“Oh,” I said, nodding and feeling very sheepish now.
“Carry on, though,” he said, a clear smile in his voice. “You slipped and hurt your leg?”
“Yes! And then what would I do? I can’t go online and Google what to do.”
“Why would I do that when I could just phone the doctor? He lives a road away.”
“But . . .” I stopped talking and thought about it. “Okay, but maybe I didn’t hurt my leg. Maybe I choked on something.”
He looked around the place, his smile growing. “What would you choke on?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Something! I could choke on something and maybe the doctor is not available and you have to do an emergency tracheotomy and you would need to consult the internet for that!”
I heard a small chuckle escape his lips now. His glasses slipped down his nose as he did and I didn’t know whether I hated him for chuckling, or whether I liked him.
“Everyone who lives in this town manages just fine without the internet.”
“Well, I am not managing.” I heard myself spit the words out—they were louder than I had intended. His smile fell. “I am not managing, okay? So, please, if there is some kind of secret underground internet here, will you please just tell me?” I could hear the high-pitched desperation in my voice.
He shook his head now, a strange look on his face that told me nothing of what he might be thinking. “I’m sorry, there is no internet here. No cell-phone reception. Nothing.”
I sighed and looked away from him. I felt a tightening in my chest again, and I didn’t want him to see.
“So, if someone like me were stuck here for twenty-four hours or so, what would I do to pass the time?”
The guy looked confused for a moment but then pointed around the shop. “Well, you could hire some movies, for starters.”
“I thought you couldn’t watch TV here?” I said.
“You can’t tune it in and get any channels, but you can use it to watch movies on.”
I nodded at this. “What else?” I asked.
“You could buy some CDs, listen to music.” He pointed to the other side of the store, and I could see it was dedicated to music.
“What would I watch the movies on? It’s not like I can slip a DVD into my phone or iPad.”
“You could try a television set—you know those, don’t you? They are sort of like books in that you look at them too.”
“Ha, ha. I know what a TV is. I don’t have one myself. We watch everything on our phones.”
His lips twitched into a tiny smile and our eyes locked for a moment and that feeling rose up inside me again . . .
Familiar. Something about him was familiar.
Very familiar.
CHAPTER 13
I tilted my head to the side and looked at him from a different angle. But the brief moment of familiarity I’d just experienced disappeared quickly when he too tilted his head to the side and his glasses slipped down his nose. I looked around the store again.
“Okay, fine. What do you have?” I walked up to one of the shelves, careful not to slip on the still wet floor.
“What movies do you like?” He came up to me; it was the closest we’d been until now, and I noticed his smell immediately. He smelled minty, as if he’d been chewing gum. And also spicy and woody and . . .Oh my God, he smelled bloody amazing. Like the best smell I’d smelled in a while. I leaned in a little and took a deep (subtle) breath. It felt terribly wrong to go around smelling strangers, but I couldn’t help it, the guy really smelled good.
“So?” he asked.
“So what?”
