“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.”
“It’s because he’s lonely, too. His wife left him about ten years ago and then his daughter moved across the country and she’s really busy with her job. He works from home like I do and he can hear when my door opens and closes. When I sit outside on the steps, he trots out, too. I go there when I get overwhelmed by anxiety.” Levi Lassiter’s eyebrows raised and I realized that this had been a lot of information…
Oh! I suddenly realized what I was doing. I was telling him all this stuff like people sometimes did to me, just like his sister Ava had in the orthopedic surgeon’s waiting room. This was an anonymous confession! Except, unlike the people who ran to escape after telling me their stories, we weren’t anonymous because I knew his name and he knew mine. He had my email address, too.
“Anyway,” I continued, “I like to ski. And I know how to make hard candy, which is not something that everyone can do, because you need a special thermometer.” I wished I still had that, but it had been in my former house and was gone. Ithought of more innocuous things I could tell him, things which wouldn’t be embarrassing if I ever saw him again later. “One time, I dislocated a toe. That hurt.”
“Is that why you were in the doctor’s office with my sister?”
“No. I was there because I got into a car accident last summer.”
“Bad one?” he asked. People were always interested in this, and I might have been, too, if it had been someone else’s story.
“Pretty bad,” I agreed. “We collided with the center divider on the Lodge Freeway. The car was totaled.”
“And you got hurt,” he said.
“I had a concussion and I broke my hip. I had some other injuries, too, but those are the ones that still bother me. I couldn’t work for a while because I couldn’t focus well.”
“Damn. You’re better now?”
He seemed genuinely concerned. Maybe his sisters hadn’t needed to tell him to hold the door, and that had been a natural instinct.
“I’m better,” I agreed.
“Did anybody else get hurt?”
“My boyfriend. He’s not around anymore.”
“Oh.” Now he looked very, very concerned.
“I don’t mean that he’s dead,” I explained. “He actually walked away from the accident.” Other drivers had stopped and pried open his door, allowing him to escape the crushed car. He’d left the scene by crossing over the freeway and jogging onthe shoulder to the nearest off-ramp. Then he’d gone into a neighborhood and waited for a car to come get him, so it was only later that the police had caught up with him. By that time, his blood alcohol level was back to normal.
My side, the passenger side, had been smashed against the concrete, so I had stayed put until the fire department had arrived. It had been a major thing to get me out.
“That was lucky for him,” Levi said. “But you’re not together anymore?”
“No, not anymore. Like you, I got dumped.”
“Not that it matters, but I wasn’t dumped,” he clarified. “I broke up with Mary Evelyn, so it came from me.”
“How long were you guys together?”
