Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(58)

I am surprised to find that Evan is in the foyer again, sitting on a cube-shaped leather sofa that is one of those sofas that isn’t really meant to be sat on, I think. It’s all low to the ground and his knees are higher than the level of his hips and the back of the thing is cutting across the middle of his back, but he has his hands behind his head and manages to look weirdly comfortable.

The foyer’s completely silent, echoing how quiet the campus has been getting as we edge closer to the winter break and students take their finals and leave, fly in all directions to their homes, leave the grounds crew with fewer and fewer walks they need to shovel to clear the way for the skeleton crew of administrators and staff, researchers like me.

Snow’s been drifting against the buildings instead of groups of students.

A silver tinsel tree in the corner is blinking with blue and white lights.

I can almost hear the soft snap of those colored lights shift from off to on.

He is wearing the same V-necked sweater with a plaid shirt he always does. The same fancy running shoes. He looks different, though.

I figure out it is because his eyes are closed. All the worry grooves in his face are relaxed when his eyes are closed, and his eyebrows are in a normal position instead of scrunched up against each other.

Huh.

I clear my throat, but in a fake way, like “Ah-HEM.”

He doesn’t open his eyes. “Hey, Jenny.”

“Um, hey? Dude, do I have the wrong day?”

“Nope.”

“So we’re going to do that thing again, out here in the lobby?”

He opens his eyes, which has the predictable effect of making me feel a little unsettled. “Come sit down.”

“On the sofa?” It’s huge, but it sort of feels all wrong to sit on a regular piece of furniture with him. I hate the fake-wood-grain table with its plastic school chairs in the therapy room, but it suddenly seems like a way better option.

“Sure.” He pats the cushion next to him and crosses his legs at the knee, which should look silly but doesn’t.

I wonder if he practices making awkward and nerdy look sort of cool. Like he fills his house with furniture that is the wrong scale for his tall body and buys plaid shirts in bulk and tells his barber to leave crazy, too-long pieces of hair mixed in with the regularly cut hair so everything always looks messy.

Then he runs his hands through his hair and puts on his plaid shirts and uses mirrors to watch himself sit in uncomfortable furniture until comfortable furniture looks like it’s the one with the problem.

His eyebrows scrunch at me and weirdly, this relaxes me and breaks my mental loop. But I’m still not sure about sitting down on the sofa next to him. I tug my knee-length, puffy nylon coat closed where I had been getting ready to zip it back up.

I feel like I want to hide from him, just a little. My coat is good for hiding. It’s forest green with leaping deer logos embroidered all over it. My mom ordered it for me from an outfitter’s catalog so I wouldn’t die of exposure in Ohio.

It’s like wearing a bed outside.

“Jenny?”

“Yeah.” I tug my coat again.

“Sit.”

I slowly walk over, then sit down on the opposite end of the long sofa. And down some more. The sofa really is low to the ground. My knees rise slowly, while my slippery, puffy-nylon-coat-covered ass slides slowly down. I have to dig my snow boots into the edge of the carpet to keep from sliding completely off the sofa into a heap of static-electricity-covered eiderdown.

“So,” I say, resting my shoulders against the freakishly hard back of this dumb-ass piece of furniture and rolling my head in his direction. “You come here often?”

“I think we should talk about your goals for therapy.” He turns toward me and hooks an arm over the back of the sofa. Rests his head on his hand.

“Out here?” I try a similar maneuver, but just manage to knock the earflap on my wool hat over my eyes. Of course, when I pull the whole thing off by its pom-pom, my hair rises in a painful crackle all around my head.

“I thought you might be more comfortable talking out here than in the therapy room.”

He shouldn’t smile at me so slow and sweet. It’s unnatural. “Is this because I hugged you last week?”

“No.” His basset wrinkles gather in his forehead.

“It’s not like I like you or anything.”

He closes his eyes again. “I didn’t think that.”

“Well, good. Because I don’t. Not like that, in the hugging way.” I hope my coat will account for the hot blush I suddenly feel all over my face.

“We’re not having this conversation in the lobby because I think you like me.” He’s speaking slowly, like he’s trying to translate a sign written in a foreign language as he reads it.