“Oh,” I said with realization and then laughed. “I was noticing how nice you looked.”
“Nice?” She still had that suspicious look in her eyes.
“Yeah.”
“Oh, God, you’re not trying to, like, hit on me, are you?”
“No!” I exclaimed, and then thought for a moment. “Would it be so bad if I were?”
“You don’t want to date me, Daggett, I promise you.” I liked the way my name sounded coming out of her mouth. It was so sultry.
“How could you possibly know who I want to date? Or what kind of girl I’m even interested in?”
“It’s not me. Trust that.”
“Are you scared of letting people in? Me, specifically?”
Priscilla threw her head back and cackled like a witch. “You’re funny,” she added. There was even a shine to her eyes like she laughed so hard she was almost crying.
“I’m being serious!” I insisted.
“Not every woman is a puzzle piece waiting to be solved by some strong, dashing, mysterious man, all right? We’re not living in a cheap, smutty romance novel. Believe me, if we were, I’d be much happier.”
“Did you just call me dashing?”
She stared at me, her eyes now unreadable. “I was making a joke.”
Disappointment slapped me in the face. “Yeah, me too,” I lied.
“Look, I love men. I love every inch of men. But I don’t like relationships. People start acting stupid and codependent when they’re in one. It’s no longer I, but we, and that shit is just tragic. Conjoined twins have more independence than most couples I know.”
I struggled to keep my mind off the question of which inches of me she would love.
I tried to stay on topic. “Yeah, but aren’t you in your thirties?”
“What’s your point?” she asked with an edge to her voice.
“Nothing,” I answered quickly and then shut my mouth tight. I have a habit of saying dumb things to pretty girls, and there was a real chance I had already blown it with this one. Either way, I figured I’d just play it cool from now on. We walked a few more steps on the road, and in the distance, I spotted a small building all lit up. It looked like Joe’s Diner. In the meantime, I made the mistake of opening my mouth again. “It’s just…now that we’re getting older, I’d figure you’d be thinking about maybe settling down.” I just couldn’t help myself.
“Why would I want to do a thing like that? I thank God every fucking morning that I made it to my thirties without getting pregnant, and my ass is an atheist.”
“I don’t just mean popping kids out but maybe buying a house, contemplating finding someone to share that life with, you know, growing old happily.”
“Marriage and a big house ain’t my idea of growing old happily. That’s some stuck-in-the-1950s bullshit.”
I knew she’d take it that way when it wasn’t my intention. I just shrugged. “I’m not trying to be offensive. I guess it’s what I want.”
Her head comically tilted at me. “I think you need your brain checked. What kind of guy today daydreams about buying houses and getting hitched?”
“One struggling with a condition that doesn’t allow me to live like a normal person.”
She surprisingly went quiet. After a moment of silence, she said, “Fair enough, I guess.”
“I miss having my own apartment and a regular day job. Heck, I miss getting turned down by women every night at the bar.”
“If you’re trying to find someone to settle down with, I really don’t think you should be checking out the types at a bar. Trust me, I am one of those girls.”
“Don’t stereotype. Not every girl going out for a drink is some mess that no one should want to be with.”
“I’m not. I’m just saying if she’s drunk at a bar, she probably isn’t looking for a boyfriend beyond one night.”
“Well, I disagree.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
I laughed while shaking my head. “Only you would vilify me for not stereotyping an entire group of theoretical women.”
“When did I do that?”
She’d be infuriating if I didn’t like her so much. If Kerry were still alive, he’d have slugged me in the shoulder ten times to try to knock some sense into me. My liking of Priscilla, I’ll admit, was a little nonsensical, but I couldn’t help myself. There was something about her. She was like a dark elf mixed with a Valkyrie. I just had to remind myself not to tell her that.
“So, where are we even going?” Priscilla asked. The road we stood on was at the rim of the city, sandwiched between apartment buildings that were pretty abandoned and a field that trailed in from outside of the city. The field had dried out and died for the winter and was now covered in snow and ice. Not even the lights for this street were working. Even so, I knew we were on Green street. You had to drive down it every time you entered the city.
“Max said to clear this area, so that’s what we’re going to do,” I answered.
“I’d be doing more, but I’m pretty much useless without having one of your sniffers.”
I felt bad for her. She came along for a reason, yet she didn’t have any skills to help out. With us getting closer to Joe’s Diner, I realized it’d be beneficial, both to our search and to Priscilla’s ego, if we went inside and asked about Cora. “Let’s go in the restaurant,” I said.
“Oh, great, I’m starving,” she replied.
“No. I mean, let’s go in there and find out if they’ve seen Cora.”
“Right, right,” she said as her eyes dashed away from me.
Joe’s Diner had a really neat throwback vibe to it, where on the left of the interior was a long, white
