Late Night Date Night - 5: Cover and Coat

August 21, 202X, 1:28 AM

Donnel City - College District

The image scored into the sheet of linoleum had literally stolen Hollis’s breath. She’d locked up, her eyes fixated on the tan grooves carved in the ink-black surface, and her diaphragm wouldn’t permit the shocked gasp. Jerome had hastily pulled the image from her numb fingers, but it was too late. She’d seen the carefully engraved words, their reverse lettering easy to decipher.

LADY

DARK

An accusation. Visceral proof that she would never be free. Could never hide. The darkness was inside her. It would always dwell there because Hollis had invited it in. And it would keep growing like a puddle of ink poured from Jerome’s bottle.

Too much and it will blot out everything.

She shuddered at his earlier words. The darkness…too much…all overflowing until it filled every groove that had once been Holli. Until she was a void.

“Hollis?” Jerome was close by, a comforting presence that she couldn't let comfort her. She was dangerous. And after tonight he would want to bail out of whatever this thing was growing between them. She was obviously too damaged. Couldn't even fake being normal. The big gulping breaths had finally arrived, shaking her body with their force. Was this it? The start of the breakdown that would unspool everything?

The lemony light around them suddenly dimmed. She saw it even with her eyes fixed on the asphalt. Darker and darker, until the sharp shadows cast by her battered sneakers turned smudgy. He would notice. He would notice and he would—

Jerome’s arms came around her. She went rigid. Then his arms squeezed ever-so-gently, and she realized it was a hug. She was being hugged.

He was only a few inches taller—a good height, she thought absently—so it was easy to tilt his head down and talk into her ear. His voice was breathless and strained, but also gentle. Tender.

“I'm sorry. I couldn't stop myself. If you need space just shove me away, but I had to.” His hand began to soothe her upper back.

She should. She should push him away. It was so hot out here that his presence was suffocating. It should have been. Why wasn’t it?

“I’m sorry,” he repeated. A whisper. A promise.

Hollis brought her trembling hands up to push him away. Instead her palms threaded up between his arms and nestled against his soft tee-shirt and…settled. She turned her head and lay it gently against his shoulder and closed her eyes. She would rest. Just for a second. Just a second.

She nuzzled closer to him and his breath caught. His arms tightened around her and it was so good. She sighed. He fit around her, or she fit against him, and it was perfect. For a brief moment she let herself believe that this man could protect her from the ugliness of the world. From the darkness. As if she wouldn’t end up dragging him into the nightmare she could never escape.

“I have to go.” Hollis wasn’t sure if she was addressing Jerome or herself.

“I can take you,” he said, but he didn’t move and she didn’t either.

“I can’t stay.”

His hand kept circling gently across her shoulders and she bit back another sigh. No one had touched her in months. Not to comfort. His movements were unlocking parts of her that she’d stowed away and tried to forget. Parts that cried out for human contact. For warmth that had nothing to do with heat.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he said.

She bit her lip. “I can’t.”

Finally, he loosened his grip and stepped back. She wanted to cry. But when she looked up and saw his face, it was clear he hadn’t stepped away because she wouldn’t tell him. His expression searched her own with an intensity that made her pulse quicken. Then he nodded.

“Okay. I won’t push. But, Hollis, please, is there anything I can do?” In the yellow light his bright blue eyes were almost green.

An idea suddenly came to her. Impulsive and childish, but as she considered it the notion gained momentum, fueled by the surreal events of the evening and the painful thrum of her raw nerves. Jerome was sweet and kind, and maybe for one night…he could be her sanctuary.

“Could I stay with you? To sleep. Just to sleep.”

“Tonight? I…are you in some kind of danger?”

She shook her head, a touch too forcefully. “Nothing like that. I just…I just don’t want to be by myself.” She looked away, suddenly mortified. “I’m just, hah, I’m a bit nuts right now. Work is a lot. Forget it. It was dumb.”

“You can stay.”

She nervously chewed the inside of her cheek and suppressed the urge to fidgit. “Yeah?”

He nodded. Calm and collected and so steady she wanted to touch him just to see if any of that stillness would flow in and soothe her unquiet mind. Instead she grabbed her own hands and squeezed hard.

“I’m kind of a nerdy neat freak,” he said, “so it won’t even be that embarrassing. Just give me a few minutes to pack up my stuff.”

“I don’t want to hassle you.”

“You aren't.”

“I know this is super weird.”

“Not to me.” He smiled at her, and she realized with a start that he wasn’t just saying things to comfort her. He meant it. “I’ve had nights where I needed to be around someone. Sometimes I get too deep pursuing some idea or other and I get to a point…” He broke off and his smile turned rueful.

“What?”

He blew out a breath of laughter and rubbed the back of his head. “…it feels like, if someone isn’t there to keep an eye on me, I’ll fly right off the face of the earth.”

Yes, she wanted to scream, yes! Out loud, she swallowed and forced herself to speak more casually: “You keep me company tonight, and I’ll keep you tethered to this mudball.”

He grinned. “Deal.”

August 21, 202X, 2:44 AM

Donnel City - Warehouse District

She wasn’t coming.

After heading back to the shuttered coffee shop, Jerome had written his address on a sketchbook scrap and offered it silently. He’d guessed Hollis wouldn’t want to share her phone number, and the muted relief on her face as she took the paper confirmed it. They had separated and agreed to meet back at his place in forty-five minutes.

That had been an hour ago.

Obviously Hollis’s odd impulse had passed, but Jerome was still finding excuses to keep “cleaning.” Which really meant wandering around touching random things and being nervous. His place had already been spotless, so all he’d done was grab a sheet and pillow for the futon and laid out an extra towel in case she wanted to shower in the morning. It had taken five minutes. He checked his phone. Fifteen till three.

Could I stay with you?

Hollis had looked so vulnerable in that moment, and ashamed. The emotions within her had been spilling out despite her clear efforts to hold them in. Even so, he hadn’t expected her to accept his hug—or lean deeper into it. Her poorly-disguised sigh had nearly undone him.

Jerome reached out and made another non-adjustment of the Gutenberg magnet on his fridge. “What the hell am I doing?” he said aloud. The image of Gutenberg—reproduced from a famous copper engraving—remained silent, but Jerome thought he saw reproach in the man’s enigmatic stare. “Think she's too much for me, Johannes?”

It was a running joke among the art grads that Jerome was “the normal one.” Kendis liked to say he’d take a wrong turn on his way to the math department and ended up in City Center College’s art building by mistake.

It was irritating as hell.

He always tried to play along, but sometimes it made him want to scream at them. Tell his friends and classmates that his head was a mad jumble of intense ideas and desires and creeping doubts. Confess that he was as messed up as they were, maybe more. His apartment was fastidious, his clothes were color separated, and he’d never taken a sick day—in whose book did that count as well-adjusted?

The truth was that he hated being noticed.

A therapist would probably have a name for whatever his hang-up was, but that would require seeing one. Worse, being seen by one. Maybe he was introverted, or naturally averse to scrutiny. Or maybe he just enjoyed hiding in plain sight. Being another face in the crowd. It was comforting, reassuring. As an artist he lived to shake the foundations of the Earth…but he wanted his art to do the shaking. He could stand quietly at the back of the gallery and watch.

Hollis was different.

A casual watcher might be fooled into thinking she was like Jerome, but he knew better. For Hollis, being an anonymous presence was anything but natural. He had watched her sit in dark corners and wear shapeless hoodies in a fruitless effort to be invisible. She knew what to do, sure, but it wasn’t the same as wanting to do it.

There was an inner light inside her. A quality in both her manner and personality that begged you to take notice. That’s why he’d spotted her the very first night she walked into C4, and why he’d kept looking for her every shift after, hoping that the drab woman in the drab hoodie would show up and inexplicably brighten his night.

“She’s not coming,” he said.

The magnet kept its own council on the subject.

He sighed, eyes glancing over at the queen-sized bed in one corner and its painstakingly straightened cover. Maybe it was time to turn off the lights and crawl into it. Best outcome, really. For a man like Jerome, a woman like Hollis would always be too bright, almost blinding. Like staring into the sun.

“Five more minutes,” he told Gutenberg sternly, “and then I’m going to sleep. You can do whatever you want.”

The thing was…he liked her. Hollis was in trouble and he liked her and he wanted to help. Something had happened. Made her want to force herself into the quiet corners of the world where people like Jerome felt safest. She didn’t belong there, he knew, but he wondered—conceited as it was—if his presence might make it more palatable for her. It had seemed to, briefly, when she had asked him for a friendly sleepover.

Friendly sleepover?

His face twisted like he’d bitten into a lemon. “Nope. Not calling it that.” He stepped out of the kitchen nook and took one final turn about his apartment. It wasn't as if she was going to show up here in any form, friendly or romantic. If it was going to happen, it would have. It hadn't. It wouldn't. Not tonight, not ever.

A hesitant tap sounded on his door.

Jerome crossed the space in two bounding leaps. Sanity returned at the last instant, just before he would have wrenched the door off it's hinges and fixed Hollis with an idiot grin. He stopped.

It might not even be her. Last year a homeless man had knocked on his door in the middle of the night and tried to sell him a bowling ball. It probably wasn’t her. Slow breath in…and out. Okay. He forced his limbs to loosen and his face to lose the manic jester vibe. He mentally repeated the word “okay” four more times, and opened the door.

“Hey,” Hollis said.

She was wearing her trademark hoodie over a thin pastel sleep shirt and pajama pants, which somehow layered a girl-next-door appeal over her usual rocker chick vibes. She was freshly showered, her pixie cut spiky and damp and somehow more feminine. Underneath it her dark eyes couldn’t quite meet his. It was a new side of her. He was starting to suspect he would love every side she showed him.

Hollis tightened her grip on a small overnight bag, and fidgeted. “I almost didn’t come.”

“I’m really glad you did.” The answer came without thinking. He shook his head, hoping she hadn’t heard the raw emotion in his voice, and stepped back. “Please come in.”

She ducked her head, but he caught the flash of a subdued smile as she brushed past him, leaving a faint scent of rose bodywash in the air. He savored it as he shut the door, then turned and smiled as he saw her pants in the light.

“Oh my God, are those Spongebob pajamas?”

Hollis shrugged a single shoulder without turning—which was good, because she would have caught him fixated on her cartoon-clad rear.

“My Pokémon pajamas are in the hamper.” She wandered deeper into his apartment.

This version of her, endearing and pristine, made his nerve endings buzz. It was like standing in an electrical field. She made him want to hold her close, hide her from outside complications…maybe start some inside complications.

Mental note: he was now so far in over his head that the surface was a myth.

“Wow…your place…”

“Uh, yeah.” He chuckled. Behold my vast studio apartment.”

Jerome lived in one of the least popular grad housing spots on campus, a weathered building right next to the rundown warehouse district. It had been continuously occupied since the 1920s and carried the fingerprints of several decades, from its narrow-plank hardwood floors—a creak in every step—to its ancient radiator against the wall. He loved it. The location was iffy, but it was also equidistant from C4 and the art building. And the way it wore its age fed his sentimental soul.

Hollis set her hand against the back of the couch-style futon and drifted to a stop. Her attention had shifted entirely above her.

“The ceiling…it’s just like C4's.”

“Stamped tin. Different design, but both places were built in the twenties. You like it?”

She tilted her head down and dazzled him with a smile.