“Like what?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“What’s trying to swallow you whole?”
He turned around and looked at me with those bright blue eyes. His brow wasn’t furrowed, and his shoulders weren’t pulled taut. His voice didn’t have any sort of an edge to it, and his eyes didn’t seem to be prying. It was a stark contrast to the stressed man who was just talking about work, and the swift change startled me.
Was he trying to convince me that he actually cared about my life circumstances?
Because I found that very hard to believe.
I kept silent, simply staring at him while he waited for an answer. I wasn’t telling him anything like that. Sure, he’d opened up to me a bit about his business. Who wouldn’t, with the money he had? All the stuff that mattered, he kept close to his chest. All the stuff that hurt, he kept locked away. I wasn’t about to be the first person to let that floodgate open, so he was just going to have to deal with my silence.
At any rate, I had a long conversation waiting for me once I got to my parents. One that would include tears, anger, and yelling. One that would require explanation and groveling and eventually, elicit pitiful looks from my parents. I didn’t want to be cooped up with some strange man in a towel while he gave me those same pitiful looks.
Like I was a lost, pathetic little dog.
It still hurt, and eventually, I would address that hurt with someone I loved and cared for and still trusted.
Not a stranger who decided to give me a ride home because someone else’s Christmas spirit forced him to say yes.
“Fine,” he said, shrugging.
“Fine,” I said.
“Which side of the bed would you like?” he asked.
I glanced at the bed that dipped solidly in the middle. It honestly didn’t matter which side I picked. Eventually, the two of us would roll into one another and be touching before we woke up the next morning.
I shivered at the idea while I simultaneously chastised myself for it.
“This side’s fine,” I said.
“Good,” he said. “I always sleep better when I’m closer to the door anyway.”
“Why?” I asked.
It was then I watched his posture straighten again. With one simple word, the man who was trying to be sympathetic to my plight had gone on the defensive. I snickered and shook my head while I sat on the edge of the bed, my mind swirling while the fuzzy television droned on in the background.
Maybe we were finding a bit of common ground after all.
Chapter 9
Colin
I didn’t understand this woman at all. For the entire car ride, she hounded me with questions about my life. Who I was. What I did for a living. Where I came from. Why I didn’t celebrate Christmas. It was like she had a premade list of questions she had ready to fire off the moment we hopped into the car, and yet, she couldn’t answer a single one of mine. And they weren’t hard questions. Why I didn’t celebrate the holidays was a tough question. Why she broke up with her boyfriend wasn’t.
She wouldn’t answer anything, just like I didn’t.
I guessed we had a bit more in common than I’d originally thought.
I sat on the edge of the bed and started wondering about her life. What she had been through. What her mother might be like. I tried to paint this picture of her world. Anything that could explain why she was the way she was. Why was she capable of physically opening herself up but not mentally or emotionally able to do the same thing? It was easy to show happiness around someone. It was the easiest emotion to mimic. But showing the tough stuff? Showing the tears and the vulnerability and the anger?
That was the hard stuff.
I started wondering about her hometown and what it might’ve been like when she was growing up. Maybe she grew up in one of those small Minnesota towns that still did horse-drawn carriage rides around the downtown area. Maybe she grew up in one of those towns where opening their very first bar required a town board meeting where everyone met to take a vote. She seemed to have that small-town feel about her. With the wind in her hair and her big doe eyes, wide and hungry for the world around her.
As she sighed behind me, I started wondering what had chewed her up and spit her back out.
It was always the small tells that no one knew they had. The heavy sighs and the mindless ticks. Like the picking of her thumbs and the way she didn’t realize she chewed on her lower lip. Those were nervous ticks that developed in childhood years, but in adulthood, they were only exacerbated by stress. I wondered what had happened to her that caused her ticks to flare back up. I wondered who had wronged her or hurt her. Small towns girls, in my limited knowledge of them, were always over-trusting of people. They would talk about themselves in a heartbeat, not because they were selfish, but because they truly felt people were genuine in their desire to open up.
Just like they were.
But she wasn’t. She was just as closed off as I was, and that meant someone along the line had done something to convince her that she shouldn’t trust the people around her.
It made my heart hurt a bit for her.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“I’m getting that way a bit, too.”
“Wanna throw on some clothes and go hunt down our dinner?” she asked.
“I think either
