Beyond Repair (9 page)

She knew there was a reason not to show him, and there it
was suddenly in a blinding flash of
oh my fucking God
. It nearly
paralyzed her. She came close to just stopping with her hand up to the
doorknob, and even after she’d managed to open it she couldn’t quite go
through. She just stood at the top of the rickety stairs as he trotted
trustingly down into the darkness.

What on earth was he going to think when he saw it?

She had every single one of his films down there.
She
had them all, from his early bloody bit parts in several slasher franchises,
right the way through to
Captain Amazing
. And he couldn’t possibly fail
to notice them either. If she’d scattered them around the place she might have
gotten away with it, but she knew she hadn’t. She stored all her films by actor
or actress, so somewhere down there he had a shelf all to himself.

Like a great and terrible testament to some obsessive
insanity.

“Bernie, wait a second,” she called out, but it was too
late.

He had already been sucked in by her movie collection.

“Holy Mother of God,” he said, and she understood why. Even
she sometimes came down here and took a step back, the way he did when he first
saw it. All you could see from the stairs were row upon row of bookshelves,
each one so close to the next you could hardly see between. They seemed to
gather together in the darkness, almost to the ceiling and studded with colors
you could just about make out.

There was the red of
28 Days Later
and the brilliant
blue of
Superman
, just waiting in the patient darkness for him to
discover them. And though she knew what else he would discover while he was in
there, the thought still gave her a thrill. It made her go all warm with pride—as
did the thing he then said.

“How in God’s name did you amass all of this?” he asked, in
a way that suggested it was some staggering achievement. Other people gained
promotions or climbed mountains. She created a film library so extensive he
didn’t even wait for an answer. He was too busy disappearing between shelves
that stood taller than his head, one hand trailing over the boxes as though he
just couldn’t help himself.

He had to revel in them just a little bit.

Or maybe revel in them a lot.

She could hear him making sounds as he wandered farther down—small
notes of surprise or awe, culminating in the kind of exclamation she adored him
for.

“I cannot fully believe you have every episode of
Star
Trek
. You have a bookcase of
Star Treks
, Alice, yet we have been
watching the food channel. We must rectify this immediately with a marathon,”
he said, and her sad little heart fluttered.

Did he really want to watch
Star Trek
with her? And a
whole marathon too—that would take
so
much time. He’d have to be here
for an entire month to get it done, and oh that month sounded like heaven.
There would be huddling under blankets, popcorn and party food, falling asleep
halfway through episodes of
Voyager
—all the things she’d been promised
by people talking about TV watching on Tumblr.

But best to play it cool.

“Sure, if you want.”

“Seriously? You’re amazing.”

“Well, I do my best.”

“You succeed—look at all these great fucking movies.
Fright
Night
,
Starman
,
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Terminator
…you
love all of these?”

He sounded incredulous, she thought. And she knew why. They
were such old movies for someone like her to love. They were weird, she was
sure, for someone like her. But she couldn’t tell him why she loved these weird
old things. She couldn’t tell him about watching with her mother, because then
she’d have to talk about all of that stuff. So instead she went with something
light and noncommittal.

“I wouldn’t have them if I didn’t,” she said, and he seemed
to fall silent then. She could still see him at the end of the third row,
looking and looking with eyes as wonder-filled as his voice, but the comments
came to an abrupt stop. They came to so abrupt a stop that it worried her a
little. Had he guessed why she liked stuff like that? Was he going to ask? And
even worse…

Had he seen her secret shame?

She didn’t think he was in the right place, but it had been
so long since she watched anything of his she couldn’t be sure. She just had to
follow him in some vain hope of heading him off at the pass—a feat that got
more futile as time went on. Just as she was sure she’d reached him he would
disappear around another corner, until she started to feel lost in her own
library. She rounded an L-shaped section, expecting to see him on the other
side, but he wasn’t there anymore.

Somehow she’d created an impossible labyrinth, with walls
that slid suddenly sideways and corridors that took you to nowhere. Next thing
she knew there’d be staircases on the ceiling, and Holden floating upside down
above her head.

She had to ask.

“Hey, where are you?”

“Over here, by the random movie section,” he said, and
relief flooded through her. He hadn’t worked it out yet. He wasn’t even close,
in fact. After a second he added more, in so bemused a tone she could have
kissed him. She could have kept him like that forever, in a permanent state of
blissful ignorance. “None of these are in order.”

“I don’t need any kind of order,” she said, and for one
glorious moment he seemed satisfied with that. She saw him through the gaps
between boxes, finding this movie and that movie like unearthing buried
treasure, just having fun with the idea of everything being a big jumble.

But eventually he was compelled to mention the problem.

“How do you ever find anything, though?” he asked, and she
had to think fast.

Unfortunately, thinking fast was not her strong suit.

“Oh…well…they kind of are. All the
Star Treks
are
together, all the sitcoms are together, all the horror is together and so on.”

“Yeah but there’s no alphabetical.”

She saw him glancing up and up, as though searching for the
elusive ABCs.

She hated to disappoint him. She hated it so much.

“I don’t like alphabetical,” she said, but knew that
wouldn’t be the end of the matter. He had hold of the end of the string now,
and was pulling and pulling on it. And when it finally came free, there was
laughter in his voice. He sounded so amused, which was somehow much worse than
contempt.

“Wait…are these in order of actor?”

“Um…see the thing about that is—”

“They
are
in order of actor. You’ve got ten movies
here starring James Spader.” He laughed, oh God he laughed. “You like James
Spader, huh? Got a little crush on him?”

“That could possibly be the case.”

“Have a thing for smart redheads, maybe?”

“Well I do sort—”

“Guess that explains why you’re not into me.”

She thought she’d misheard, for a second. His tone was not
the tone she was used to, all bright with amusement and affection. It was a
touch darker, as if he’d just tasted something bitter. And the actual
words…surely he couldn’t mean what she thought he meant? But before she could
even ask about it or make it better, he’d already moved on to some other
flummoxing, unfathomable point.

“Oh my God, Alan Rickman? That…is a really hard standard to
meet. I can’t even do a British accent, as you probably know if you’ve seen my
completely excruciating attempt at a period drama.” She held her breath,
knowing what was coming. He’d moved a little farther to the left now, so
couldn’t really fail to see it—though she somehow hoped he wouldn’t. She hoped
she hoped she hoped and all in vain. “Christ you
have
seen it. And
you’ve also seen the one with killer spiders…great, that should have given you
a wonderful impression of my ability to fail at acting. Man you’ve got quite a
few here you…”

He neither came to an abrupt stop nor trailed off, yet both
said the same thing pretty clearly. The burning light of realization was upon
him, so hot it was melting her at the same time. Why had she brought him down
here? Why? Why?

This was probably the worst way to explain what he then
grasped.

“You seem to have a section of my movies.” He hesitated,
waiting for clarification that she was never going to give. If it was going to
be done, he had to do it himself. He had to do it himself in this really weird
hollow voice that made her heart sink about three feet. “Do you have a crush on
me, Alice?”

Oh God, he’d used the word
crush
.

He couldn’t have made her feel more like a teenager if he’d
tried.

“That isn’t exactly how I would put it.”

“Then how would you put it? You got all these little
collections of actors you have the hots for and then here’s my filmography…”

“It’s not exactly like that.”

“Think you could attempt to turn it into words?”

“It’s already taking a lot of effort just to say these
ones.”

“Try harder then for the love of God,” he said, in a way
that panicked her far more than she had ever really thought possible. He
sounded so angry and accusatory, as though she really was obsessed and insane.
She’d arranged all of this somehow because of her crazed desire for more Holden
Stark—like
Misery
only with pills she’d magically made him eat and
almost-kisses she’d persuaded him to give.

And then she dared to glance up, and felt kind of stupid.

He didn’t look angry and accusatory.

He looked intense and desperate. He was smoldering so much
his eyes were practically on fire. She would have feared death by immolation if
there hadn’t been a bookcase between them, but even then it was a close thing.
Somehow the films framing his face seemed to make the moment
more
charged, not less. They deepened the shadows between them and turned his gaze
into molten lava.

She still didn’t know how to answer, however.

The best she could manage was
okay maybe I do a little
bit
, but she had to say it fast and frantic and with both fists clenched
tightly by her sides. Mainly because of the concept, but also because he was
still staring at her in that overwhelming way. In fact, the overwhelming way
had gotten worse in the meantime.

Now it had this faint note of disbelief.

And a massive note of potentially explosive passion.

“If you have a crush on me what was all that weirdness in
the bathroom about?”

“I don’t…know what…weirdness you’re referring to.”

“Hey, I’ve been good. I haven’t brought it up because I
didn’t want to scare you. I
don’t
want to scare you. But you know that I
have to bring it up now, right?”

“You don’t have to. We could just carry on like this.”

“Even though you maybe have a thing for me?”

“I don’t have a thing for you. I have a thing for the people
you play.”

“And that’s completely different.”

“You know it’s different.”

“So you find the real me repellant?”

“What? No, God, no, no that’s not…it’s the
opposite
of that it—”

“It didn’t seem like the opposite of that when you flung
yourself across the bathroom floor just to get away from me.”

“The flinging wasn’t about…you being repellant! Jesus, I
can’t even believe you’re using that word with a straight face. I called you
handsome the first day we met.”

“Accepting general handsomeness and finding someone
attractive are not the same thing. Come on—you know that.”

“Your handsomeness is pretty far from general, Holden.”

He went very quiet after that. So quiet she wanted to glance
at him and check if he was okay. She’d managed to inch her gaze away during
this conversation from hell, but really what good did that do her? Without his
massively expressive face she could hardly understand a thing.

She could hardly understand it anyway, but that wasn’t the
point.

The point was that he’d been wondering if she found him
gross
.
All this time she’d been thinking of her massive virgin status and her terror
of big men, sure that he must understand. He understood everything else. Yet
somehow, he hadn’t understood this in the slightest. He even expressed the
sentiment again, just to drive it home.

“I don’t care if it’s general or not. I only care how you
feel about it. How you feel about me as a person,” he said, and oh her heart
ached to hear the words.

It was impossible not to offer him something, after that.

Even if the something was completely stupid.

“I feel…nice. I feel really nice,” she said, then did her
best not to wince. He couldn’t see because she’d dipped her head behind twelve
copies of
The Terminator
, but it seemed like a good idea to try anyway.
If she didn’t, he’d probably hear that discomfort in her voice when she next
tried to speak.

And things were already difficult enough as it was.

“So what was the problem, then?” he asked, but she couldn’t
come out with the right answer. The right answer was hideous and humiliating,
so instead she had to shout a false one really loudly.

“The problem was that I’d just met you!”

“Are you sure that’s it?”

“I’m absolutely not sure at all but let’s just go with it.”

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to go with it. We hadn’t
just met when I touched your cheek in the closet, or brushed against your arm
on the way out of the kitchen. But you kind of reacted the same when those
things happened too.”

“Okay, well what about if I tell you that I was just
afraid?” she tried, because at least that was partially true. She was afraid—but
maybe not entirely of the thing she then pointed out. “You’re a big impressive
movie star and I once had a crush on you. The whole thing was just a bit too
crazy and overwhelming—I mean when it happened to Annie Wilkes she bludgeoned
his feet with a mallet.”