Page 6 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

Well! I blinked, and then closed my phone with a click.

I sat down carefully in my chair and opened the files I had been working on, the finances of a local party store whose owners had been nice enough to keep me as their bookkeeper even though I’d been out of commission for a while.

I was slowly trying to build my little business back up because not everyone had been willing or able to wait out my recovery and forgo my services for all that time. I understood. I did, but it was—

I jerked in surprise when my phone made another sound. I always had it silenced and I never turned on any of the notifications…except I had just now, and I had forgotten to turn them off. I wasn’t very interested in what that guy had to say, of course, but I did go ahead and read the new email.

“Sorry,” he’d written. “Looking at what I sent to you, I realize that it came off as strange and not hilarious. I’m not actually hilarious despite the opinion that you might have formed after I did that trick with the coffee.

My sister told me that I acted like a jerk when I met you and my other sister read the email I just sent and says you’re probably afraid.

She repeated that I’m a jerk. Now I’m trying too hard and I think that’s enough. I’ll leave you alone. Levi.”

I leaned my chin on my hand and re-read all that.

“I’m not scared,” I wrote back. “Things come off wrong when you write them. Maybe it would have been funny for real, in person, but probably you would have seen my face and taken it back. Writing is a poor way to communicate. Things are better face to face.”

Send.

This time, I didn’t even pretend to return to work. I stared at the inbox on my phone and waited. Maybe I needed to sit outside, because my heart was beating pretty hard.

His name appeared again and my thumb moved to tap it before my mind recognized that it was a new email.

“How about more coffee?” he’d asked. “I’ll swallow normally.” He suggested a time and place, an hour from now in a café in the town that lay between where he lived in the basement and where I lived in the apartment that had no apertures for fresh air.

I also swallowed hard as I read that, also in the usual way of using pharyngeal muscles instead of relying on gravity. Then I wrote, “Ok.”

An hour later, I had the car drop me off in Royal Oak.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the plate glass window below the swirling gold letters that spelled out the name of the café, and I saw that wearing a bright blue shirt hadn’t really brightened me as a person.

I’d looked in my closet and tried to find something that didn’t feel quite so bland and blah, and I’d remembered how Ava had put on lip gloss at the doctor’s office.

I had makeup for sure, because I’d worn it before.

It had been a while, though, so I’d had to hunt around in a pouch that I hadn’t opened in months.

Were the expiration dates real? It had felt strange to try to be fancier and I’d asked myself why I was bothering to do it, why I was spending so much time standing in front of my closet and then in front of my mirror.

I wondered why I was going to waste money on a car that would drive me to see a guy who was most likely a jerk, as even his sisters had said.

But now I was here. I walked to the door.

Levi Lassiter opened it for me. “Hi,” he said. He stepped out of the restaurant so he could hold it and I could walk inside where apparently, he had already been waiting.

“Hi.” I hadn’t brought the cane today but it didn’t mean that I was ready to run around and do cartwheels. I was glad that he’d helped and a little surprised, too. Maybe his sisters had given him instructions on behavior, like how my neighbor Hernán tried to teach me Spanish.

“Thanks for coming,” he told me. “Can I get you something?”

I was aware that only one of us was employed. “No, I’ll get it myself,” I said, and waited in the line as he went to a table. Instead of standing there as they made the drink, though, I joined him and sat, too.

“Hi,” I announced, and then remembered that I’d already done that. How long had it been since I was out on a date—was it forever, like it felt right now? Well, it had been at least six years: five with Grant, and then all these months recovering. Six years of my life.

“Are you ok?” he asked. “You just turned red in the face.”

“It’s hot in here,” I answered, which was a blatant untruth. It was perfectly fine and not even crowded in the middle of a Thursday. Most people had things to do, after all.

He nodded vehemently. “Hot,” he echoed, and took a long sip from his drink. “It would be nice to cool down.” Then he looked at his steaming coffee very self-consciously, either due to the lies we were telling or because he’d recalled the last time he’d swallowed a liquid in my presence.

“This is really awkward,” he said next, and I nodded.

What were you supposed to talk about when you were one-on-one?

Hernán was the person with whom I had the most contact, but he just went on in Spanish about whatever was on his mind so that I could absorb it.

I never had to respond very often. Should I say something about the weather?

No, I’d already mischaracterized that. How about politics? Sports?

Levi had thought of that topic, too. “So you like to ski,” he stated. “That was what you said before.”

“Emerson?” the girl behind the counter called, and he got up.

“I’ll get it for you.”

That gave me approximately ten seconds to figure out how to pull us from the tar pit of vacuity that we’d stumbled into like unfortunate Ice Age mammals.

How about a discussion of poisonous plants?

That was interesting, right? Or smelting?

I didn’t know much about it but I’d always wanted to learn more.

“Here you are,” Levi announced, setting my drink in front of me and then returning to his seat.

We both looked at my cup.

“So you like to ski,” he repeated.

“Yes,” I answered, and then dredged up more.

This, after all, was how people formed relationships and bonds.

They had to divulge information about themselves and find connections.

“I think I also said that I’m from up north, and I was on the alpine ski team in high school there.

I wasn’t very fast, though. I just liked to be outside. ”

“Oh.” Now he was nodding like that was the most fascinating piece of information that he’d ever received.

“Yes,” I confirmed. “How about you?”

He gave me some details of his own alpine adventures and I listened carefully. Then we both drank from our cups, and I wished I had sugar to put in mine.

“How do you know Ava?” he asked suddenly.

“I met her at the doctor’s office while we were both waiting for our appointments.”

“Do you mean on Tuesday? The day before yesterday?” he asked. “Damn, she’s working faster than she used to. She must really want me out of…” But he stopped. “How much did she tell you about me?”

“I already know that you live in her basement,” I answered, which I guessed was what he’d just prevented himself from saying.

“I know that your girlfriend broke up with you and you didn’t have anywhere to go, with no savings and no job.

Your parents wouldn’t let you move back in and the Bank of Dad has now closed, too.

You dropped out of school…no, sorry,” I apologized as I remembered the whole story.

“You were going for your PhD but you quit because you didn’t really want it and were only trying to keep from having to work for a living. ”

“Damn,” he repeated. He put the heels of his palms over his eyes but he didn’t seem to get angry, because he was smiling when he took them away. He also seemed slightly dazed. “After hearing all that, why did you come with her to meet me? Why in the hell did you to see me again?”

“I’ve been alone for a while and I guess I’m desperate,” I responded.

Levi started to laugh. It might have been funny if I’d been speaking sarcastically, but it was totally true.

“I was told that I need more human connections,” I continued. “I didn’t really put a name to it before, but it turns out that I’m unhappy. I only talk to my neighbor and he mostly speaks in a foreign language. He’s nice, though.”

“Wow. Well, we’re a pair.” He laughed more, and then shook his head. “How’d you figure out that you were sad?” he asked.

“I did therapy through an app and that was what the woman told me,” I said. “She explained that I needed to put myself in positions to meet people but I have no idea how to go about that. No one will swipe on me.”

“Hold on,” he said, and looked at his phone. After a moment, he held it up to show my picture on the screen. “This is your profile? It’s…severe.”

“Shouldn’t I say what I want?”

“Maybe not straight out of the gate,” Levi advised, then read aloud what I’d written. “Serious inquiries only. If this picture is up, I’m still available. Don’t waste my time. Strict calendar of relationship progression.”

I shrugged like his sister had. “I’ll think about changing it, and I’ve been trying other stuff.

But I can’t join a sports team because I still have trouble walking.

I went to a book discussion at the library but I really don’t like to read.

I don’t know how to do anything crafty, so I can’t join a painting group or anything else that involves skill, like a knitting coven. ”

“A coven?”

“I can’t afford to take a class,” I continued. “I have a ton of bills, although I do have a job. How do you meet people once you’re past having a roommate and past playing on the swing set together? Anyway, I don’t seem to have an aptitude for attracting other humans.”

“Except for your neighbor,” Levi said. “You mentioned that he talks to you, although you may not understand what the guy is saying.”