Jennifer Crusie - The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes

Her hormones had nothing to do with the stranger who’d shown up in her kitchen, she reminded herself sternly. In fact, her hormones were barely operating at a normal level, despite the strange, erotic dreams that had been tormenting her the last few nights. All those had managed to do was ensure she had a lousy night’s sleep, and right now she’d had about as much of the mysterious Elric as she could handle.

‘You want to leave,’ she said, her voice soothing. ‘You want to forget you ever found us.’

His hoot of laughter might have been insulting if she’d had even the faintest hope it would work. ‘I told you, that only works on the weak-minded, and those whose minds are clouded by lust. Haven’t you ever wondered why it didn’t work when you tried it with your sisters? And don’t tell me you haven’t tried – I won’t believe you.’

‘I’ve tried. You’re right, it only works with men. And clearly not all men,’ she added. ‘Lucky for you your mind isn’t clouded by lust for me.’

‘Lucky for me,’ he said, his still dark eyes watching her. ‘Why did you choose Charles? The weak-minded part, I imagine. You wouldn’t have any trouble finding men whose minds are clouded by lust, but you must have wanted someone who was easily controllable. And you seem like such a sweet girl.’

‘Charles is none of your business,’ she said. ‘Who I choose to marry and what I do with my life is none of your business.’

‘You’re a fool. You deserve better, and instead you choose a backwater town and an idiot boyfriend and sooner or later you’re going to end up blowing up this house and your sisters with it until someone puts a stop to it.’

She turned her back on him, shaking. More anger, and she hated it. Though the odd thing was, she was getting angry in return, when she usually just hid in her room. ‘Leave me alone.’ She picked up the dishpan to dump the soapy water out. ‘Get the hell out of here and leave me alone.’

‘I’m not going anywhere,’ he said.

Lizzie gave up and began to the tip the dishpan, and then something tickled her nose, and she shivered hard twice.

‘Then I am,’ she said and whirled around, flinging the soapy water directly at him.

And then she ran.

The Greasy Fork was crowded by the time Mare got her lunch break at noon, but Crash had snagged them a booth, as always. She threaded her way through the crowd, keeping her heart-shaped sunglasses on to hide her eyes so they wouldn’t give anything away, like maybe that she was glad to see him and might still be hopelessly in love with him except that she wasn’t that much of a loser, hell, she was Queen of the Universe, he could kiss her foot. Or something else.

He saw her and stood up, looking tall and broad and solid as ever, and really, really good, and she remembered how it had felt to have his arms around her. Doesn’t matter. She was going to be cool, she didn’t care-

‘Thanks for meeting me,’ he said, and his voice sounded so deep and good, just hearing him felt so good, she closed her eyes to savor it.

‘I had to.’ Mare slid into the booth. ‘I couldn’t talk to you at the store. We have a vice president there.’

‘Yeah, I saw him.’ Crash sat down across from her and that felt right, being back in a booth at the Fork with him, and Mare thought, No, this is how you got hurt before, he won’t stay…

‘So it’s been a while,’ she said.

‘Right.’ Crash picked up his empty coffee cup and tilted it, and Mare thought, Coffee, that’s new, he didn’t drink coffee five years ago.

‘Well, welcome back.’ She picked up the menu and flipped it open, holding it in front of her so she couldn’t see him, especially because she thought there might be tears in her eyes, tears of rage, damn it, but he wouldn’t get that; if they slipped down her cheeks from under her sunglasses he’d think she was crying for him.

‘You don’t need to look, you have that menu memorized,’ he said.

Mare sniffed and thought, Yeah, remind me again of how my life never changes. ‘There might be something new on here.’

He hooked a finger over the edge of the menu and pulled it down to look at her, exasperated, ‘There’s never anything new in this one-horse town.’

Mare snapped the menu down. ‘Something new happened once. The horse left. Why did you leave me without a word, you bastard?’

He scowled at her. ‘Hey, I called three times the next day and got the usual runaround from Dee. I came to see you but I couldn’t come in, like always, and you wouldn’t talk to me.’

Mare blinked. ‘Talk to you? I had three pins in my arm. I was doped to the gills on Percocet, for crying out loud. Of course I wanted to talk to you when I was lucid again. I was in love with you.’

‘Well, you didn’t call me,’ Crash said, looking around the diner as Mare’s voice rose. He leaned forward as he lowered his voice. ‘I figured since I’d almost killed you, and you never called me back, you were done with me.’

‘And you didn’t stick around to ask?’ Mare said, madder than ever. ‘You just left the next day?’

Crash sighed. ‘Mare, I didn’t see much future for us. At the best of times, your sister hated me, and you never let me get too close. After the accident…’ He looked down into his coffee cup. ‘I didn’t think dumping you on my bike in the middle of the road and breaking your arm was going to make things any better. So yeah, when you wouldn’t see me, I left.’

‘Oh, well, so fine,’ Mare said. ‘You want to end the relationship, you say-’

‘No.’ He met her eyes. ‘I didn’t want to end anything, I just wanted… out. Out of Salem’s Fork, I’d wanted out of here for a long time. But I couldn’t leave you. And then I called and you wouldn’t talk to me, and things were lousy with my dad, and he kept telling me I almost killed you and didn’t deserve you-’

‘Well, your dad’s a jerk, we all knew that,’ Mare said. ‘But-’

‘-and Dee felt the same way and Dee’s not a jerk-’

‘Dee’s overprotective,’ Mare said, starting to see the past more clearly. ‘But you still should have talked to me, damn it. You didn’t even talk to me.’

‘I tried,’ he said, and tilted his empty coffee cup again, and Mare sat back, knowing he had tried, and that he was right about her keeping him away before that, too, keeping secrets like I’m a witch, because that kind of thing was hard to explain and could get Dee and Lizzie burned at the stake or whatever they did to witches in the twenty-first century, probably studied in Area 51 or something, and then Pauline stopped to fill his cup for him, peering at him over her glasses.

‘So you’re back, are you?’ she said. ‘Where you been?’

Mare looked up. ‘Pauline, we’re having a conversation here.’

‘Yeah, everybody heard you.’ Pauline raised her penciled-in eyebrows. ‘Just like old times, you whipping him into shape again. You can take your sunglasses off. The sun went down in here after breakfast.’ She nodded at Crash again. ‘So where you been?’

‘Italy,’ Crash said.

Italy. Mare looked away, at the jukebox selector on the tabletop, biting her lip. Italy. She began to flip through the cards. She’d stayed in Salem’s Fork and kept her secrets and cried for months, and he’d gone to Italy. Where there was probably dust and sunshine.

‘No shit.’ Pauline balanced her arm on her hip, holding the coffeepot dangerously near Crash’s ear as she absorbed that.

Crash slid two quarters across the table to Mare - just like old times - and she swallowed hard. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t taken her to Italy, she didn’t speak Italian anyway. Of course, neither did he back then. He probably did now. Italy. She blinked back tears. Hell, she’d have gone to Outer Mongolia if he’d asked.