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"Yes, how dare you not leave me there to die," I said, shooting him a saucy smile over my shoulder as I closed the glove box.
"I'm not sorry about saving you, honey. I'm sorry I, ah, made you so uncomfortable."
Uncomfortable.
That was a delicate way to phrase it.
"It's not your fault," I offered, because it was true. "Besides, I'm fine now."
And, surprisingly, I was.
I was used to giving platitudes to people, especially my uncle and therapist. I was always fine. Even when I wasn't.
But sitting there in a car I had never been in before with a man I had been creeping on somewhat for a year, outside of my apartment for the first time in about two years, yeah, I found I wasn't lying when I said I was fine.
I was.
Not great, but that was asking for too much.
But fine.
"How long has it been?"
My eyes snapped to his face, seeing him watching me again and I got the strong impression that he was seeing more than I thought I was giving him. He had those kinds of eyes, the ones that read into you.
"Two years," I admitted.
"Can I ask you something that I've been wondering since, fuck, I don't know... I moved in?"
"Sure," I said, belly tightening slightly at knowing I just agreed to answer whatever he might ask. Things that were completely unanswerable like: why are you an agoraphobe anyway?
"How the hell do you get the mailman to bring your boxes up to your door? If my box gets too full, he starts leaving me those 'Sorry We Missed You' notes and makes me drive my ass to the post office to pick them up."
I smiled at that not only because it was a funny visual, but because it was so much like him. Not Ryan, Uncle Danny. "My uncle is our mailman," I supplied with a laugh. "He, well, he mostly raised me so we're close and he, sort-of, understands my issues so he helps me out by putting my packages outside my door."
My therapist would get those disapproving lines between her brows at the word "helps", choosing instead to say "enables". But screw her.
"That explains it. How did he mostly raise you?" he went on and where it would normally feel invasive for a casual acquaintance to ask that, it was so nice to talk to someone who wasn't taking notes that I didn't mind at all.
"Like I said, my mom was a bit of a hippie. She drifted. Never settled down and when she did, it was usually with a man. Sometimes, those men didn't want a kid hanging around so I got dropped off in Navesink Bank and she went off... wherever for a while. Eventually, she'd kick him to the curb or, more often, he would dump her and she'd feel guilty and come back for me. We're, um, not close."
"Understandably," he said with a nod that said he didn't judge me for pushing her out of my life. Hell, I still judged myself about it.
"Are you close with your family?" I asked, already knowing the answer to that since I had seen his family visit often, but wanting to keep the conversation going.
He smiled a little at that, one brow going up. "Maybe too close at times," he said in a way that suggested there was a deeper meaning that he wasn't going to let me in on. "I have four brothers," he went on, not seeming to want silence either. "We're all close because, well, our mother would never allow us to not be. She's a bit of a hardass."
"Well, she'd have to be to raise five sons, wouldn't she?" I paused at that, wondering what it would be like to have siblings, finding maybe I would have felt less alone in the world growing up. "It must be nice to have that many people care about you though," I said, not meaning to because it implied that not many people cared for me. And while that was true, it made me sound a little pathetic.
"Oh, they care alright. About what I wear, how I act, what I drive, who I date, my lack of a social life."
"Well, I can hardly judge you on that," I laughed.
"Were you always..." he started to ask, but I cut him off before he could get it out.
"No. This came on.... gradually at first and then all at once. Most of my life, I was you know... normal. I had friends and I went out and I had a job that I went to every day."
"Where'd you work?"
"I taught kindergarten," I supplied, feeling that little familiar pang inside at even the mention of it. Better times those were.
"You like kids, huh?" he asked, still giving me that soft smile that I found really disarming. "I got three nieces that are adorable hell beasts."
