Fix by J. Mann (highly illogical behavior .TXT) 📕

He hands me my backpack. “See,” he says, raising his eyebrows, “easy-peasy getting in, huh?”

“How could I have ever thought you were the devil?” I ask him, before I can stop myself.

“Aw,” he says, “an Eve compliment. Thank you.” And he closes my door.

The quiet sends a shiver down my spine. A shiver that doesn’t hurt. His close presence is wedging itself in between the nerves in my body. No message. No pain. He opens his door, gets in, and shuts it, and I’m enclosed. With Thomas Aquinas.

He starts the van. I can’t take my eyes off his hand on the stick shift, a terrible urge washes over me to reach out, to place my palm over his thick knuckles. The thought has me pulling my eyes away from his side of the van altogether and staring out my own window, fogging it up with my breath.

It starts to rain. The movement of the van and the long day catch up to me. And maybe that last Roxy. I lean back and close my eyes. As soon as I do, I see her smiling in front of her locker. She’s wearing the fedora.

“Take me somewhere.”

My voice bounces off the window.

He clears his throat. “What?”

I can’t turn my head toward him. I can’t face him. “Take me somewhere,” I repeat, placing my hands in my lap. “Somewhere you go when you want to be alone.”

He doesn’t say anything… though I feel the acceleration of the van, and another mile later, we do not take the turn onto Ashmont toward home. I’m going wherever he takes me.

He drives smoothly, making every turn and downshift with my spine in mind. Did he hear the loneliness in my voice? Is he done with me now? Like her?

We pull out onto the interstate.

We drive without speaking for what feels like a very long time. The wind blows the rain against the windows. I might have fallen asleep. Or maybe this is all a dream. I don’t even care if it is. I look over at him. He keeps his eyes on the road.

“The glass museum,” I think he says, but I’m not sure.

“What?” I ask.

“We’re going to the glass museum, in New Bedford.”

“A glass museum.”

He takes a quick look at me from the side of his gold rims.

“We don’t have too long. It closes at five.”

I look at the van’s clock. It’s 3:30 p.m. “We have an hour and a half,” I say. “In glass-museum time, that’s like six days!”

He laughs. “Glass is cool. It’s useful and beautiful. What else can you say that about?”

“Underwear,” I suggest.

“‘Underwear’?” he repeats, totally thinking about me in my underwear.

I look out my window. “Stop it,” I say.

“What?” he says, grinning.

“You know.”

“Thinking about you in useful and beautiful underwear?”

“Don’t forget to picture all the scars,” I say, wishing I hadn’t.

“Can you describe them?” he asks. “Where they start from. Where they go to?”

“Just drive,” I say, feeling every inch of my scars.

Five minutes later we pull into the glass museum’s parking lot. There are only two cars in the lot.

“I hope we can get in,” I say.

“You’re going to like this place,” he says.

I leave my backpack in the car. He opens the door for me. I let him help me out. He hurries me through the rain into the museum.

We stand in front of a ticket booth while he stomps the rain off him and I try to catch my breath. I haven’t moved that quickly in months. The man in the booth looks up through his own gold-rimmed glasses.

Behind me, he pulls a card out of his wallet and shows the man behind the counter.

“Have a great time,” the man says, waving us on.

We walk through a turnstile and into the museum. “You have a membership?” I whisper.

“Don’t judge,” he says.

We stop at the first big piece. It’s a gold glass window-looking picture of a man wearing a crown and riding a fish.

“Edris Eckhardt,” he says in my ear. His breath tickles and makes my entire head tingle. “It’s called The Four Horsemen.”

It’s strange, yet pretty. I stand very still, hoping he’ll whisper more.

Outside the museum windows, the rain continues to fall. Inside, the museum is warm and filled with glass cases—glass behind glass.

The rooms are small and lead into one another. Everything glows in yellow lights. The carpets stifle all sound. It’s like a colorful cocoon.

He pulls me into a room that contains a series of stained-glass windows of what look like saints all done in collage. Men and women. Broken up and put back together. Maybe there is some deeper religious purpose, although all I see are the brilliant oranges, electric blues… and shapes, thousands of tiny shapes. All different. All perfectly placed—each one contributing to the whole. These are my brothers. My sisters. Pieced together in bright, jagged beauty. Standing in front of them, I feel as beautiful as they are. And I only move on when my spine begs me to.

Together and apart, Thomas Aquinas and I drift from room to room, from work to work, looking, reading. Sometimes he finds me next to something and whispers interesting facts about it and sometimes we just collectively stare. It’s not all vases and goblets, which is what I thought it would be, but sculptures and windows and lamps and jewelry and syrup bottles.

The syrup bottles are fun. There is a whole wall of them, a big rainbow of funky shapes. I stand in front of them for a bit.

“I like these, too, Eve,” he says.

It makes me shudder… the way he says my name.

We stare at the colorful display together, and the question just falls out.

“Why do you like me?”

His eyes scan the bottles, like he’s looking for the one with the right answer. His hesitation has me folding up inside.

But then there’s something about the way he holds his shoulders, the stillness of his chest, his lips stretching out just the smallest bit.

“You’re interesting.”

He says