Page 15 of Comfort Read

This seems to do the trick; everyone returns to their books, though Kit notices some muttering, voices too low for him to make out the words. When he turns back to Sage and Throgmorten, both are staring at him; Throgmorten’s expression suggests he’s mildly offended, but Sage looks almost astounded.

“Thank you.” It’s so fervid that Kit squints at him, confused.

“No problem…” he says. Then, realizing that several of the customers have returned to their books in appearance only, and are obviously still watching every move Sage makes, he adds, “Do you want to, uh… go somewhere else?”

“God yes.” Sage’s shoulders drop in relief and then he stares down, slightly dismayed, at Throgmorten. “How do I…” he starts to ask, but before he can say, “escape without getting brutally maimed,” Throgmorten yawns, twitches his tail, removes himself to one side of the cushion, and then stands and waits, looking at Sage expectantly. When Sage rises, Throgmorten immediately slides onto the spot he vacated, curls up in a ball, and falls asleep.

“Huh. Unsettling,” is Sage’s verdict, after a moment.

“Yep,” Kit says cheerfully. “Always. We’ve got a whole board and everything.”

Kit shows Sage the board. Sage laughs at the board. They’re only talking—Kit’s had this exact same conversation with everyone who comments on Throgmorten’s unnerving intelligence—but Kit has the strangest sense of being in a play, abruptly onstage before his audience. With all these people watching them, even his own words feel borrowed and false in his mouth, an act.

With a flash of sympathetic horror, Kit remembers that Sage has been in the public eye since he was nine years old. Is this how it is for him? Does he feel like this all the time? He glances at Sage’s pinched face and darting eyes and tries to forget he ever thought it.

Kit introduces Sage to Allison, who says, “Hello, nice to meet you, loved your work in Humplestiltskin, do you have any thoughts about Dune?” When Sage, blinking, confesses that he does not, she sighs and says, “Then, tragically, our conversation ends here for now—Gareth! Don’t you try to sneak away from me, there are only seventeen more reasons why you’re wrong about—hey! You started this! I’ll excommunicate you from the group chat if you keep picking fights you won’t finish, I mean it!”

“Should we go?” Sage says, in an undertone, as a red-faced Gareth blusters his way back to the counter.

“Definitely.” Kit hurries them both out the door. It’s a relief to be outside, with no one looking at them, or listening to what they’re saying.

This relief comes crashing to a halt as Kit realizes he has absolutely no idea what to do next. A long moment of panic. Then:

“I shall take you to look at the town!” It’s not, Kit reflects, a great sentence. Overly formal; too enthusiastic; delivered in a way that could not have made it more obvious that the thought was occurring to him in real time. A shame, really, that it’s already come out of his mouth. Worse that he follows it with: “For the town… is where we are.”

Sage squints at him. “Hey. Are you, like, nervous?” The squint is fair, but Kit feels the question is not.

Still, he might as well admit it; it’s not like he’s fooling anyone. “Usually,” Kit admits, running a hand through his hair. “And currently. Yeah.”

“Me too,” Sage admits, his mouth a crooked half-moon. “I mean, not usually, that’s rough, but right now? Nervous as hell. This is…”

“Weird?” Kit suggests, when the pause has stretched enough that he can’t bear it any longer.

“Yes.” Sage punches out a hard breath. “I was trying to think of a better word, but there isn’t one.”

They stare at one another for a beat, the enormity of their folly balanced between them. He can almost see in Sage’s eyes the questions running through his own mind, like: Is this insane? Are we both insane? Is the whole idea doomed to fail, and mess one or both of us up in the process? Kit’s sure that it’s Sage who should have the answers to these questions. But he looks every bit as at sea as Kit feels, and something about that lost expression on his iconic, chiseled face draws the next steps out of Kit, blasting them loose from his own abruptly forgotten doubts.

“While we’re on the topic of weird…” Kit spreads his hands wide and begins to walk backwards in the style of the college tour guide he once was. “Welcome to Cedar Falls, New York! One would imagine the town was built here because of the waterfalls, since that would make sense. But alas no; our town founder, the unforgettably named Biff Wellington, in fact had what he claimed to be a psychic vision, and that’s how we all ended up here today.”

“You’re making this up,” Sage says, shaking his head. Kit can’t be sure, but he looks almost as though he’s trying not to smile. “Biff Wellington?”

“Look it up if you don’t believe me,” Kit says, biting back a smile of his own. “The library’s back that way, but I can take you if you want. It’s all there in black-and-white. Old Biff went foraging for mushrooms one day, and evidence would suggest he wasn’t that great at it, because shortly after sitting down to eat a few, he had a vision of a tree coming to life and telling him his destiny was to found a town here. That tree, actually.” He points to the large poplar that sits between Sawyer’s and the rest of the main drag, which is ringed by a wrought-iron fence. “There’s a plaque and everything. See for yourself.”

Sage walks over to the tree and glances down at the plaque, well-kept despite its age, which reads:

Here stands the noble tree that started it all. The town of Cedar Falls is forever grateful for your wisdom. Mayor Biff Wellington, 1871

Sage whistles, then laughs. “You know, I should really be used to this. I travel for my job all the time! But somehow I’m always amazed by how bizarre people can be.” He grimaces, and adds, “There are shades of bizarre, I guess. I’m not sure anything else in Hollywood would surprise me anymore, and I wouldn’t want it to. But this? It’s nice.”

Kit does not say, “Tell me every surprising thing that ever happened to you in Hollywood, exclude no names and spare no detail, I solemnly swear I will not write down everything you say and upload it to a gossip website, tell me now, oh my God!” He thinks that if he did Sage might dive into the nearest bush to escape, and Kit wouldn’t even be able to blame him.

Kit instead finds himself saying, “That’s actually the best way to get kids interested in history. Hooking them with the strange, funny stuff first, the human stuff.” It’s only at Sage’s quizzical look that he realizes he has to explain: “I was a second-grade teacher, before, you know. All that.”

He gestures back at the bookstore, and then, remembering that he’s supposed to be giving a tour, starts walking backwards again. Sage follows him as he says, “So that’s the stationery store, been here since the forties, and then the shop next door is⁠—”

“Why’d you stop being a teacher?” Sage interrupts.

“Oh,” Kit says, his mouth suddenly dry. He waves a hand, trying to seem casual. “You know.”