by Penny Reid
He took a step back, clearing his throat. “I usually just get the combination platter.”
“Great. Then that’s what I’ll get.”
He nodded, his eyes coming back to mine. They were cagey, distrustful. I grinned.
Before five minutes ago, this kind of look coming from him would’ve sent me into a tailspin crash-landing onto the crazy carousel. But not this time. He didn’t need to trust me.
After all, we were nothing but friendly acquaintances.
“Good. You’re here.” I gestured to the seat across from me as soon as he walked up to the booth. “I need you to keep me from eating this whole thing. It’s friggin’ delicious.”
Injera was bread from the gods, and tibbs were the food of the gods. Add the two of them together and my diet was in the corner rocking and crying and singing creepy nursery rhymes to itself. Creepily.
Victor sat down, opposite me, and glanced from where I was grabbing part of a hard-boiled egg with a shred of injera to my face.
“You already started?”
“Yes. I was hungry.” I fed myself the egg and bread, and then went back for seconds, frowning at him when he remained immobile. “Hey. Friend. Do your part!” I gestured to the big platter of food with my chin. “I ordered for two.”
Giving me a very small, and very wary—but clearly amused—smile, Victor ripped off a piece of bread, seemed to debate his options, and grabbed a quantity of cabbage and carrots. As he chewed, he glanced around the restaurant, a frown on his forehead when he returned his attention to the platter.
I wanted to ask, Something wrong? but decided friend Emily didn’t care. Yet.
Instead, I got to the point. “So, Vic, tell me about yourself.”
His sharp green eyes flickered to mine and I held my breath for a second, because they were so sharp. I swear, sometimes, just having him look directly at me felt like being poked with a bunch of little knives.
“Don’t call me Vic.”
I waited for him to take another bite, and then asked, “Tor?”
A surprised laugh erupted from him and he covered his mouth with a napkin, shaking his head.
“Not Tor? That’s too bad. I’ve always wanted to know someone named Tor.” That wasn’t a lie so much as a joke, I was hoping to keep the mood light. “So tell me, Victor, how do you spend your free time? What do you do for fun?”
He glanced to the side again, his eyes moving around the restaurant. Whatever he saw there seemed to unsettle him again. Is he worried about being seen with me? I shrugged off the concern.
Swallowing, he returned his attention to me. “I build and fix planes.”
I reared back, my eyes expanding to their maximum. “Model ones?”
Somehow, I already knew the answer before he responded, “No. Real ones.”
“No shit? Real planes?”
“That’s right.” He took a gulp of water, and then ripped another square of injera.
“You’re going to have to tell me more about that.”
“Sure,” he agreed readily. “I can take you up sometime too. If you’re interested. I have my pilot's license.” He seemed to be relaxing into the conversation. Good.
“How big are these planes?”
“I build custom jets and fix antiques, Cessnas usually. My friend owns a company, I work for him.”
“And you help him build them for fun?”
“Yeah. And for a paycheck,” he said without shame. “Being a professor doesn’t pay what it used to.”
“Huh.” I nodded, respecting his matter-of-fact tone about it. “So, if you could be a full-time professor or a full-time airplane builder, what would you do?”
Victor’s eyes moved up and to the right, like he was giving my question serious thought. He looked so relaxed, so into the conversation. I had to tell the odd, giddy fluttering in my stomach to chill out.
We are friendly acquaintances, nary a crush nor a daydream in sight.
“I don’t know, honestly.” His sharp, sexy eyes—no! not sexy—intelligent eyes came back to mine. “I enjoy teaching, and research. I can’t imagine not doing it. But I’ve been around planes and aeronautics my whole life. I can’t imagine not doing that either.”
“Huh,” I said again. “So that’s how you spend all your free time? Building planes? Nothing else? Not, let’s say, going to upscale lingerie shops in the swanky side of town?”
His eyes dropped and, if I wasn’t mistaken (which I wasn’t) a bit of pink highlighted his cheeks. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought it up, but since we were now in the friend zone end zone, I gave into my curiosity and the urge to ask.
“That’s . . . my father’s thing.”
“Mr. Hanover?”
“Yes.” Victor seemed to be gritting his teeth.
“With more wives than Henry the Eighth?”
I was pleased to see that drew a small smirk out of him. “You don’t know how apt that analogy is.”
I decided to let that go, for now, since I was still curious about Victor and the Pinkery. “But didn’t you get a membership? If looking at lingerie is just your father’s thing, why’d you do that?”
He dropped his injera on the plate and wiped his hands with a napkin, glancing over my shoulder. “I wanted . . .”
“Yeeeees?” I prompted in a cartoonish voice, still wanting to keep the mood light.
Victor’s gaze became distracted, narrowing, dropping to the floor, and then lifting again to the spot behind me. Unthinkingly, I also glanced over my shoulder.
Two women. Sitting in a booth on the other end of the restaurant. Looking at him. Smiling.
When they saw me look, they quickly glanced away. It made me smile. I didn’t blame them for looking. Victor Hanover was a hottie.
But when I returned my attention to Victor, he did not look pleased. He was gritting his teeth again, wiping his already clean fingers with frustrated, quick swipes.
This time, I decided to ask the question I hadn’t earlier. “Hey. What’s wrong?”
“Them.” Without looking at them he lifted his chin in their direction.
“What? You don’t like them looking at you?”
Victor’s eyes—intensely aggravated—moved between mine, like he was searching them for the answer to a riddle that might earn him his freedom, and one of my fanciful thoughts occurred to me. Maybe he was under the spell of a wicked troll. Maybe that’s what this was all about. Wicked troll magic . . .?
Stop it with the nonsense.
Eventually, after much (obvious) internal debate, he said, “I don’t like it.”
“What’s the problem? They’re not leering. They’re just appreciating something beautiful.”
The pink on his cheeks turned rosier and he pressed his lips together in a stern line. “Don’t say that about me.”
“Okay.” I shrugged. “You’re hideous.”
He stared at me, stunned for a moment, and then he huffed a trifecta of laughs: the first sounded disbelieving, the second bitter, the third reluctantly amused.
“You have no idea what it’s like.”
“What it’s like?”
“You don’t even notice.”
“Notice what?”
He glanced to his right and then tilted his head toward the bar. I looked where he indicated and found a man, on his own, drinking something with no ice. After a short moment, the man looked at me, caught me watching, and then hurriedly turned his back, rubbing the back of his neck.
“What’s going on? Am I missing something?”
“Yes.” He’d crossed his arms. “That guy has been looking at you since I walked in.”
I waited for Victor to explain the relevance of this. When he didn’t, I prompted, “So?”
“The last time we were here, men were looking at you then too.”
“Okay? So what? People look at other people.”
He gathered a deep breath, his stare somber, serious. “No. They don’t. People don’t look at people. People look at beaut
iful people. Everyone else is invisible. And you don’t notice because you’re used to it. You’ve always been beautiful, so it doesn’t faze you. But I . . .” he swallowed, the action appeared to be a struggle.
Again, though I felt like I knew what he was going to say, I waited. I wanted to hear his perspective in his words, not fill in the blanks with my assumptions.
Victor’s attention darted beyond me once more, and once more he frowned, this time leaning forward and placing his elbow on the table, his other hand right next to it, rubbing his forehead with long fingers. “If those women saw the real me, they wouldn’t look.”
My heart hurt at the conflicted desolation in his tone and I fought the urge to reach across the table and hold his hand.
Instead, I kept my voice low and soft and asked, “The real you?”
“Yeah.” His eyes were on the table.
Grabbing another piece of injera—just to have something to hold—I twisted it between my fingers. “Am I missing something? Are you in the mafia?”
He laughed again, shaking his head. “No. Emily.” His smile lingered—in his eyes and on his mouth—as he gazed at me with a blatant fondness that had my stomach doing cartwheels closer to the carousel of crazy. “You know I’m not in the mafia. I mean, the real me. None of these people would look at me twice if they saw what I looked like before.”
“And that’s the real you? What you looked like before?”
“Yes. I mean, no. I guess . . . it’s not pretty.”
“What?” I popped a rolled-up piece of bread into my mouth.
“The real me, under these clothes.” He gestured to himself, to his chest, and then lifted his eyes to mine, a challenge there, like he expected me to look away. “The clothes hide the skin, but it’s there. I know I could have surgery, get it removed, but I can’t bring myself to do it.”
I didn’t look away, but my mind was racing. Holy overshare, Batman. I should've proposed friendship to Victor Hanover weeks ago. Jeez! I’d wasted all this time being hot for him. He didn’t want another lady lusting after a body he didn’t feel belonged to him. He needed . . . perspective.
“Obviously, you don’t have to answer me. But are you seeing a counselor? To help you with this transition?” If he wasn’t, then that would be the first thing I nagged him about from now on.
“Yes. I am.” He reached for his water, twisted the glass. I noticed his fingers weren’t just long, they were elegant, with elegant nails, neatly trimmed, and elegant lines at the knuckles. “Since the beginning, actually.”
“Okay. Good. Then I won’t nag you about that.”
His lips tugged to the side. “You were going to nag me about that?”
“Absolutely. Yes. My mom’s therapist has helped her a lot with her body—uh—image.” I’d been about to say “body issues” but remembered issues was a pejorative term as well as being less accurate. “Again, you don’t have to answer this question, and I’m not advocating that you do this, but I’m curious why you don’t want to get the skin removed.”
Victor stared at his water glass, his lips twisting to the side, his usually sharp eyes losing focus.
“You don’t have to answer.” I lifted my hands. “I can tell a joke instead. Have you heard the one about—”
“Right now, it feels like I’d be completely erasing who I was before,” he blurted, swallowed, and then lifted his eyes to mine. They weren’t so sharp. “And I liked that person, even if no one else did.”
Chapter 12
*Victor*
“What’s going on with you and the brunette? Any movement on that? You finally ask her out?”
Scowling, I debated how best to answer. Andy and I had been talking on the phone for an hour, working through all the scheduling details for the new orders, touching base on an antique Cessna rebuild. I thought I was free and clear.
No more going out for drinks with Andy after work.
“Hello? Are you there? Or are you choking on something? Should I call an ambulance?”
“We went out to dinner last week and we’ve decided to be friends.”
“Friends.” He sounded disgusted. “After all of that, after kissing her and blowing her off and regretting it for weeks, you decide to be . . . friends.” He said the word friends like most people say the word malignant.
I hadn’t told him about Emily’s job at the Pinkery, wanting to respect her privacy, but I’d told him the rest a few weeks ago. I’d needed to tell someone. With drunken enthusiasm, he’d congratulated me on my first kiss. But then he literally boo-ed me—while we were still in the bar—when I told him what I’d done at the restaurant after.
“I still don’t understand why you didn’t just make her your girl after kissing her.”
“No defensible justification exists for dating a student in my class.” I chose to focus on the most obvious and logical of my reasons. I didn’t expect him to inherently understand my perspective as a professor yet I had expected him to understand why—even if she hadn’t been my student—dating someone like Emily would be impossible for someone like me.
“Your mind needs a tune-up. It is always defensible to date a woman who digs you, and who you dig in return.”
I shook my head and set my jaw. Perception was nine-tenths of reality. Advocate or no, it put her in an untenable situation, one where she would be judged for our relationship in a way I wouldn’t. Even if she didn’t care now, one day she might care. I wouldn’t do that to her. I’d witnessed enough of that kind of behavior from my father. Following in his footsteps was not an option.
“Listen. I need to go.”
“You don’t need to go.” He sighed, grumbling, “Please tell me at least you’ve called her? You have plans with her now that you’re friends? Something concrete? Hanging out with her would be good practice at least.”
“Good practice?”
“Yeah. Hanging out with a lady you want to bang and not making things awkward. And don’t try to deny that you want to bang her.”
Ignoring his garish statement, I scratched my cheek, paying no attention to the sinking sense in my chest that I’d messed up again. “I should’ve called her? I don’t want to bother her.”
She hadn’t contacted me since our dinner last week. She’d attended the Monday review session but didn’t stay after to talk. She wasn’t present for the Wednesday test, but that was to be expected. Gloria had been administering all her tests for nearly a month.
I did see her at the gym, however, every morning but Thursday. She still hadn’t noticed me, and I didn’t know how to approach her there without making it . . . Well, without making things awkward. Or potentially making her uncomfortable.
“Not calling is okay if you already made plans.”
“No plans yet.”
“No plans?” He sounded indignant. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
I said nothing.
“God. You are so fucking clueless.” He exhaled an obviously frustrated laugh and I was certain he was also shaking his head. “Listen, this is what you’re going to do: you’re going to text her, all right? Texting is no pressure, for either of you. You text her and you thank her for something. Tell her you want to get together—and don’t ask if she wants to, just tell her you want to—and then you follow up next week if you get radio silence.”
“What? Why would I do that? If she doesn’t text me back, shouldn’t I leave her alone?”
“No, Sheldon. You message her next week. You’re the asshole. Now you got, like, the next twenty balls in your court. You have to be the one to message her first for the next few weeks. You need to be the most solicitous, most patient, most interested motherfucker in all the land. That’s what you did to yourself. You want to know her? Now you have to really, really work for it. This is how it is: she’s not going to start texting or calling you or treating you like a friend until she knows you’re not going to disappear or blow her off again. Makes sense?”
I nodded, because it did make sense
. Suddenly, I was winded.
“Victor?”
“Yes. It makes sense. Thanks.”
“Do it now, Victor. I’m hanging up. See you in the morning for leg day. Bye.”
He ended the call and my mind went blank other than the single action item: text her now.
I still had her number in my phone from our brief kiss in the hall over a month ago. But I wouldn’t think about that. Every time I thought about it, about kissing her, having my hands on her, I got hard, flushed, dizzy. It was disorienting.
One of my friends in grad school—a female friend—had announced that I was asexual, in her opinion. I didn’t agree or disagree with that label. Her opinion was merely a data point, and I understood why she’d arrived at her conclusion. I’d been attracted to one person, once, freshman year of high school. It had been a painful experience and I’d never experienced anything like it again.
Not until now.
Maybe I was asexual, or on the spectrum of asexuality. Maybe I wasn’t. Unlike Andy, I didn’t consider my lack of interest in physicality something to fix or cure or be distressed about. Quite the opposite. I considered it a strength.
Think about it, how much better would all manner of interactions be (for you) without instinctual sexual desire clouding perceptions?
Using the workplace as an example: no sexual harassment, no preference given to applicants or workers based on their perceived physical attractiveness. Removing physical desire would lead to more competency-based hires and promotions, controlling of course for other biases.
Anyway. Back to Emily and this inconvenient attraction. Ultimately, whether I was attracted to her or not didn’t matter. I believed Emily deserved someone experienced, sophisticated, knowledgeable, a sexual content expert. She deserved someone who could lead instead of follow. Therefore, I was not the person she deserved as a romantic partner, but I absolutely did not want to lose her as a friend.
Text her now.
I opened our short string of texts, seeing I’d been the last to text her over a month ago, directions to Queen of Sheba. My mouth dry, I began my message,