

Right now I want to agree that way, too. I want to be the person who makes the first move. In truth, if I don't I might die of this agony. His lips are parted and our fingers are practically fucking; this must be the right thing to do. I even lean a little and he does nothing to stop me. He says nothing. He simply waits for what is going to be the most glorious kiss in the history of time—I can tell, I know it, I can feel it.

And then just as I'm almost there he murmurs the following against my parted lips:

“You should probably know that I'm not the least bit interested in sex.”

Chapter Three

I
KNOW
I should probably go over there and make things better. The problem is that I don't want to on any level whatsoever. If I do, I'll be forced to talk about the incident. He might want to dissect it in the exact way he dissected everything else that I am. He might want to say something nightmarish like
I just don't feel that way about you
, and after he has I will have to dig a big hole in the garden and just fucking bury myself in it.

He's so handsome. How did I not realize that his handsomeness would be a big problem? Did I think the laws of good-looking averages would magically be inverted simply because he's a bit weird? Being a bit weird doesn't change the fact that he could do a Calvin Klein ad campaign tomorrow while I would barely qualify as the assistant who has to bring him coffee.

My hair is bonkers. I have eyebrows the size of France.

Why did I try to kiss him, for God's sake?

Now I can't even talk to him.

How can I when he had seemed disturbed by my reaction to his rejection? I can still see him holding out his hands to me, like a man trying to quiet a startled animal. Most likely he uses the same technique to coax trauma victims out of terrible depressions. I bet one of them also tried to kiss him, and he gently talked to her about feelings she didn't know she had for five hours while giving her closure on issues he should hardly have known, and oh Christ, I really need to stop thinking of things like that.

His kindness just weighs too heavily on me. It makes me realize what good can do to someone's soul as easily as evil can take a piece of it away—almost as though he's grabbing me by the throat but in reverse. He lets go of my throat. My feet touch the ground. The porch light stops swinging, and then I watch him slowly walking backward until he's swallowed by the dark.

Or at least, that might have happened if I hadn't fucked everything up.

I could have started believing again in human beings. Instead, I slip back into my quiet little closed-off routine as though nothing happened. It seems best, under the circumstances. I don't want to think about the raw, red stripe of rejection or the embarrassment that followed, so I immerse myself in mundane tasks at work.

The supply cupboard doesn't need reorganizing, but I reorganize it anyway. Resident files are looking a little battered, so I put them all in new folders. And when it gets to four in the morning, I check that everyone is sleeping one last time instead of immediately handing over to Sandy. It might be quiet here in the dim, deserted halls of the Pleasant View nursing home, but I know it's quieter at home.

Even my car feels too full of silence. The second I'm inside, my head is full of the mortifying thing that happened, and no amount of music makes it go away. I turn the radio up to full volume, and still keep hearing him say
I'm not the least bit interested
. I still see him looking at me with those oil-painting eyes, hands out to gentle me.

But that may not be all my fault, considering the fact that
I just passed him on Highway 75 at four in the fucking morning
.

I swear to God, I almost careen off the damn road. Though who could blame me if I did? It feels as though I just progressed from mild PTSD to wild hallucinations. The whole thing is too much of a coincidence to be real, and yet as soon as I slow to a stop I can see that it is. I can see him in my rearview mirror, walking by the side of the road in what can only be described as his underwear.

Oddly enough, this is not a relief to me. I mean, true, I haven't started seeing things that aren't there. But seeing Noah walking down a road in the middle of the night with nothing on his feet and barely a T-shirt and shorts covering the rest of him is not a comforting sight. People race down this stretch of highway. There are bears in the woods on each side.

And my temperature gauge just hit freezing.

I have to get out of the car. It means bringing him out of a bout of sleepwalking again, and that will be followed by undoubtedly awkward conversation. But the alternative is that he more than likely dies of hypothermia, so what else can I do?

Christ, I wish there was something else I could do. He wakes up before I even get to him, and his expression is a real peach. First there is this kind of alarm, as though he's afraid I might be here to attempt another kiss. Then as the truth of the situation slowly dawns on him, so does the extent of the awkwardness between us.

He looks as though he just smelled something really bad. For a second, he even seems to take a step back, and the gesture he makes is clearly the one people use when they want to refuse help.
No, no, really I'm fine
, it seems to say.

But thankfully, his words can't quite match it.

“I guess I could use a ride,” he admits after a moment. What else can he do? The cold has already chapped his lips. One of his feet is bleeding, for God's sake. He absolutely has to get in the car, no matter how close that puts us.

And, oh man, it is very close indeed. I can immediately feel the iciness of his left thigh. If I move my leg a quarter of an inch, our knees will probably be touching. Our shoulders almost brush when I lean forward slightly to turn off the radio, and for the first time I find myself cursing the fact that I bought this tiny car.

I should have gotten a goddamn Cadillac. I should have bought a truck with four seats in the front—but even that probably wouldn't be enough. His smell would still fill the space, as sharp as winter air and so sweet I have to fight the urge to inhale more deeply. Plus, being farther away wouldn't stop him from speaking.

Or prevent me from listening.

“I should probably explain about the other day,” he says, and I want to say no, stop, please—there's no need. Mainly because I know what he might be about to tell me. I can feel it coming, like a punch waiting inside someone's fist.

It's the reason I speak first, before he can finish.

“I'm so sorry about it, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have tried to kiss you—how could I know that you were repulsed? You didn't seem repulsed. But then maybe I should have realized after the kitchen and the door you closed and the thing is though I'm just really bad at things like this obviously you know I—”

“No, you've misunderstood—”

“The last time I did anything like this I was a teenager, and even now I still feel like that, all ridiculous and childish while other people know all the tricks like getting coffee and going on dates and asking each other to—”

“Beth, please stop now. You've misunderstood.”

He has to say it a third time before it sinks in. But even after it has I keep trying to explain what doesn't need explaining. It takes me an absolute age to wind down into something like silence—though he hardly seems to mind. His patience is as lovely as the rest of him. It sings through me as sweetly as his words, when they finally come.

“Do you remember what I said? Do you remember exactly?”

“You said that you weren't the least bit interested in sex with me.”

“That isn't exact, Beth. You've added two words.”

“I'm pretty sure that—”

“I never said that I wasn't interested in sex
with you
. I said I wasn't interested in sex—at which point I believe the sentence ended,” he says, and I go to correct him again.

I go to, but then come to an abrupt stop as realization dawns.

He's right. He's absolutely right it did. There was no
me
in there at all.

“I thought I had to tell you. It seemed best to be honest before a kiss rather than letting it happen and happen and happen until finally we're in a bedroom and I have to think of some awkward way to get around what I just absolutely cannot do.”

“Does this. . .are you asexual? Is that what you mean or. . .?”

“
Asexual
is not the word I would use to describe what I am.”

“So is there. . .another term?”

“I can think of a few. None of them are ones I particularly want to share with someone like you,” he says, and I swear my stomach drops three feet.
Someone awful and unsympathetic like me
, I think, and have to force my next question out.

“Is it okay for me to ask why?” I ask, from between gritted teeth.

Not that gritting them is actually necessary, in light of the answer he gives.

“Because more than anything, I don't want you to go away,” he tells me, and I kind of wish I'd protected my heart instead of steeling my jaw. I should have built a barrier around it—now it seems to be all split in two. At the very least, something in my chest is aching for him. Even though it could be something terrible, I ache for him.

“I won't go away. You can tell me.”

“Your voice is shaking.”

“My voice was shaking when we started this. It will probably continue shaking right into tomorrow. But I still want you to tell me—I can take it. Do you like. . .to do some kind of bad thing? How bad is the thing?”

He doesn't answer for a long, long time, and when he finally does it makes no sense at all. Or at least, it makes no sense to my logic center. My heart, on the other hand. . .oh, my heart. My heart can hardly stand it.