Chapter 8
I NIBBLED ON A FINGERNAIL AS I CHECKED my phone for the fifty-seventh time. I’d been sitting here at the bookstore for almost twenty minutes. Tank was supposed to meet me here ten minutes ago, and then, if we didn’t hate each other, we’d head to a nearby tavern for dinner.
Where was he?
Late. He was late. What if he never showed up?
A horrible thought struck me. What if he'd come without my noticing him, seen me, snorted, and left? Was I being the most gullible fool in Gullibletown to keep waiting for him?
After our amazing sexting session left me gasping for breath the other night, I'd been scared to pick up the phone. I could hardly believe I, Cecily Spangler, had done that.
I’d finally picked it up and read his text.
How are you, Ponytail? You OK?
I found myself longing to hear his voice. I almost said fuck it and called him myself. But I texted that I was fine and dandy, thanks for asking. He told me to go to sleep and that he’d text me in the morning.
Frankly I hadn't expected to hear from him again. Part of me thought he wouldn’t respect me after my behavior. So the first thing I did the next morning was go to the members list of the forum to see if he had logged in. He hadn’t.
I finally got a text after lunch.
Now you’ve got to meet me, Ponytail.
Why?
You wouldn’t just use me like that and discard me. Unless all I was was a body to you…
Relief had made me sag.
Goofball! You were the one who wanted to sext!!
LOL. So when and where?
Are you sure you really want to do this Tank?
I’ve never been surer of anything, Cecily. What about you?
OK.
OK. OK is good. OK works.
And we’d set it up. We’d meet here, in the reading nook near the art history books. It was private, more or less. When he spotted me and decided I was not his type, I figured we could part ways without any fuss. Everyone could keep their dignity, and we could both pretend this quote unquote meetup had never happened. And I could tell my sorority girlfriends I was done and put this New Year’s resolution behind me.
A movement to my left caught my eye. A stooped, elderly man was standing there, leaning on a cane, looking at me. I smiled tightly, glanced around, saw nobody else, and looked back down at my book. Then, sensing something, I looked back up slowly.
The old man had straightened. His eyes were bright blue and piercing, and they were slowly giving me a once-over. I returned the favor. His skin was terrible, worse than anything I’d seen in old or young alike—spotted, veined and saggy. And his hair—white and wild, like Doc’s in Back to the Future. I almost burst out laughing. He just looked so...zany.
"Ponytail?" the man whispered.
Holy crap! It was Tank! Tank was 89!
My appalled shock must have shown on my face. I had the urge to leap from my seat and go racing out of there. Then the man’s expression changed. It was strange, but I think he was trying to grin. My sense of oddness, that there was something off about him, heightened. The overcoat, the cane, all those wrinkles...none of it was quite...real.
Then it hit me. I’d worked on enough Halloween haunted houses to know what I was seeing. This was a costume, and it was custom-made by a professional.
He straightened fully to an impressive height, confirming it. "Not funny?"
Now that he was standing upright, I could see just how tall he was. Really tall. And those broad shoulder did not match the exaggerated paunch stretching his overcoat.
His voice...oh my god in heaven. It was the deepest, sexiest voice I’d ever heard, bar none. And so familiar to me, somehow...was that a sign that this was fate? There was laughter there and a robustness that told me this was no old man. I went instantly hot and could feel my face going red.
I shook my head, scrambling in the overstuffed armchair to draw my arms around my knees. "Who made it?" I strove for casual nonchalance. "Cosplay artist?"
"A friend of a friend...of a friend. A costume designer. It took her all day to get it on me." He stepped forward tentatively and held out his hand.
I stared at it. There was no silicone rubber there; it was his naked hand, tanned, strong, long-fingered. "What, no old man hand?"
"I figured that would be going too far..."
I snorted and took his hand. Instead of shaking mine, he closed on it, completely swallowing it in his palm. His warmth and strength seared me in the brief moments we touched. My eyes rose to see if he noticed my reaction.
The heat in his gaze as it wandered over my face, down my neck to my chest and my folded-up legs, was the second shock. I wasn't sure what he thought he saw in my patterned tights and geo-blocked tee-shirt dress, but whatever it was, he seemed to want to keep looking at it. Finally he found my eyes again. "Hello, Cecily."
Pretty sure I will never again hear the words Hello, Cecily without going instantly wet.
"Tank." I wasn’t pulling off the nonchalance very well. I couldn’t help clearing my throat. "You’re late. I thought you weren’t coming."
His eyes widened. Had nobody ever called him on being late? Something told me he was used to getting away with shit. "Sorry. Sorry, I...this took longer than I expected."
"And, um, you thought you’d meet me dressed like that because you wanted to creep me out, since I wasn’t freaked out enough already?"
His eyes sparkled. "The idea was to be inconspicuous."
I sputtered out laughter. "Um, okay...fail?"
He crouched down in front of my chair. He was looking at my face bit by bit, as though he were counting each one of my freckles.
I waited for him to rip the mask off like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. But he didn’t. "I was hoping you’d think it was in line with my avatar," he murmured.
"Your avatar isn’t a creepy old man."
"You called it dorky. I wanted to show you my inner dork, make you feel more comfortable. Fuck, you’re completely adorable. Better than I imagined." He sounded dazed. "Did I fuck up? Are you going to run away now?"
That voice, his words, were working on me, I had to admit. Despite my rational brain telling me I should get out of there and call the cops—He’s weird, officers! Can’t you arrest him for showing up weird?—all I wanted to do was look into those clear, blue eyes for the next year.
I shrugged. "It’s not ideal, you knowing what I look like while I don’t know what you look like."
"I know." There was frustration in his voice. "I’d like to get out of here before I take off the mask. Is that all right with you?"
I scowled. "Would it be all right with you if our situation were reversed?"
He looked away on a rueful laugh. "I’ll need to wash off the goo."
"You should have thought of that before."
"I did," he admitted. "I wanted an excuse to wait before...shit. Take a deep breath, Ponytail."
I stared. "Why?"
"Just trust me."
I didn’t trust him, but that Ponytail softened me. I held my breath. He reached up with his hands to grasp the bottom of his mask. As his face was revealed, I didn’t notice much at first, distracted by his struggle with the rubber, then by the trickle of sweat running down his tanned skin and the blotches of white residue. His elbow lifted and he blotted his face on his sleeve, chuckling. "Usually when I peel off clingy shit, I’ve just gotten out of the water."
That was my only warning.
I got a glimpse of a square jaw with a slash of a dimple behind a large, muscled arm. Then blond hair, matted down. A handsome face that was anything but dorky.
I stared.
And I stared.
And I stared.
And the impossible was still true.
The "fat old man" stood there with Rafail Slutsky’s face.