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“Oh, no, that’s fine! You have to get to work and I’m going to be here for a while. It’s okay, I don’t live that far and I’ve been walking home every night for years,” I tell him with a nervous smile.
“Grab. Your. Shit. You can eat the pizza on the way,” he tells me again, narrowing his eyes at me.
He’s starting to sound less like a knight in shining armor and more like a caveman. I bristle at his demand.
“No,” I reply sternly. “I will not grab my shit because, like I said, I’m not ready to go home yet. And I’ll walk, just like I always do.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
“No. This is a recent addition to my personality. Get used to it,” I fire back.
Maybe I’m imagining things, but I swear I see the corner of his mouth twitch, like he’s trying to hold back a smile. With a sigh, he steps back from the counter.
“Eat. And pay attention to your surroundings,” he states sternly.
When I look at him in confusion, he continues.
“On your way home. Don’t be a dumbass staring at your phone the whole time. Look around you, be suspicious of everything and everyone. Walk fast with your head up and don’t stop for anything. If someone tries to stop you or do anything to you, yell fire. Never yell help. Studies show more people will come to your aid if you yell fire.”
I nod without saying a word as he gives me one last pointed look before turning and walking out of the library.
“Thank you for the pizza!” I shout after him.
And just like that, with one little mention of statistics, I realize maybe I don’t need that stupid Match Made in Heaven thing Cindy and Ariel signed me up for. I’m pretty sure I just found mine.
Chapter 5: Rude Knight in Shining Armor
“Grab your shit. Let’s go.”
I look up from the computer to find Beast standing on the other side, staring at me in annoyance.
“Excuse me?”
“Grab. Your. Shit,” he repeats slowly, his irritation with me evident.
He’s been coming into my place of work now for over a week. He still comes in an hour before closing time, sits at his usual table, and I wait until Mrs. Potter leaves for the night to chat with him. Technically, I’ve been doing most of the chatting and he’s been doing his usual sighing and grunting with a few words thrown in here and there, but it’s been nice. Especially since I’ve been talking to him about books. Mrs. Potter is a voracious reader, but she only reads dirty romance novels, and that’s not exactly something I feel comfortable discussing with her on a daily basis.
You can learn a lot about a person by the books they read. I didn’t realize how much I missed talking to my dad about books until Beast showed up here the night after he brought me pizza—with three bags of Taco Bell.
“I usually read a book a day. I’m a speed reader. I don’t actually read word-for-word. I sort of skim the sentences and my brain is able to retain everything and make sense of it. Unless I’m reading one of the classics. Those take me a little longer just because of the different way they use the English language. Pride and Prejudice is my favorite,” I rambled, my fork hovering over my plastic container of the Nacho Bell Grande Beast pulled out of one of the bags and placed in front of me when I walked over to his table as soon as he arrived.
I looked down at the pile of chips, cheese, meat, and tomatoes to hide my embarrassment that I couldn’t seem to quit talking nonstop in front of this man.
“Mine too.”
The quiet words that came from Beast’s mouth a few seconds later made my head jerk up from the food, and I stared across the table at him in shock.
“You like Pride and Prejudice?!”
With his arms crossed over his chest, one of his eyebrows quirked up.
“Elizabeth Bennet judges Mr. Darcy without even knowing anything about him, and then she looks like an ass for being superficial. What’s not to like?”
And just like that, my face heated in embarrassment once again. Not for being too talkative, but for behaving just like Elizabeth Bennet and being shocked that this man not only read one of the greatest romantic classics of all time, but also liked it as much as I did.
“Less talking. More eating.”
Beast nodded his head towards the food in front of me and the small twitch at the corner of his mouth made me relax and realize he was teasing me and not holding it against me that I judged him.
Each night I’ve brought up a different classic I read and loved, and each night he’s confirmed he read it as well with a few low, gruff words. He continues to let me ramble on and on about books and never takes his eyes off of me. It’s a heady feeling having someone so interested in what you’re saying, and it’s been nothing short of amazing.
