Page 18 of Heart Strings & Hotlines
“Jesus, Thane.” Rafe drops into a chair along the wall. “That’s not what I said at all. I said how you experience the world is different than the majority, and how you’ve compensated so long for that is through knowledge. I never said you, as a person, weredifferent.”
I ignore him. I don’t particularly care for semantics, so I nod at Kara. Her face is scrunched up in a strange way, and her eyes are a horrible shade of red.
“Do you have allergies?” I ask her. This is probably something I should know.
“Ugh, Brad. No. You scared me. I was crying.”
Huh. “But I’m fine.”
“When people care, they show it in a number of ways.” That’s Rafe’s psychotherapy voice.
Fucking exhausted, I drop my head back to my pillow.
“I don’t mean to sound rude here, but…Thane seems pretty, I don’t know, normal to me. No-nonsense for sure, but not…” Lottie again loses the rest of her point.
“I love it when people discuss me like a lab rat.” Pinching the bridge of my nose, I try to squeeze them out of existence. It doesn’t work.
“He is normal,” Kara says.
“How his brain processes certain stimuli is different than the majority.” Rafe clarifies. “And how he grew?—”
“I grew up isolated from other people. My father thought I was weird, and he shouted commands so often I didn’t realize he had an actual speaking voice until I was ten.”
Rafe has told me ad nauseam that I’m not weird, but I’m fine however I am, weird or not. Normal or not.
“You’re not weird, Brad.”
I study Kara’s face, then quickly shift my focus to the cement-block wall painted a horrific shade of gray that reminds me of death. I’m frustrated with myself, not her. Not understanding things makes me feel stupid, and that makes me angry, but I can’t be angry with my baby sister.
“You’re annoying, yes. The most frustrating human I’ve ever met, yes. The?—”
“Okay, Kara.” Rafe holds up a hand to stop her. “We get the picture.”
If anyone is weird in this room, it’s Rafe and that soft voice he uses. It reminds me of the one time I tried yoga. The second the woman leading it tried to adjust my hips, I was out of there.
Rafe is the one still wearing a damn sweater-vest, after all.Thatis weird.
My head throbs. “When can I get out of here?”
Rafe smacks the bottom of my feet that hang over the edge of the bed by close to a foot.
“Am I in a children’s bed?”
“Sort of?” Lottie says, then scrunches up her nose. What the hell does a scrunched-up nose mean? It would be super helpful if there were a Google Translate for facial expressions.
Fuck, that’s a great idea.“Sort of is not an explanation, Lottie.”I could build a facial reader. I own all the technology.
“Don’t bite her head off, geesh.” Kara gives Rafe a high five and I sit up, remember my predicament below the belt, and roll to my side. Now I understand why the pillow was there. “You’re the stalker who moved in next door to her, not the other way around.”
“Sorry.” Lottie’s face is as gray as the wall behind her as she points to my crotch. “That was, ah, that was me. I wasn’t sure what to?—”
“You put a pillow over my boner?”
“Ugh, gross. Sister’s ears, Brad. Sister’s ears.” Kara exits the room with arms flailing. Seems a bit dramatic, but whatever.
Lottie closes her eyes, and I look at Rafe.
“I assume she’s doing something to gather patience.”
