Page 32 of On His Mind

“You’re all so out of touch,” she says, certain of it. “Do you even know how to feel anything?”

I try to work out who she’s actually fighting. “Are you talking to me, or Theo?”

She gives me a lazy grin. “You.”

I stare at her for a moment, watching her closely. Then I say, “I’m a good listener.”

She rolls her eyes. “I need to get home.”

“So get home.”

She glares at me. It isn’t a real glare.

“You want me to walk you?” I ask.

She draws herself up straight, which takes work, and looks me dead in the eye. “Why?”

I don’t have an answer, and I’m not handing her the truth, so I just look back at her.

“I’m a bitch, you know.” She nods, like a warning. “Save yourself.”

I can smell the booze on her from where I’m standing. “I doubt that, Penelope.”

She goes still. “I’m sorry — you know my name?”

My heart taps hard against my ribs. I don’t say anything.

“I don’t know yours.” She tips her head, studying me. “What’s your name?”

“Percy.”

For a second, she just looks at me. Then it lands, and she laughs — really laughs, head tipping back, teeth catching the streetlight, and it’s a good laugh. She has a good smile.

“What,” I ask.

“Percy.” She says it again, turning it over. “Percy and Penelope. What era are we from?” She laughs again.

“You don’t like your name?”

“I love my name. It’s elegant.” She looks at me sideways. “Percy goes with it, though. I think.”

And my heart just stops. There’s no good reason for it. She’s drunk, she’s making fun of the pair of us, the sounds of our names –– it means nothing. I have to drop my eyes to the pavement to get it beating again.

“Can I walk you?” I ask.

“Sure, Percy,” she says.

I fall in step beside her. It’s colder now, or I’ve only just noticed, and she’s got half a bare shoulder and goosebumps up her arm and a cup she isn’t even drinking from. I don’t think about it. I shrug out of my jacket and settle it over her shoulders, and it’s only when my hands are at her collar, close enough to catch her hair under the smell of the booze, that I understand what I’ve gone and done. I’ve touched her. I’ve never once in my life reached for a person like that.

“You don’t have to,” she says.

“Take it.” I tuck the collar in at her neck and step back. “It’s cold.”

“Thanks.”

We walk a while without talking, and the quiet’s easier than I expected it to be. Then she says, “So you’re a Hawthorne Boy.”

“Is that a thing?”