Love in the Time of Serial Killers(49)

I shrugged. I didn’t want to enumerate all the ways I was probably a bitch, to remind him of the few he may have already forgotten about.

“Nice is a bullshit word, anyway,” he said. “Nice is just surface politeness. Screw being nice.”

I blinked a little at how emphatic he was. I didn’t disagree—far from it—but it was surprising to hear him of all people express that sentiment. “Okay,” I said, “but literally you came over here to help me paint, and I called you a nerd. There has to be a happy medium somewhere between surface politeness and insulting someone to their face, and I’ve never been able to find it.”

“I am a nerd,” he said. “I’m not insulted by that at all. If I seemed sensitive about it . . . well, it was basically why my last relationship ended. But you wouldn’t have known that. It’s not your fault.”

“Your ex dumped you for being a nerd?” I could’ve phrased my question more diplomatically, but I’d been too shocked to put any filter on. This must be the ex-girlfriend Conner had mentioned, the one who’d broken up with Sam right before Christmas. “Honest question, but is it even possible to be a true nerd anymore, now that Disney owns Star Wars?”

He smiled at that. “Deeply uncool were the words she used,” he said. “To be fair.”

“Did she see you in those coveralls?” I asked. I’d meant it as a joke, a little sarcasm to lighten the mood, but it came out more sincere. His words had wrenched something deep in my chest. I hated the idea that someone would say anything like that to Sam, especially someone he’d trusted and cared about. Probably even loved.

I got up to grab the roller and start painting again, hoping my sudden panic didn’t show all over my face. I’d always known I was protective of my own heart. It was unthinkable that I’d be so protective of his, too.

“Tell me more about this arbiter of cool,” I said, pleased that my voice sounded so steady. “Did she have a tongue ring or something?”

“A nose ring, actually,” Sam said. “How did you know that?”

I’d just been going back to high school and trying to think what could make someone seem intimidatingly badass. For me, a lip or tongue piercing always signaled I don’t give a fuck and The music I listen to would make your eardrums bleed. But maybe I should update my rubric.

“How long were you together?”

“Two years,” Sam said. “We met at a bar—I was playing guitar in my friend’s band, and Amanda heckled us from the front row. I think that was part of the problem. She had this image of me as some kind of rock star wannabe, but I’d only been filling in while their usual guitarist spent time with her new baby.”

Images of Sam from the past few weeks flickered through my mind—standing barefoot and disheveled in front of me at two in the morning. Holding a bag of Kit Kats in his doorway wearing a ridiculous tropical shirt. Plucking out “Farmer in the Dell” at the music store. Wearing those stupid fucking khakis.

I could see how the reality of him didn’t quite fit a rock star stereotype, despite his love of music. But the reality of him was also a lot better than that.

“Did you play the tambourine up there, too?” I asked. “Because you gotta see how that would give a girl the wrong idea.”

Sam had returned to painting, too, which was a relief. He was on the stepladder, focusing on edging around the ceiling, which gave me the perfect excuse to check out his butt. Briefly. Tastefully.

It was a very nice butt.

“Do you think you would’ve married her?” The question was out of my mouth before I could think about it, and wow. One hundred percent not my business, and since when had I cared about anyone’s potential marital status, anyway?

Sam didn’t answer right away. He was looking down at the cup of paint while he dipped his brush back in it, and I stared at the exposed skin of his neck, trying to glean what he wasn’t saying. Yes, I was madly in love with her?

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “I’d never really considered it, and then we broke up, so I guess I’ll never know for sure. Either way, it’s obvious that we weren’t meant for each other.”

“Is anyone?”

It was taking him a long time to reload that brush with paint. “Do you really believe that?”

“I’ve read The Phantom Prince,” I said. “The updated version with the foreword where she completely disavows her relationship with Ted Bundy. If that doesn’t convince you that romance is dead, nothing will.”

Sam stepped down from the ladder, as if he needed to be more grounded to have this conversation. “You do that a lot. Bring up serial killer stuff when the topic turns more serious.”

“What could be more serious than mass murder?”

He gave me a look that immediately made me feel all prickly inside, all you don’t know me, but then also a little fuck, you really know me. I blew my hair out of my eyes. The bandana wasn’t doing its only job.

“My parents divorced when I was thirteen,” I said. “And okay, I know as far as original wounds go, it’s pretty banal. Most people I know have parents who aren’t together anymore, or were never together in the first place. I remember talking to some kid in my class a year before they split, some guy with greasy hair I had a crush on, and he said his parents were divorced. ‘I wish mine would be,’ I said, half because, I don’t know, I wanted to impress him. Like I didn’t buy into the picket fence bullshit everyone else did. And half of me meant it, too. They fought all the time, and if they weren’t fighting it felt like we were walking on eggshells, trying to avoid doing anything that might cause a fight.”