Love in the Time of Serial Killers(31)

I didn’t know how much I liked the sound of pull no punches. I preferred not to be punched, if possible. “No,” I said, then hurried to add, “but I’ll buy one. No problem.”

“Good,” Dr. Nilsson said. “A modicum of initiative would yield you Dr. Blake’s email address on the internet, but just in case, I’ll give it to you.”

I dutifully wrote it down, knowing that Dr. Nilsson’s comment was her way of reminding me that I should do my research on Dr. Blake before I met with them. Read a few papers on EBSCO, see if I could find a conference talk on YouTube, that kind of thing. If nothing else, it would be a healthier rabbit hole to go down than my current fixation on the Sunrise Slayer.

“I’ll have my comments on your last chapter to you tomorrow,” she said. “You may want to apply some of my more global suggestions on your current chapter, so shall we say beginning of next week for another check-in?”

Another question that wasn’t really a question. “I can do that,” I said with confidence I didn’t wholly feel.

“Excellent. Talk later.”

And then she hung up, leaving me so bemused that it took me a minute for one thing she’d said before to sink in. I was pretty sure she’d implied that I was one of her favorite students.



* * *





?IDEALLY, MY CONVERSATION with Dr. Nilsson would’ve kick-started me into a new phase of my writing. But instead, I spent another hour typing paragraphs and then cutting and pasting them into a draft email I’d creatively titled notes, a graveyard of stuff I promised myself I’d incorporate at some point but never quite knew how.

In the past, my go-to procrastination technique had been to clean. My apartment was never as spotless as the year I was preparing for my comp exams. But lately it felt like all I’d been doing around my dad’s house was gathering up stuff to pack up, throwing stuff away, wiping down surfaces. It was overwhelming and not that fun.

It felt like all the cool kids now were baking to procrastinate, but I was generally hopeless in the kitchen. The only thing I really knew how to make was a no-bake Nutella pie, which, come to think of it, actually sounded pretty fucking good right now.

Only somewhere between me driving out to the more distant grocery store—the one where my father didn’t die—and me arriving home with an Oreo cookie crust, my plan changed. Sam’s truck was in his driveway. I’d never actually thanked him for helping me out when my car died. I could make him a pie, right? That wasn’t weird.

At times like this, I really wished I had a true best friend I could text about this sort of thing. I was friendly with several people in my grad program, but most of them were fifteen or twenty years older, some married with kids and mortgages and lives that felt way more adult than mine did even though I’d been able to vote for a decade now. I had no idea how any of them would respond if I texted out of the blue with something like, Hey, long story but there’s this guy next door, and is it a thirst move if I bring him some pie?

Phrased like that, it made me emphatically not want to do it. But then that felt mean, like somehow the universe knew that I’d already committed to giving away pie and had now reneged on my promise.

Conner would tell me to go for it. He’d want me to make another one for him, too. Alison would say . . .

Well, who knew. We hadn’t been that kind of friends for a long time.

After the pie was ready, I compromised by cutting it in two, putting half on a plate in the fridge with some cling wrap over it. The other half I would bring over to Sam’s, but in a casual way. Like, I’m still wearing this old Batman Forever T-shirt and leggings with a hole at one knee, I haven’t bothered to apply any makeup, this is not a thirst pie, that kind of casual.

Casual was not historically something I’d done well.

But I schooled my features into neutrality as I stood on his doorstep, waiting for him to answer the door. I wasn’t going to ring the bell twice. That was beneath me.

When he finally answered, he looked bleary-eyed and more disheveled than usual, as though he’d been awoken from a nap. I thought he’d be happy to see the pie no matter what, but I hadn’t counted on the formidable opponent that was midday sleep. Well played.

“Sorry to Judgment Ridge you,” I said. “But I made this, and I thought . . . well, I really appreciate your help with the car. So.”

I thrust it out to him, and he took it, still looking a little confused.

“Half of it is gone,” he said.

“Well, yeah,” I said. “I wanted some pie, too. But I used a knife to cut it in half—I didn’t, like, rip into it with my lobster claws or anything. It was all very Solomon.”

He leaned against the doorframe, looking like he was finally settling into the conversation. “So does that mean if I hadn’t wanted the pie cut in two, I would’ve gotten the whole thing? Because it proved that I loved it best?”

“I can go get the rest out of my fridge and we can shimmy it back into the pan, if it means that much to you.”

“No, no,” he said, his forehead crinkled, as though he were genuinely afraid he’d offended me. “Thank you for making it for me. Nobody’s ever made me a pie before, even half a pie. It was really sweet.”

Ugh. No one, and I was pretty sure I could say this accurately even without telepathic powers, would ever describe me as sweet. Prickly was one I got a lot. Aloof. Maybe intimidating, which I wasn’t mad at.