Page 18 of Play With Me

Cap. Shit. “I’m not actually sure,” I confess.

“What?” She moves to stand, then cries out, cringing, with a hand to the back of her head. “Ow.”

Sheishurt. Fuck. I ease her back down.

“He’s here somewhere; he went to get help.”

As if we conjured them, footsteps patter down the hallway, and a moment later, Cap appears with that grouchy-ass librarian who tried to tell us to get lost earlier.

“Good work, Cap.”

“Cap!” Nora exclaims, but she isn’t quite looking at him. She can’t see him without her glasses, I realize. Cap runs toward her and jumps.

I have to wrap myself against her back to keep them both from falling, and for a moment, I’m holding both of them in my arms.

My heart feels like it’s melted into mush.

“Oh buddy,” Nora says, her voice cracking. She’s crying. “I missed you so much.”

The librarian stands there a moment, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. Then he squints down at Nora. “Your friend promised there’d be no more trouble!”

He doesn’t care that she nearly cracked her head open. “Hey!” I say, moving to stand, but Nora puts a hand on my thigh as she gets up, completely distracting me.

“Sir,” she says, clutching Cap against her. “I slipped on the floor in your library. That’s not exactly causing trouble!”

For a moment, both of us stare at Nora, so different with her hair and no glasses. I’ve never heard this level of assertiveness from her.

“Yeah,” Cap says, “we should sue you!”

The librarian rears back. “Sue!” He takes a step backward, and I noticed a vague crunching sound, but I’m too distracted by the sight of Cap’s wet eyes.

He was crying too. How could I have missed that? I get to my feet, coming in close beside him.

I should have tried harder to see her before this. Cap needed her. We should have visited in the summer. Except…she didn’t want to see me. She’d made that clear.

She probably still feels the same way; I’ve just knocked it out of her temporarily.

“I—I” the librarian sputters. “We don’t…that’s not—”

“Do you want to sue?” I ask Nora.

She sighs, squeezing Cap again. “Maybe later.”

“You’re off the hook,” I tell the librarian. “But maybe send for someone to mop up these floors so no one else gets hurt?”

The librarian presses his fingers to his brow like he had a handkerchief, but forgot he wasn’t holding it. Clearly, he’s relieved the litigious Americans have backed down. “Yes. Yes, a mop…”

He bustles off, leaving the three of us alone.

After we make sure she’s really not hurt, Cap reverts to his excitable self. “Nora, you wanna see our hotel room? It’s really big and there’s a giant TV and a pool and a window where you can see the bridge where they used to put the chopped-off heads!”

“Cap!” I clear my throat, standing. Inviting Nora back to our hotel room is awkward, to say the least.

“Sounds awesome,” Nora said. “But I can’t see anything right now.”

Her glasses. I scan the floor, then grimace as I take in the pile of crunched glass where the librarian was standing. “Uh-oh.”

“He broke them!” Cap exclaimed. “We should definitelysue!”

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