When My Heart Joins the Thousand(17)

“Wait!”

I keep walking.

He’s still calling my name, following me. Soon, he’s panting for breath. His footsteps are unsteady, broken by the muffled thump of his crutch. What is he thinking, running after me with a broken leg? I turn around just in time to see his foot slip on the muddy grass, and then he’s falling.

Before I have time to think, my body reacts. I lunge forward and catch him. He slumps against me, gasping. His heart bangs against his ribs. It feels like a small animal trapped in a box, beating itself against the side in its struggle to escape. I can’t remember the last time I’ve been close enough to feel another person’s heartbeat.

“Are you okay?” he asks, breathless.

“Yes,” I reply, just as breathless. I think it’s strange that he’s asking me that when he’s the one who tripped.

I realize that the lengths of our bodies are pressed together, and panic flashes through me. I pull away, pick up his crutch, and hand it to him, all without looking at his face. Then I turn and keep walking, but he catches my wrist. My whole body goes rigid at the shock.

I look at his fingers, pressed against my skin. My breath comes short and sharp. My nerves are blazing, tingling; his fingerprints are soaking through my skin, down into my bones, into my DNA.

I speak, my voice low and hoarse: “Let me go.”

“Alvie.”

“Let me go.”

“You’re not a freak,” he says firmly.

Suddenly my feet are rooted to the spot.

He looks down at his hand, still locked around my wrist. Slowly—as if it takes an effort—he uncurls his fingers, one by one. I clutch my hand against my chest, the skin still tingling where he touched. But I don’t run away.

My fists unclench. A wave of dizziness rolls over me, and I am left feeling like the wind has been knocked out of my mind.

“Let’s talk about this,” he says. Then, more softly: “Please.”

We return to the bench and sit. I grip my knees, shoulders tense, gaze fixed on my faded black sneakers. “If you don’t want to have sex with me, you can say so. I won’t be offended. That—that isn’t why I reacted that way. It’s just—the way you were looking at me—” I take a breath. “Never mind.”

He bites his lower lip. His knuckles are white on his crutch. “Listen. I . . . it’s not that I don’t want to. But I didn’t expect you to just ask. People usually go on a few dates first.”

“People have one-night stands.”

“Yeah, but this is different. We’re not two strangers hooking up in a bar.”

“Yes or no.”

Several times, he opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something, then closes it again. “Let me take you out to dinner,” he says at last.

Dinner. That seems manageable. Slowly, cautiously, I nod. “Where.”

“Is there anyplace you like? I don’t know too many nice restaurants, but I think there’s a French place around here that’s supposed to be good.”

I’ve never had French food. There’s only one restaurant I go to, a small diner a few blocks from my apartment that serves pancakes twenty-four hours a day. “Buster’s.”

“Really?”

I nod.

“Okay. Buster’s it is.”

My Rubik’s Cube is still on the damp grass. I pick it up and clean it off on one edge of my hoodie. It’s just as well that we’re going out to eat, because I have some questions I need to ask him. I’m still not sure if this is going to happen. He hasn’t exactly said yes, but he hasn’t said no, either.





CHAPTER NINE


When Stanley and I arrive at Buster’s, we’re the only people in the restaurant, aside from an elderly couple sitting in a corner booth. A five-foot-tall sculpture of the restaurant’s mascot—a winking beaver in a chef’s hat, holding a stack of syrup-covered pancakes on a tray—stands next to the door.

I order Swedish pancakes and Stanley orders eggs Benedict. The waitress fills our coffee cups.

“If we’re going to do this,” I say, “I have a few conditions.”

“Conditions?”

I take a swig of my coffee. “First, I don’t like to be touched.”

“But then, how can we . . .”

I clarify: “When another person touches me, I find it very uncomfortable. But as long as I’m the one doing it, I’m generally fine. So I’ll have to be in control the entire time. Is that all right with you.”

His brows knit together. “Why don’t you like to be touched?”

I study the red-and-white-checkered tabletop. There’s a smear of dried, hardened ketchup on the wooden edge of the table. “No reason. I’ve always been this way.”

He doesn’t reply, but I can feel his eyes on me.

The food arrives. I take a bite of my Swedish pancakes. As I chew, I watch him. The fact that we’re talking about this indicates that he is, at the very least, seriously considering my proposition. My head buzzes oddly. Sights and sounds are all faintly distorted, as if I’m surrounded by a ball of water. I focus on breathing and chewing.

Finally he speaks: “If that’s what you’re comfortable with, then that’s okay with me.”