Page 68 of Hilarina and the Ogre

Hilary didn’t need the rest of the question. He’d seen him asking it the whole time they’d been inside while the cops milled around, puffing themselves up.

“How do you think?”

It wasn’t an avoidance of the question, but rather, something just as pressing, a trade Hilary was offering. Like saying, Tell me what you think of me.

“You’re…kind.” But he knew that wasn’t it. Kindness didn’t taste like this. It didn’t know things. He tried again. “You protect people.”

“People?”

Trenton couldn’t have made the assumption on his own, the one that raised himself up on a pedestal, but Hilary did it for him, giving him the permission to go ahead with the claim.

“Me. You protect me.” It still felt egregious to say, even with permission. An obnoxious presumption.

Hilary smiled. Not like he usually did when trying to cheer him up or give him strength, but like a man setting down a burden after his back had already broken under it. “I’m your stalker, Trenton,” he said. “I’ve been stalking you for years.”

The next breath burned. Not like the acid in his vomit, but like a strong soap. The purgative, not the poison. Trenton felt himself growing, a gentle but insistent kind of pushing inside him. “I don’t believe you.”

“Yes, you do.” Hilary was looking a little like Trenton felt, though less relieved and more exasperated. “It answers too many things for you, doesn’t it?”

It did answer things. Things like why Hilary was always around and, more importantly, how he always showed up exactly when he was needed. It also explained how the man knew so many things about both past and present, things he needed to do or say. Because only someone singularly devoted, someone who had made him into a kind of life’s purpose, could have done as well as Hilary.

It still left one question. “Why me?”

“Because it has to be you. Because you were always, from the beginning, going to be.”

Trenton thought maybe the feeling blooming inside was how Mary Magdalene had felt with Jesus, the transformation so complete he couldn’t be compared to the person he’d been before the knowing. “Can I be something that special?”

Hilary looked up at the sky, and he looked so frail, so small beneath the weight of the world, that it seemed he would shatter into a powder of tiny fragments the next moment. But he didn’t. Hilary just took a breath and smiled into it. “Want to find out?”

Chapter Nineteen

Taken Hostage

Hilary’s house was near enough to the restaurant to be within easy walking distance. They could even see the corner of it from the upstairs window, but it would take Trenton a while to notice. He was going slowly, taking in the place the way he’d never studied his own apartment. Hilary’s, and now his. He knew that without having to ask, though Hilary said it aloud just to make it clear. “The second shelf is for you, but if you have more shoes, we can get another to put on top. They’re stackable. Your coat can go on the hook or in the closet. Whichever you find easier.”

“I want to keep it with yours.”

So Hilary took the coat and hung it on the hook, the two jackets side by side, and Trenton knew the hook had been hung for him, and only for him.

“Do you like the bare wood, or should we cover it?” Hilary asked. “I was thinking of a rug for the living room at least, but I’m worried about dust mites.”

“I’ll vacuum.” It felt so easy to say, to insinuate himself into things like that. But Trenton knew it was only because Hilary was making it that way, not just opening to him, but constructing the walls up and around him, as if he were at the center and always had been.

There weren’t many personal touches in the apartment, but the few that were there Trenton lingered over. “I like this painting.” It was of two small children in a field of sunflowers, kneeling before a puddle, holding hands. Their backs faced the viewer. One was wearing a hat. The other was floating his as a kind of boat in the puddle. “I like it so much.”

“I thought you might.”

It was why Hilary had bought it. Why Hilary had bought all the things in the apartment. Everything in it was soothing, the colors warm and everything comfortable. Trenton turned to look at Hilary, his savior, providing for him as if that were simply the natural way of things.

There was only one bed.

“I can get another,” Hilary said. “I have a couch.”

Trenton tried to study those words, looking for hidden meaning, but that confused him, complicating things with his thoughts and anxieties. So he took a breath and asked. “Which do you prefer?”

Hilary looked at him and considered. “I don’t know yet.”

And then the question seemed stupid. Of course Hilary didn’t know. He hadn’t yet seen what kind of roommate he had.