The Flip (An Angel Hill novel) Read online

  He was floored. In fact, floored was only one of the things he felt right then. She wanted to give him her number, she wanted to keep in touch and those words made his heart soar, but before any of that, she was moving. She couldn’t move, he had just found her.

  He had a momentary irrational image of packing up and going with her, but when he said, “Oh, where are you moving to?” and she replied, “I’m moving to St. Louis, my boyfriend was going to college there, but he graduated last year too, and got a job there.”

  And that was the death knell, Sean thought. Boyfriend. Of course she had a boyfriend, look at her.

  He tried to cover his disappointment with, “Oh what does he do?”

  “Works in a garage for now,” she said. “But he plays in a band too, and they gig a lot around there.”

  How in the hell was he supposed to recover from that? Sure, the guy worked in a garage, and Sean was a college professor. Yeah, he taught film studies, which wasn’t as impressive as, say, philosophy or business or something, but he had status. But the boyfriend was in a band. And, dammit, chicks loved guys in bands.

  “Well,” he said, “it sucks to see you go since I just found you, but, yeah, we can keep in touch.”

  There’s no way in hell I’m keeping in touch with this girl while she’s living across the state with her garage-working boyfriend, he thought. Even though Sean didn’t believe in love at first sight, he knew that what he felt for this girl had the makings of something serious. He couldn’t explain the connection he felt to her, but it was there, and if after only three encounters across a library desk she was offering her phone number, he knew she had to feel it too.

  He had to do something.

  “Hey, I’m grading some student films this weekend if you want to check them out. I get some pretty interesting stuff. I mean, not, you know, you have a boyfriend, but you might like it if you like…” He trailed off and looked down at the graphic novel.

  “I’m actually going out there this weekend,” she said and he wanted to go back in time and erase the last fifteen minutes because he wasn’t sure how much disappointment one person could take in such a short span. “But I’m coming back Sunday night, if you’re not busy, say Monday?”

  “I’m not at all,” he replied, even though when he thought about it later, he would remember he was busy Monday night; he and his friend Matt had planned to get together since Matt worked second shift at the Sara Lee plant in St. Joseph and was just coming off a 21-day streak. It would be another three weeks before they got the chance, but this girl, whose name he still didn’t know, was moving to St. Louis. Matt would understand.

  “Cool. Then here’s my number,” she said and slid another reminder to him, this one with her phone number scribbled on it, just above her name, Amy Smith.

  “Then I will call you Monday, Amy Smith,” and he got the hell out of there before he could say anything else stupid.

  By Monday he had gone through half a dozen stages of heartache, from missing her to wishing he’d never met her and had saved himself feeling like this to hoping she just never came back so he wouldn’t have to face her again and even to wanting to go out and find a girlfriend so when they met up on Monday he could talk about his girlfriend this and his girlfriend that just to make her feel like he’d felt.

  But he knew none of those things were realistic. You just met this woman, he kept reminding himself. In fact, you’ve barely even done that. She checked out some books to you, she said she liked them too, that’s it. Whatever you’re feeling, he told himself, she’s not feeling it, too.

  Only, the thing was, she did feel it, too. And when he saw her on Monday, she confirmed it by saying, “I’m not moving.”

  “What? Why not?” Not that he was disappointed, but he hadn’t heard the reason yet. It could be something bad and totally unrelated to him.

  “Because of you,” she said.

  “Why because of me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head.

  He had called her on his lunch break that afternoon, and she’d answered and told him where to pick her up, but he thought she sounded distracted on the phone, almost like she was trying to hurry and get off the phone with him. He wondered if her boyfriend had maybe come back with her.

  Now they sat in his car, a dark blue Hyundai Elantra with a dent in the driver’s door from someone slamming into it last winter.

  “This is going to sound stupid,” she said.

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that to me, and the first time wasn’t stupid at all.”

  “Like you said last week, we just met. But what you said was you just found me.”

  “Yes. I didn’t realize I’d put it like that, I’m sorry.”

  “Well, I just found you, too,” she said. “I can’t tell you what it is or anything, but I feel like, all my life I’ve been looking for --”

  “The one,” he said.

  “Yeah, exactly. And I thought it was Jimmy, even though I had to look past a lot of flaws, but he was a good guy and he cared about me, so I thought that was all there was for me. But then I met you and, I don’t know, you’re so easy to talk to--”

  “We’ve hardly spent any time talking at all,” he said.

  “But I know what I feel when I do talk to you, and it feels comfortable. It feels right.”

  “That it does,” he said.

  “Please tell me you don’t have a girlfriend,” she said.

  Sean shook his head.

  “Please tell me you’re interested and that you know what I’m talking about.”

  “I brought those books back every day until I saw you were working again,” Sean said. “I don’t know what it is, either, but I want to find out and when you said you were moving, my heart sank.”

  “I’m not moving,” she said.

  “And the boyfriend?”

  She shook her head.

  He had no idea what to do next, so he leaned across the seat and hugged her. She hugged back and she felt good in his arms, but it was hard having her so close to him. He breathed in the scent of her shampoo, and there was another smell under it. Perfume. It was called Sunflowers.

  “Don’t move,” was all he could think to say. “God, if you do I’m going to kiss you.”

  She turned her head toward him.

  A month later, Amy Smith moved into Sean’s house and, even though Matt told him that was awful quick and that he barely knew this girl, he also said he couldn’t deny how Sean looked at her when they were in the same room together.

  “She really makes you light up, man.”

  “I know,” Sean said.

  During the month they dated before she moved in, Sean had noticed how Amy just knew things. It was never anything major, she wasn’t predicting lottery numbers, but he couldn’t deny she seemed to be in touch with something. It was as if she were more in tune with the world than Sean, or than anyone he knew, for that matter.

  It wasn’t details she predicted, but when Sean introduced her to Matt and Rose, Matt’s current girlfriend, the first thing she said when they were alone again was, “He’s cheating on her, isn’t he?”

  As far as Sean knew, that wasn’t true, but he found out later that, yes, Matt had been seeing a girl named Amy on the side when he had time. He didn’t know how Amy had known that, but he thought maybe since she worked in the library, she could easily have seen the two together at some point. Except Matt had absolutely no reason to be at the NWAH library.

  Then the day Sean was going to ask her to move in, Amy beat him to the punch by waking him up, sounding a little frantic, a little desperate, asking him, “What is it? You want to tell me something, but you’re nervous. You don’t know what I’ll say. Just say it, Sean.”

  He sat up in bed, rubbed his eyes and tried to sort out what she’d just said.

  “Huh?” was all he managed.

  “I know you want to tell me something. Spit it out.”

  “Love, I don’t know what y
ou’re talking about.”

  “Yes you do, don’t bullshit me. What is it?”

  “No, seriously. I don’t have anything to tell you. I was going to ask you something, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Fine, then what is it?”

  “Nothing big, I’ve just been thinking of asking if you wanted to move in.”

  Her scowl broke and her eyes softened, then started spilling over with tears and she threw her arms around him, pleading, “You swear that was all? There wasn’t anything else, anything bad?’

  “Of course not. Why would you think that?”

  She clung to him.

  “I could just tell there was something, but you were afraid of what I’d say.”

  “Well, yeah,” he said, pulling her away, looking in her eyes. “We just met a few weeks ago, it’s damn soon to be living together, but it’s what I want. But that doesn’t mean it’s what you want, and if you didn’t want it--people need their space, I get that--but if you said no, then I’d start freaking out and wondering how serious you were about us.”

  “Sean, you’re the man I’m going to spend the rest of my life with, of course I wouldn’t say no.”

  As if turned out, that was another thing she was right about.

  They had Chinese for dinner. Panda Express had come to Angel Hill and Amy wanted to try it. The lo mien was dry, but Sean’s shrimp fried rice wasn’t, so she ended up eating most of that. Her orange chicken had been crusty and hard, but Sean’s honey walnut shrimp was delicious and she had several pieces. The broccoli in her broccoli beef was cold, but Sean’s mandarin chicken was hot and she finished it off for him.

  He didn’t complain, he was distracted by the throbbing toe and wondered if he might have broken it.

  “It’s fine,” she said. “It’s not broken, don’t worry about it.”

  “And how do you know?” he asked.

  She answered as she always did. “Just do.”

  “I’ll take your word for it, then. But if it turns black and falls off, I’m blaming you.”

  “Hey, I’m not a doctor,” she said, and Sean laughed. “But that’s still what you get.”

  “I said I was sorry for sneaking up,” he said. “In my defense, I wasn’t trying to be sneaky, I just wanted to capture your body in the moment without ruining it. You looked really sexy.”

  “I’m not your dancing monkey.”

  “I know, love.”

  That was the end of it until they were in the car--an upgrade from Sean’s Elantra to a newer model, still not new, but there were no dents--when Amy said, “You’re still thinking about it.”

  Sean shook his head, glanced over at her, and said, “The toe? No, it’ll be fine, I’m sure. I think if I’d really broken it, I wouldn’t have been able to put my shoe on or drive.”

  “Not the toe. You’re still thinking of filming me.”

  “Baby, I’m always thinking of filming you.”

  “Not like that, though.”

  “Honestly? Yeah, I’m still thinking about it.”

  “Because you want to … quiz me.”

  “God, would you stop doing that, you’re creeping me out.”

  Sean, a naturally private person, let few people in over the course of his life, but from Amy he had learned it did no good to have secrets, because if it was important enough, she would find it out. She never pried, she never revealed anything to embarrass him, but he no longer tried to hide anything behind a brick wall in his head. But there were times when it did get to be too much, and it started to feel a tad bit invasive.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can just tell.”

  He shrugged. “That’s okay, it shouldn’t be hard to figure out anyway. Filming is what I do, I’m almost always thinking about it.”

  “Not like this, though. I don’t think so anyway.”

  “No,” he agreed. “Not like this.”

  “And what do I get if I say okay?”

  He shrugged.

  “What do you want?”

  “A promise you’ll never sneak up on me with your camera again. It gets old, and I don’t like it. If I let you film me, which I don’t like anyway, then you promise to never--and I mean ever in your life--do it behind my back again.”

  “So I have to remove the camera in the shower?” He sighed long and loud, putting on the extra emphasis for her sake and said, “Fiiiiine!”

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  They got home and Amy went to the bathroom. When she came back, Sean already had his camera out.

  “What, now?” she said. “I didn’t say anything about now.”

  “We’re here.” He shrugged. “We get it over with and then we watch some Mystery Science Theatre on Netflix. Come on.”

  She shook her head and rolled her eyes and said, “Fine, ok. Whatever. What do you want?”

  “Just sit on the couch,” he said.

  She did and he had the camera on her. Her arms were crossed over her chest and she wasn’t looking at the camera.

  “You know this makes me uncomfortable, right?”

  “But just think of the rewards,” he said. “You’ll never again have to wonder if I’m filming you while you’re not watching.”

  “I don’t wonder now, I just assume you either are, or are trying to.”

  He shrugged.

  “Anyway,” he said, “just be yourself. It’s you I want to get on film.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you’re very graceful. I love watching you move.”

  “You’re stupid.”

  “Can’t argue with that. Doesn’t change the fact, though. When did you know you loved me?”

  “You know when.”

  “No, I know when I loved you, and I know what you’ve told me. But when did you feel it, for sure?”

  “Death. When you checked out Death, I looked up and saw it was you again and I smiled big inside and wanted you to stay there all day and talk to me.”

  “And that’s love?”

  “It was then,” she said.

  “And then you told me you were moving and that you had a boyfriend. The old ‘let’s be friends.’”

  Now it was Amy’s turn to shrug.

  “Did you know even when you were saying it that you weren’t going to move there?”

  “I think probably. I didn’t put it into words like that, but I think it was there somewhere. I went that weekend because I went every couple of weekends, especially if the band was gigging. I’d help carry the equipment, run the soundboard. I was friends with all of them, so I didn’t mind. And they had a gig that weekend, so I went as usual. But I think, yeah, somewhere in there I knew I wouldn’t be going back.”

  “And you’ve been trapped ever since.”

  “Call it what you want,” she said. “I’ve never been happier. It fits with you, you know?”

  He raised an eyebrow and Amy smiled and said, “Not like that, stupid. Ok, like that too. But you know what I mean.”

  He smiled behind the camera. He knew very well.

  “Okay,” he continued, “but if you recall you didn’t say I love you until a couple of weeks in. I kept saying it and saying it and you’d just smile and wrinkle your nose, but you just would not say it.”

  “I couldn’t. It was self defense. I knew if I said it, that was it for me. I’d be done.”

  “But you finally did.”

  “And do you remember what you said when I finally said it?” she asked.

  “I didn’t say anything. I broke out crying like a baby because I was so happy.”

  “God, you’re such a girl.”

  He shrugged.

  “So,” he said, “you met and fell in love with me, you finally gave in to it and let it . . . What’s the word I want?”

  “Consume.”

  “Let it consume you.”

  “And did it ever.”

  “And now here we are, happy together, very much in love. What’s next?”

  She shrugged. He though
t she looked like she was finally beginning to feel uncomfortable in front of the camera, so he lowered it from his face so she could see him, so she could focus on him, look into his eyes instead of the camera, to help put her at ease again.

  “Where do we go from here, love?”

  He knew where he wanted to go. He was going to propose to her. He’d been planning it for weeks, and dammit if it hadn’t been nearly impossible to keep it from her radar or whatever it was. Trying to act normal when he was beaming inside every time he saw her and thought about how the ring was going to look on her, it had, at times, taken all the concentration he could muster.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You tell me.”

  “Okay,” he said, “how about this. What do you predict is our future? Where do you see us in, let’s say five years?”

  Amy slammed violently back into the couch, her head flopping back on her neck, and her arms went rigid, her fingers spasming.

  “What?” was all Sean could say at first. He lowered the camera again, set it on the floor and went to her. He grabbed her shoulders, unsure what the hell he was supposed to do. He didn’t even know what was happening. Was it a seizure? She’d never had one before, not in the time they had been together. “What is it?” he asked, as if he expected her to answer.

  He fumbled in his pocket for the cell phone. He cursed it for being so elusive, then he grabbed it, yanked it out, nearly flinging it across the room in the process, but somehow keeping hold of it. He tried to get his nervous fingers to calm down long enough to dial 911, but Amy’s hand, like a claw really, grabbed his wrist and he looked into her eyes.

  “Dead,” she croaked. “You, me.” She swallowed. “Everyone, dead. Five years? Dead dead dead dead dead.”

  He sat next to her on the couch and stroked her face, which was pulled tight in a grimace. He wished he knew what to do, but his mind was a blank. He had even forgotten he had his phone out, ready to call for help.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “Who’s dead?”

  “You are,” she said. “In five years, you’re dead, love. Everyone’s dead. All of them. The Englishman, the woman, the short one, the dirty one, everyone.”