Page 67 of Love Her

“Spice, or crazy?”

“Tom-a-to, tom-ah-to,” I told her. I heard her give a snotty laugh, and knew the corner’d turned. “So you tell me what you can tell me, if you can tell me,” I went on. “But there’s no rush. I’m not going anywhere.”

A long moment of silence unspooled after I said it. “Tonight,” she corrected me. “But also not ever.”

“If I have my way, yes,” I agreed with her, settling back on the couch, with her in my lap. “And I’m kind of an asshole, if you hadn’t noticed,” I added, and she snickered, lifting up enough from me to wipe her face with both hands. She stared at me intently, taking turns looking lost and then found.

“Did you ever wonder why I sleep with nightlights on?” she asked eventually, and I shook my head. “I’m afraid of the dark.”

The urge to askWhyloomed large, but I managed to bite it back.

And then I remembered one of the last times I’d seen her in a janitorial uniform, when I’d turned the lights out on her to scareher—because I was a prick. She’d crawled out of the bathroom like a drowning man reaching shore and had puked.

If there had ever been any doubt, I wasdefinitelyan asshole.

“Yeah?” I asked, and she nodded quickly.

“Almost my whole life,” she said, then shook me bodily. “Now you tell me something embarassing.”

I blurted out the first thing that came to mind—especially after finding out I’d hurt her. “I worry I’m not good enough for you.”

She blinked and reared back. “Rhaim—that’s not funny?—”

“I know. It’s why I worry about it so much.”

“Seriously! Never say that again!” she said. “I ought to slap you!”

“Yeah. You should.” Her jaw dropped, and she tried to read my face to see if I was joking or not. “Do it,” I urged her. “You’ve had a shitty day. You’ve got permission to take it out on me.”

She lifted up her hand, and then smacked it across my face before groaning. “Ow!”

“I should’ve warned you I have bones,” I laughed. “You back with me?” She looked from her stinging hand, to the handprint she’d tried to leave on my face.

“I think so,” she said, then blinked again. “You let me hit you!”

“You’re not exactly a welterweight, Lia. Plus, desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.”

“And you think I’m crazy?” she said, and I shook my head.

“Your words, not mine. I’ve never said that.”

She tucked her head back against my shoulder again. “You don’t need to—not when everyone else has.”

“Well they’re all fuckers. And wrong,” I said, cinching my arms around her tightly. “Do you want to sit in the dark some? With me? And let me chase whatever it is you’re scared of off?”

36

LIA

Isat there on Rhaim’s lap, contemplating.

I’d already had such an awful day—I didn’t want my brain to get pushed back into the hole if I could help it.

But then again, I’d have to see my Uncle at my father’s birthday party, in what, three days?

“Okay,” I whispered. Maybe I could rewrite just one file inside my head in the meantime. And not piss myself out of fear at the sight of him, like some pathetic chihuahua.

“Okay,” Rhaim said back, shifting himself, so that I was forced to stand before he did. Then he took my hand and went over to the lightswitch for his secretary’s office. “Ready?”

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