by Sara Rider
She’d had to keep herself together for so long, she’d almost forgotten what it was like to just let go and relax. No one knew she’d been struggling in the year leading to her mom’s death. She’d had no idea what she wanted to do with her life, and found college to be less than she’d hoped. Instead of feeling like the world was at her fingertips, she’d felt afraid and overwhelmed. Like a guppy wrenched from the fishbowl and thrown into the ocean to fend for herself.
No one seemed to understand her anxiety. She was a smart kid who’d done well in high school. She was supposed to be the kid who excelled in college. Her mom had worked too hard to save for her education for Julia to just quit, and they’d fought viciously over it. So Julia had sucked it up and stayed the course, even though she was miserable. It was only after her mom died that she’d had no choice but to leave college and work full time to support herself.
Julia sometimes wondered what her life would be like if her mom was still alive. She missed her mom fiercely, and guilt gnawed at her every time she thought about what it would be like if she’d stayed in school like her mom had wanted. The ten-year anniversary of her mom’s death had been a wake-up call for Julia. She’d spent so long worrying and stressing and being hyper-responsible in order to make her mom proud that she’d forgotten to simply remember her. She hadn’t even known her mom read romance novels until she found the photo of her reading Torrents of the Heart.
Julia looked down at the cover, with the dull gold lettering atop a faded purple background. The woman with long-flowing blond hair wearing a cheetah-print sarong looked up at the man like he was about to devour her and she welcomed it. The man’s heavily muscled arms—his three heavily muscled arms—circled her waist and cupped her nape. Julia sat up a little straighter, laughing at the terrible Photoshop mishap. How had that gone out unnoticed?
And then she gasped.
She recognized the broad, bare chest with the patch of hair in the middle. The powerful thighs revealed by the barely-there loincloth he wore. She even recognized the muscles of his arms—his three arms. That was Fergus MacNair on the cover.
Holy shit. Fergus MacNair was a romance cover model.
Her brain could barely comprehend it, and yet it made so much sense. Now she understood why he’d been so angry every time she asked him to find the book for her.
But he’d found it for her anyway.
Her heart squeezed with emotions she couldn’t quite name. She pulled out her phone and started to dial his number.
Then she hung up before the call went through.
Why was she hesitating with him? Why was she so afraid of getting hurt?
She rummaged in her drawers for a notepad and a pen. It was beyond awkward trying to grip the ballpoint in her left hand, and it took her a few seconds before she managed a decent enough grip holding it like a knife in the hands of a crazed murderer. Each stroke of the pen was painstaking and graceless. She didn’t let herself examine the drawing too closely when she was done. The stick figures were close enough to humanoid to get her point across.
She snapped a photo of the sketch on her phone and sent it.
Fergus’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He tried to ignore it. His conversation earlier that morning with Nicole had left him unsettled and unsure how to proceed. He’d had sex with Julia and the world hadn’t crashed around him in a fiery blaze. He didn’t know how to feel about that, but his “dealing with people” energy was running low and he needed to save it for the library patrons.
His phone vibrated once more. And then again. With a grumble, he pulled out his phone. Julia was texting him, though at first glance it looked more like a threatening note. She’d sent him a photo of what looked like a stick figure melted by acid—a woman, judging by the terrible attempt to add long hair and a lopsided pair of circles at the chest. Below the photo was a caption:
Julia Hardin and the Hungry Highlander Librarian Beastmonster.
That made his eyebrows shoot skyward.
Please, sir. I know you are a ravenous beastmonster, but I beseech thee not to eat me. I am but a measly human.
Another image popped up. This time, it was something that looked like an alligator or a T-Rex wearing a kilt with a long tail poking out the back—though he had to squint to be certain. The more he studied the bizarre scrawled image, the more he considered whether he ought to be insulted she’d drawn his hands so small, or impressed by her dedication to her art despite a broken arm.
Och, is it too late for you, lassie. My hunger is uncontrollable and my teeth are sharp.
Another sketch appeared, this time only a face—Julia’s presumably, with her mouth in a panicked “O” shape. Please be merciful and spare my life. I can provide you with steak and potatoes and wine. A grand fine meal. What say thee?
Fergus stared at the series of incomprehensible texts for a long time, unsure if this was a sign she was drunk, or had taken too many pain meds, or something else entirely. He hadn’t dated since he was a teenager—two decades ago. Had things really changed so much since then? He’d always found Julia to be enigmatic, and maybe a little kooky, but this was more than he was prepared for. Still shell-shocked, he put his phone back in his pocket and continued typing the report he was working on.
It wasn’t until his lunch break a few hours later when he’d taken his leftover Thai food out of the staff refrigerator to reheat in the microwave that a light bulb went off in his head. This was Julia’s way of asking him to dinner. It was so absurd, he laughed out loud, which caused Mia, who was making herself yet another of mug of peppermint tea, to look at him in alarm.
He ignored Mia, shoving a bite of pad thai into his mouth. When she finally left him alone, he hunted down a pad of paper and a pen. He might not understand Julia well, but drawing was the one language he was fluent in.
“What is this tragedy?” Nora pressed her palms to her cheeks in horror.
“It’s…it’s…” Clem swallowed before unleashing the rest of her sentence. “Horrible.”
“It’s not that bad,” Julia groaned. She was lying. It was that bad. “Please say it’s not that bad.”
Her attempt at painting her own nails hadn’t started out awful. She’d managed to remove the old traces of the soft pink polish without too much difficulty, but the moment she tried to apply a darker red to her nails, disaster had struck. She’d used her left hand to paint the nails of her broken hand with all the dexterity of an overly enthusiastic four-year-old. Nothing a healthy dose of nail polish remover couldn’t fix. But she’d gotten a little too ambitious when it came to painting her left hand. With her right out of commission, she devised the rather ingenious plan of shoving the end of the brush inside her cast.
The first problem was smudging the nails she’d already done. The second problem was her reaction to that mess-up, which involved jerking her cast away in a panic, sending the brush flying across the room. That caused her to knock the bottle over, which she tried to right before it spilled onto the carpet, but she struggled to find purchase on the slippery bottle with her left hand. She wasn’t quite sure what happened after that amid the chaos, but the end result was a Rorschach blot of I’m Not Really a Waitress all over her table and hands, and, worst of all, the copy of Torrents of the Heart she’d been reading.
The library copy that Fergus had found for her.
She hadn’t even started her date with Fergus yet and already it was a disaster. Julia didn’t put much stock in omens, but this had to be a bad one.
The sharp scent of acetone from the nail polish remover she’d tried using to clean the cover burned her nostrils and made her eyes water. In the end, all she achieved was ruining her mascara and creating an even bigger mess on the cover.
Nora gently removed the nail polish remover from Clem’s hand and returned it to the bathroom. She came back with a damp washcloth and wiped away Julia’s raccoon eyes.
“Bad might be an understatement,” Clem added. She went to the kitchen and poured a glass of emerge
ncy rosé from the box Julia kept in her fridge.
Clem shoved the stemless wine glass into Julia’s face.
Julia coughed and sputtered against the onslaught of liquid filling her mouth. “This is pointless. I’m going to call it off.”
“You’re not cancelling,” Nora said matter-of-factly, as though Julia’s opinion on the matter was not important at all.
“Why not?”
“Because you just had a crappy day, and an even crappier week with the broken arm and everything. If anyone deserves to have dinner cooked for her by a hot librarian, it’s you.”
Nora’s words were so calm and reasonable, but there was one flaw in the logic. Julia dropped her forehead to her arm. “I’m still not exactly sure he did invite me over for dinner.”
She didn’t even need to look up to know Nora and Clem were exchanging concerned looks above her messy bun. This wasn’t fair. She was the one who was supposed to provide sage, impartial advice when her friends were facing a romantic crisis. That was her super-power as the perpetually single friend. The hardened, bitter shell around her heart gave her just enough distance and wisdom to see through all the drama and stress of love. And now here she was, doused in nail polish and disappointment, with no idea whether a date was even a date anymore.
“Usually this kind of thing is straightforward,” Clem said. “What makes you think it’s not really a date? What did he say when he asked you?”
“His exact words,” Nora added.
Julia raised her head slowly, as though the weight of all her jumbled thoughts was too heavy to bear. “He didn’t exactly ask me. Not in words.”
A silent pause followed, broken only by the sound of Clem pushing the glass of rosé across the table to Julia.
Knowing things could only go downhill from here, Julia decided she may as well get the worst of it over with and unlocked her phone. She showed them Fergus’s response.
Nora and Clem stared at it for a long time, mouths hanging open. Finally, Clem reached across the table and snatched the glass of rosé back, downing it in one smooth shot. Nora took it from her and refilled it, bringing another two glasses with it. The three of them sat in silence and drank their cheap wine while the image Fergus had drawn stared back at them from her phone screen in the center of the table.
A cave opening, shadowed expertly to convey its dark depths, with an ominous hint of a dragon’s snout lurking in the distance. The text below read The beast bows for no one’s demands. Present yourself to my cave Friday, 7pm, and I shall feast upon your bones.
“Huh,” was all Nora could muster.
“I didn’t know he was so talented.” Clem scrolled up the text history, putting Julia’s pitiful left-handed sketches on full display. “Yours are…interesting, too.”
“I’m better with my right hand,” Julia said defensively.
“Have you considered that maybe sending Fergus badly drawn sex cartoons isn’t the best form of communication if you want to pursue something a little more serious?” Nora asked.
“All the damn time.” And yet he’d responded in kind. Julia didn’t believe in fate or soul mates or anything fanciful like that. But he was the first man she’d shared that weird side of herself with and he hadn’t rejected her. He’d joined her and revealed he was just as strange.
Nora reached across the table and squeezed Julia’s hand. “Come on, let’s get you ready.”
It only took another fifteen minutes for Julia to be properly primped and polished for her date, with Nora and Clem’s assistance. Everything she struggled with on her own was so much easier with their help.
When they finished, Julia’s heart felt a million times lighter. She might not know what she was getting into with Fergus, but at least her hair and makeup looked good. Her outfit—a simple white T-shirt tucked into a floral patterned skirt with an elastic waist and A-line silhouette—was designed for easy removal. She was ready for anything.
“Hey, if you want I could take this to my lab,” Nora said, picking up the ruined copy of Torrents of the Heart. “I could probably find something to clean up the mess without damaging the cover any further.”
“That would be great, but…” Julia’s lungs squeezed a little too tight. There was only one reason why Fergus had kept this book from her for so long. He didn’t want people to know about it.
Nora raised her eyebrows. When Julia didn’t respond, she looked at the book, studying it more closely. Then she gasped.
Clem yanked the book from Nora’s hands. She tilted it to one side, then the other. Then she looked straight at Julia. “Holy shit. Is that Fergus? Why does he have three arms?”
Julia groaned. Maybe it was too soon for optimism after all.
13
Julia’s nerves jangled inside her stomach like a kitten with a new ball of yarn when her cab pulled up to Fergus’s house. It was a nice little house on a quiet street. The landscaping was simple with a couple of rhododendron bushes flanking the porch steps. She wasn’t sure what to expect and this house gave no extra insight into Fergus’s personality.
She paid the cab driver and carefully made her way up the sidewalk, trying not to the think about the cost of transportation these last two weeks. She’d gotten a lucky break when her mechanic, who owed her a favor, offered to fix her car for just the cost of the parts since she wasn’t in a rush to get the car back. She wasn’t a confident driver to begin with, and didn’t want to risk driving one-handed. For the next five weeks, she was entirely dependent on the small fleet of yellow-and-black checkered cabs.
Fergus opened the door before she knocked. “Hey.”
She swallowed away the sudden dryness in her throat. “Hey.”
He was wearing a black apron freshly speckled with some kind of red sauce. She’d discovered so many different facets of this man over the last few weeks now that she’d peeked behind his grumpy façade, and she had no doubt she was about to discover yet another one tonight.
“Can I come in?”
He adjusted his glasses and stepped aside. “Yeah, of course. Sorry.”
She handed him the six-pack of pale ale she’d brought and went inside. The house was everything it promised to be from the outside. Clean, with plain white walls and the tiniest bit of clutter, mostly from the stacks of books overflowing the shelves. But then there was the art.
Her breath caught in her throat as she took in the dozens of framed sketches covering the walls. “Did you do all of these?”
“Most of them. The sketches are mine. The paintings are pieces I’ve bought over the years.”
“They’re incredible.” Her eyes were drawn to one sketch in particular—a smaller one in a black frame positioned at the center of the gallery wall. It was of a child with huge, round eyes and dark, curly hair. Something about her was so familiar.
“Thanks.” There was a nervous energy about him tonight. She hadn’t seen him in the week since trivia night at the Holy Grail last week. He’d been so confident and assured then, but time had created an invisible wall of awkwardness between them.
She looked around, wondering if he was going to offer to show her the rest of the house, but he didn’t. He stood there, rubbing his hands together in a nervous gesture. She started to ask if he would give her a tour, but the smoke detector went off, letting out a shrill cry.
“Shit!” He dashed into the kitchen, leaving her standing there by herself once more.
Julia winced. So far not a great start to their date, but that didn’t mean anything. They could get things back on track easily.
She made herself comfortable on his couch while she waited. There a puzzle on his coffee table, only about two-thirds of the way completed. He’d started in the middle, completing a random section of the design without doing any of the edge pieces. Not even the corners. It was the exact opposite of how she would have done it. Her fingers itched to pick up one of the pieces and find its spot. She loved puzzles, but once she started, it was impossible for her to stop.
&nb
sp; The smoke detector quit ringing, though a haze of smoke and the smell of something burned seeped into the room. Sitting around and waiting to be catered to wasn’t her natural state, so she ventured to the kitchen to see if there was anything she could help with. She pushed open the door and saw him in front of the stove, one hand swatting away the smoke-filled air with a tea towel and the other pressing his phone to his ear.
“Stop asking me why I’m cooking dinner and tell me how to stop screwing it up.”
Julia smiled and retreated to the living room. He was making an effort—a real effort—for her. When was the last time someone had done that? Her heart squeezed a little tighter. This wasn’t a disaster of a date, this was a sweet effort gone a little awry.
She didn’t mean to start working on Fergus’s puzzle, but that one little green and purple piece so clearly belonged in the top left corner that it would have been a shame to leave it in the pile of unused pieces. As soon as it was in place, that familiar rush of adrenaline mixed with endorphins hit her, and her self-control evaporated like water on hot asphalt.
She placed another piece, then another. Each one soothed a little more of the anxiety that had plagued her all day. Soon she stopped thinking about Fergus and this date altogether. She was consumed by the need to finish the puzzle. It was a tricky one, with little variation in color, but Julia was a master at puzzles, having spent more evenings than she could count as a child with her kitchen table covered in tiny jigsaw pieces. Her mom loved puzzles, too, and it was as common as breathing for Julia, Eli, and their mom to stay up way past their bedtime finishing one. The only reason Julia didn’t have any in her apartment was precisely because of this all-consuming urge to finish the damn things once she started.