“No kidding! Wait, what do you mean he ‘almost’ kissed you?”
“Well, he slept over so I was smoothing his hair down before he left and he touched my cheek and like...glanced down at my mouth. But then he didn’t do anything, he just left.”
“He slept over?” Paula exclaimed just as the doorbell rang.
I laughed, knowing full well that I’d buried the lede, but enjoying her shock and disbelief as I skittered off to pay the delivery person and collect the large pepperoni. We ate on the couch, no plates, just leaning over the lid of the pizza box while I told her the whole story starting with the meteor shower.
“You could have told me that asshole was sending you things in the mail.” Was the first thing she said.
“I was trying to just ignore it and pretend it would go away.”
Paula frowned and reached out to give me a one-arm hug. “I’m just saying. You don’t have to tell me anything, but you also don’t have to face these kinds of things alone.”
“I know,” I said, fidgeting with the hem of my shirt. I didn’t know why I hated talking to people about these things, even when I was sure that they would be supportive. It just felt somehow like saying it out loud made it more real. Like the more people I told the larger it was. “I’m sorry. No more secrets.”
“Don’t be sorry, hun. I can’t believe he stayed the night though,” Paula went on, possibly noticing my discomfort. “That was really sweet of him.”
“I slept really well knowing he was here. I kinda wish he’d sleep here all the time.”
Paula laughed. “You should ask him.”
“No way.” I grinned, taking another bite. “But..so, what do you think?”
“Well it seems like he’s interested. Like,” she paused to swallow, “if it was just the rides and phone calls and even the staying over, I’d say he probably just wanted to be friends, just because it’s kind of hard to imagine him having like...romantic impulses.”
I snickered. “No he doesn’t seem very impulsive at all.”
“But the almost kiss is pretty obvious, he must like you.”
“But he didn’t kiss me,” I reminded her. “He thought better of it.”
“I’d have been a bit pissed if he did, to be honest. I mean, you took a risk letting him stay the night with you. He is a man, after all. I’m sure he just didn’t want you to think he was trying to get anything from you, to prove that he deserved the trust you had in him.”
“Oh.” I wondered how I hadn’t realized that myself. “It hadn’t even occurred to me that it was a risk.”
“Exactly. So do you want him to kiss you?”
I took another bite and chewed it slowly.
“I think so. I don’t know. I like him. And when he’s around I feel better. Healthier. Like I can’t really think of anything bad or scary when he’s there. He’s just kind of...comforting”
“Have you had any boyfriends since the thing with the stalker?” Paula’s voice lowered slightly.
“No, not really. He kind of ruined me for guys. Well actually, it’s not exactly that I’m afraid of men, more like I’m afraid of the whole flirting thing. Being asked on dates, being hit on, that kind of thing. It all seems sinister to me now. How guys do it...it’s kind of aggressive isn’t it?”
Paula nodded knowingly. “I understand that perfectly. It makes sense then, that you’d be into someone like Diedrich. I’d be shocked to my toes if he ever made a move. So, whatever happens or doesn’t happen, I would bet everything that it’ll be you who starts it.”
“That’s good.”
“That’s good,” she agreed.
“You know, I never really noticed him before.” Paula said after a quiet moment while we finished eating. “He’s not my type, I like loud, annoying guys.”
“I know.” I chuckled and she nudged me with her elbow.
“But he is pretty handsome. In that quiet, Professor kind of way.”
“Right? Like a hot librarian,” I agreed.
Paula tipped her head back and laughed. “I thought sexy librarian was a male fantasy.”
I shrugged. Her laughter was loud and contagious, it seemed to echo into the dark corners of my house. Shortly after that she noticed the clock on the oven and told me she had to run “ten thousand errands” and she left in a flurry of hugs and teasing about me and my hot librarian.
The next morning it was raining again, but I was used to that. I wanted to see Diedrich that day. We'd left on such odd terms. Knowing him, I thought it was likely that he would pretend that nothing had happened or that he'd forgotten. But I couldn't forget how I had felt when he looked at me like that, like he was seeing me for the first time. I'd felt alive, and nervous but not afraid.
It was kind of funny, actually, how the physical response was so similar to the horrible panic that had been plaguing me for years. The pounding heart, the surge of adrenaline, the rush of heat and energy, in such a different context, it was almost unrecognizable.
That's what I was thinking about when I opened my mailbox, expecting to be informed that I've been Pre-approved for a loan. Or maybe find that my utility bill had come. What I found instead was what looked like a birthday card in a pale blue envelope.
When I opened it up, the constant shushing of the wind in the trees faded into a deafening silence. The filtered sunlight became a harsh glare that bounced off the white of the card. I flipped back to the envelope and noticed that it wasn't addressed.
"Miss you, Babe,” was scrawled in blue ink on the bottom of a card with a childish teddy bear on the front.
"Athena!" I cried in a strangled voice. She loped to my side and I walked downtown in record time, nearly running. I could only thank God I didn't have to work that day. I’d lost jobs in the past for not showing up because of anxiety attacks.
I barged into the bookshop, not even seeing the customers standing at the register. I walked right to the back of the shop, past the couch and the coffee machine, and into the back room, shutting the door behind me.
I listened to Diedrich finishing up at the register, telling them thank you for coming and to please stop by again and tell him how they liked the books they chose. It was a practiced spiel, I'd heard it a hundred times before, but now I breathed into the soothing sound of his voice, trying to control the pounding of my heart. Athena was agitated at my feet, gently trying to herd me into a chair, but I stepped around her, pacing back and forth along the length of the small room, packed with boxes of books.
"Sparrow, what's happened?" Diedrich said when he came in, shutting the door behind him. He crouched down so that his eyes were level with mine and held my face in his hands. He looked scared. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
I shook my head, speechless.
"Tell me."
I must have been crying because his thumb brushed over my cheekbone. I closed my eyes and they stung, like they'd been open too long without blinking, and leaned against his hands.
"He sent me a card. Only he didn't send it. He put it in my mailbox himself. There was no address written on it, just my name. Like a birthday card you give to someone in person. He's here. Somewhere."
He straightened up suddenly and when I looked up at him, he was distinctly pale.
"I'm taking you to the police. Please don't argue." He stated it so calmly that there was no defying him anyway.
He led me out of the back room and I laced my fingers through his as he hastily turned around the open sign on the door to closed and put me in his car.
"Did this happen just this morning?" He asked once we were on the road.
"It wasn't there yesterday. I don't know when he was there. He could be there still." My voice was growing higher and tighter the more I spoke and I didn't know how I would explain everything to a new set of police.
"I should have insisted on you talking to the police weeks ago. I'm sorry, Sparrow,” he muttered
I reached over and took one of his hands off the wheel to squeeze it in my own. For the rest o
f the afternoon, he rarely let go of my hand. As I spoke to a kind but busy policewoman named Laura, he was with me. As we waited for them to pull up Adrien's record to find that he'd blown off his parole officer, he stayed by my side.
As I cried to my mom on the phone, he squeezed my shoulder.
The day stretched on, and I kept thinking that I should wake up soon and it would still be this morning and there would be no card in my mailbox. The sun set and it was decided that an officer would be dispatched to look at the house, and would check in on the place periodically.
"I can't go back there." I cried when the paperwork was done and there was nothing left to do at the station.
He didn't seem to mind my crying, at least he didn't shush me, he just pulled me closer and assured me that I didn't need to to home.
"Perhaps Paula has room--"
"I want to stay with you." I interrupted "Your place is safe, it’s upstairs so no one can see in the windows. There’s only one door. Please. I will make it up to you."
"You don't need to make up anything to me." He squeezed me "Of course you can stay with me until this is sorted out."
I might have felt guilty about forcing myself into his space. Maybe I would have a month previously, but not anymore. I could feel all the progress I’d made in the past months slipping away like wet sand under my feet. I was in survival mode again.
Chapter Eleven
Diedrich couldn't let Sparrow know that he was afraid. She was depending on him to be an island of support and calm in this sudden whirlwind.
No, actually, it wasn't sudden at all. He should have known that this would happen sooner rather than later. Adrien had been sending her packages, so clearly he knew where she lived. Obviously it was only a matter of time before he came to West Bend looking for her, to collect her. Diedrich should have prepared for this instead of ignoring it, hoping it would just go away or that she would handle it on her own.
Between the fever pitched afternoon and now, driving back to his apartment in the twilight, Sparrow had sunken into herself. She sat perfectly still in the passenger seat, gripping his free hand, staring straight ahead with unblinking eyes. He tried to put himself in her shoes but he couldn't. He had no idea what it was like, not even the faintest clue. She was being hunted like a rabbit by someone who, he could only assume, had far worse intentions than a wolf.
"The police here are very good,” he said glibly. "I had a break-in once."
"Did they catch the robbers?"
Diedrich stammered "Well, no. But that’s a different situation. They never came back so there was less opportunity to catch them. But what I mean is that the response was prompt and thorough."
"Okay."
Fuck. Well that didn't help.
Her fingers slid out from his and he put both hands on the wheel to pull into the parking lot.
He had asked her if she wanted to go back to her house to pick up some clothes and things, but even with the police presence there, she didn't want to go. She promised that she would be braver in the morning, and get her things then.
"I'm so sorry that your home, your grandma's home, has become a place where you are too afraid to go."
She didn't respond.
"Are you tired?"
She nodded. At the police station she had been a fountain of nervous energy, answering questions and filling out forms. It had taken more out of her than he had thought at first and now, as she stood in the middle of his living room, her arms hung limply at her sides and she didn't seem to see anything. He retrieved an old t-shirt that he hoped would be large enough to cover her sufficiently for sleeping, and as many blankets and pillows as she had provided for him when he’d stayed at her house.
While Sparrow was in the shower, Diedrich sat on the couch and patted Athena, who sat near him. The dog’s tail thumped.
When she emerged from the bathroom, her hair was gathered in a loose braid over one shoulder and she was all legs in his shirt. Their eyes met, but Diedrich swallowed thickly and looked away, focusing on straightening some of the mess from the living room where she would sleep.
She slid into the blanket nest and, curling towards the back of the couch, seemed to go right to sleep without so much as a goodnight. Well, she was surely exhausted. Diedrich tiptoed through the rest of his evening and put himself to bed too.
As he laid in bed, staring across the room, he was more restless than he had been in years. He never had trouble sleeping, in fact by the end of the day he was normally so tired that his head hardly hit the pillow before he was passed out. But that night he tossed and turned, his body antsy and ready to run, his senses alert to any sound or movement. He was nervous about her, about how she was sleeping, if she was comfortable, if she felt safe. But as the hours went by his anxieties shifted and he found himself incessantly worrying over whether he had locked the door. He always locked the door. He had surely locked the door. And yet.
Finally, he got out of bed as slowly and silently as he could and slipped into the hallway to check.
Yes. The door was locked. Obviously. He shook himself and tried to laugh it off. He was losing it.
"Where are you going?" came a small voice behind him.
Diedrich jumped, hissing through his teeth. Sparrow was standing in the kitchen, a small glass of water in hand, silhouetted against the window.
"Nowhere. I'm not leaving. I was just--"
"Checking the lock,” she finished quietly "I'm rubbing off on you."
His heart still racing from being startled, Diedrich dropped the doorknob and followed her voice. In the blue moonlight she looked like a ghost. The shadows settled into the hollows of her cheeks and the deep groove of her jaw, making her look almost like a stranger. But she was so familiar, even then.
"I just wanted to be sure that you are safe here."
"You can't sleep?" she asked, but it was more of an observation. Her eyes had lost their blueness in the half-light. They were steely and shadowed now.
"No, I just--" But she was standing closer to him now, close enough to touch. So he did. Some kind of primal instinct moved him, told him that if someone is standing that close, you hold them. You wrap your hand around the small of their back. It was unconscious.
Mostly.
At least partly.
Her back arched under his hand and her hands came to rest on his chest. There was no point in hiding anything now that his heart rate had given him away. She didn't wait for him. She rose up on her toes again and this time she touched her lips to his, just barely, as if asking permission.
It was so loud, like bells ringing in his mind. Whether in celebration or warning was impossible to tell then, but she molded against him so seamlessly and when he kissed her back, she sighed. Something about that tiny breeze-like sound snapped him back to reality. His breath caught in his throat and he leaned away from her, holding her shoulders.
"Sparrow." It hurt to look at her, the pinkness in her cheeks visible even in the gray moonlight of the darkened kitchen. "You are very scared."
"Yes." She breathed
"And vulnerable."
"Yes."
"Do you understand why that makes things complicated for me?"
She was trembling under his hands, but her face remained blank, even as her eyes grew wet.
"Please, Diedrich. Please, let me have one thing. One good thing." His eyes were drawn to her neck as she swallowed. "I'm not asking for anything bad. Just kiss me goodnight."
"I didn't say it was bad," he stammered
"Please."
He touched her cheek and she closed her eyes, turning into his touch, and kissing his palm. When she looked up at him again the moon caught her eyes, giving back a spark of their blue in the colorless room, and he was compelled to do just exactly as she asked.
As he kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, he knew there was never much sense in telling her no in the first place. He never could.
-----
I’d been pretend
ing to sleep, listening to Diedrich as he moved around the apartment before going to bed himself. I didn’t want to talk anymore after all the talking I had done at the police station, and pretending to be asleep seemed like the easiest way. Once I was pretty sure he was asleep I’d gotten up and tiptoed into the kitchen for some water. I heard his bedroom door open and I froze, silently watching as he crossed the apartment and checked the lock on the door.
That small action filled me with such conflicting emotion that I was frozen. I felt both guilty that he was worried about me, worried for me, and overwhelmed with gratitude. I think I must have loved him at that moment. He was just right, quiet, compassionate, and inexplicably protective. Warm and soft and comforting all at once. It occured to me that I may have simply been knocked off kilter by everything that had happened that day, and maybe my feelings for him weren’t as strong as they seemed just then in the moonlight. But even then, the voice of reason behind my self-protective doubt was firm. This man. This one.
A Short Walk to the Bookshop Page 12