So, I was going to try to follow her advice. I wasn't going to overthink anything that happened in his car.
You know, at least until I was shut in my apartment again.
Then, oh yeah, I was going to analyze it to freaking death.
"Better safe," he said, shrugging, giving my fingers one last small squeeze before releasing them so he could use both hands to wrap me up. My gaze went down, not wanting to be a creep who kept staring at his face, and watched as he quickly, but super carefully wrapped me up. "Ryan," he said a moment later as he stuck the little metal doohickey on to hold the gauze together.
"I'm sorry?" I asked, looking up to find him watching me.
"Ryan Mallick, my name," he said with a small nod.
Right.
I knew that.
Because, like I said, I occasionally watched him. And that meant I also saw his brothers sometimes and they called him Ry and Ryan and also, I once got a letter in my pile of his. So I had shot it across the hall and under his door because I couldn't bring myself to hand it to him.
"And you're Dusty," he said, my name in his smooth voice sending a weird shiver across my skin. "Interesting name."
"My mom was, ah..." what was a nice way to say it? "A bit of a hippie. So I got branded with Dusty Rose Sunshine McRae."
"Sunshine, huh?" he asked, smile teasing up in a way that made his very stern face seem warm and inviting. "I guess I can see that." Then, before I could fall half in love with him right then and there, he moved backward, settling my hand onto my own thigh, and completely cutting off all contact.
I was unreasonably sad at the lack of it as I reached for the bottle of peroxide and found the cap, just to have something to do.
"Sorry I dragged you out of there," he said a while later as I completely reassembled the contents of the first aid kit he had made a mess of, crumbling up the used wrapper for the gauze and sticking it in my pocket, then slipping the whole kit back in the glove compartment.
"Yes, how dare you not leave me there to die," I said, shooting him a saucy smile over my shoulder as I closed the glove box.
"I'm not sorry about saving you, honey. I'm sorry I, ah, made you so uncomfortable."
Uncomfortable.
That was a delicate way to phrase it.
"It's not your fault," I offered, because it was true. "Besides, I'm fine now."
And, surprisingly, I was.
I was used to giving platitudes to people, especially my uncle and therapist. I was always fine. Even when I wasn't.
But sitting there in a car I had never been in before with a man I had been creeping on somewhat for a year, outside of my apartment for the first time in about two years, yeah, I found I wasn't lying when I said I was fine.
I was.
Not great, but that was asking for too much.
But fine.
"How long has it been?"
My eyes snapped to his face, seeing him watching me again and I got the strong impression that he was seeing more than I thought I was giving him. He had those kinds of eyes, the ones that read into you.
"Two years," I admitted.
"Can I ask you something that I've been wondering since, fuck, I don't know... I moved in?"
"Sure," I said, belly tightening slightly at knowing I just agreed to answer whatever he might ask. Things that were completely unanswerable like: why are you an agoraphobe anyway?
"How the hell do you get the mailman to bring your boxes up to your door? If my box gets too full, he starts leaving me those 'Sorry We Missed You' notes and makes me drive my ass to the post office to pick them up."
I smiled at that not only because it was a funny visual, but because it was so much like him. Not Ryan, Uncle Danny. "My uncle is our mailman," I supplied with a laugh. "He, well, he mostly raised me so we're close and he, sort-of, understands my issues so he helps me out by putting my packages outside my door."
My therapist would get those disapproving lines between her brows at the word "helps", choosing instead to say "enables". But screw her.
"That explains it. How did he mostly raise you?" he went on and where it would normally feel invasive for a casual acquaintance to ask that, it was so nice to talk to someone who wasn't taking notes that I didn't mind at all.
"Like I said, my mom was a bit of a hippie. She drifted. Never settled down and when she did, it was usually with a man. Sometimes, those men didn't want a kid hanging around so I got dropped off in Navesink Bank and she went off... wherever for a while. Eventually, she'd kick him to the curb or, more often, he would dump her and she'd feel guilty and come back for me. We're, um, not close."
"Understandably," he said with a nod that said he didn't judge me for pushing her out of my life. Hell, I still judged myself about it.
"Are you close with your family?" I asked, already knowing the answer to that since I had seen his family visit often, but wanting to keep the conversation going.
He smiled a little at that, one brow going up. "Maybe too close at times," he said in a way that suggested there was a deeper meaning that he wasn't going to let me in on. "I have four brothers," he went on, not seeming to want silence either. "We're all close because, well, our mother would never allow us to not be. She's a bit of a hardass."
"Well, she'd have to be to raise five sons, wouldn't she?" I paused at that, wondering what it would be like to have siblings, finding maybe I would have felt less alone in the world growing up. "It must be nice to have that many people care about you though," I said, not meaning to because it implied that not many people cared for me. And while that was true, it made me sound a little pathetic.
"Oh, they care alright. About what I wear, how I act, what I drive, who I date, my lack of a social life."
"Well, I can hardly judge you on that," I laughed.
"Were you always..." he started to ask, but I cut him off before he could get it out.
"No. This came on.... gradually at first and then all at once. Most of my life, I was you know... normal. I had friends and I went out and I had a job that I went to every day."
"Where'd you work?"
"I taught kindergarten," I supplied, feeling that little familiar pang inside at even the mention of it. Better times those were.
"You like kids, huh?" he asked, still giving me that soft smile that I found really disarming. "I got three nieces that are adorable hell beasts."
Surprised, a choked laugh escaped me, making a low, sexy rumble come from him as well.
"Adorable hell beasts is an interesting way to put it."
"You'd have to meet Hunt and Fee to understand it, I guess. Fee is a bit, ah, let's say strong and opinionated. That'd be a tame way of putting it. She owns the phone-sex business in town."
"Gotcha," I smiled, figuring that would definitely take a strong, opinionated, confident woman to do that job. "Any other nieces or nephews? With all those brothers, I mean..."
"Well some of us have been too busy with work and the others have been too busy chasing skirts to settle down. But my younger brother Shane just got himself shacked up with a woman named Lea and I expect them to start pumping them out sooner rather than later."
"Big family," I smiled, finding no small bit of longing inside.
I loved my uncle.
He was always my rock, my anchor, my safe place to land. His door was always open to me as a kid, no matter what time of night my mom showed up, no matter how much he had to rearrange his life to take care of me. He was, for a man who kept mostly to himself and therefore wasn't overly warm, the most giving, selfless person I had ever known. And while my childhood didn't involve warm hugs when my heart was broken or hair-braiding and romcom marathons, it did involve someone who always remembered my favorite foods and kept them stocked, who always told me I could do whatever I set my mind to, who never judged me for my shortcomings.
That being said, there were no crazy Thanksgiving dinners or huge unwrapping sessions on Christmas morning. There was no banter loud enough that you couldn't hear yourself think over it.
I had always wanted the kind of holidays I saw in movies.
Ryan had that.
I envied it.
Even if it meant they judged me on what I wore and drove and who I dated and how I spent my free time.
"Is your uncle coming to you for Christmas?" he asked when the silence stretched long enough to become uncomfortable.
Christmas was in just over a week.
"He usually does for a couple hours, yeah."
"You cook?"
"Mhmm," I said, shrugging a shoulder. "You kind of have to in my situation. Does your family do a big thing?"
"Christmas afternoon," he agreed, nodding. "Used to be morning until Fee had the girls. Now they have to have their Christmas morning at home so it got pushed later."
"Is it crazy?" I asked, hearing the neediness in my own voice.
"Fucking nuts," he supplied, willing to give me what it was clear I needed. "Everyone has to buy for everyone else so the gifts take up the entire living room. Unwrapping takes hours and then we have a huge dinner which, by then, everyone has had a drink or five so it's loud and over the top. It's..."