Free The Story Guy (Novella) by Mary Ann Rivers Page B

I’ve broken a spell. He pulls me into a tight embrace the way he did in front of The Windmill. The feel of his sweater against my cheek, the hard chest underneath it pounding with his heartbeat, his sun-warmed smell—it hardly seems real, when just moments ago it was everything.
    He leans in and buries his face into my neck. I think I might feel something hot and wet, but before I can process that, believe that it’s even possible that he could break open enough to cry, he squeezes me once, hard, and starts to move away, walking backward. I don’t let him say goodbye.
    “Brian, I’m calling you later, okay?” My voice is unconvincing.
    “Okay. Carrie, I just—”
    “I’ll call you later. It’s okay, just go be with your sister.”
    He looks at me a moment longer, but then turns and jogs away. The wind off thelake has picked up, and the sun doesn’t quite manage to cut through the unexpectedly cold afternoon.

Saturday, 8:32 p.m.
    I don’t want to leave a message. I really, really don’t. But I’d said I would call. And some kind of misplaced hope, or Midwestern niceness, means that I will. But after calling three times and listening to the hopeless ring tone, it seems like I have no choice. It has been such a long evening, avoiding my own thoughts.
    “ This is Brian Newburgh. Please leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you .”
    “Brian? This is Carrie. Carrie—West. Carrie West. Your Wednesdays-only that is more than Wednesday. I hope—I really, really hope your sister is okay. I’d like to talk to you. Please call me back anytime. I think we need to talk, but I understand if you need some time and just want to—well, hang out? Please call.”
    So, there. I met an anonymous man in a park, twice, had almost anonymous phone sex with him (if you count anonymous as not knowing his last name at the time), then I bullied him into brunch, and finally, when he abandoned the date to rush to the bedside of a sister who is hospitalized , I begged him to call me back.
    I need some perspective. I start to call Shelley, but hesitate. I think about someone else who claimed to have his share of story guys.
    “Justin?”
    “Hey, Carrie, you just caught me. I can talk and walk, but I’m meeting Aaron for a late dinner.”
    I give him my updates, careful not to gloss anything over. “What am I working through here? I like my parents. I’m an only child. I suffer no trauma, hence no posttraumatic syndromes or stress. It’s true that I’ve been pretty lonely around the edges lately, but I’m not afraid of getting myself out there as needed. Have I had a personality change lately? Do you think I’m having a stroke?”
    “Wow, Carrie. When I said you should go for Story Boy I didn’t realize he was a Russian novel.”
    “This is crazy, right? I mean, I’m sure if I would have met him—I don’t know,normally? In a regular way, let’s say—I’d have backed off early. But the novelty of his nutty Wednesday ad and—”
    “I don’t know.” Justin’s voice is slow, thoughtful.
    “What do you mean?”
    “How does he make you feel?”
    “Right now? Off balance. A little embarrassed. Worried. Like I don’t know myself.”
    “Yeah. Exactly. Carrie, would you like to know this part of yourself?”
    “Huh?”
    “The part of yourself that opens herself up to a man based on nothing but a little intuition that there is goodness in him and that he kisses like the world’s ending. Do you want to know that part? Because you don’t have to. You’re right. Your life is a nice one—there are no guarantees, but it’s on the right path to stay a nice one. Brian is not on this path.”
    I switch the phone to the other ear, as if that would help me hear the message better, somehow. My path is the nice one. The one filled with friends who will smile when I buy their children books for their birthdays. Who will take me out, sometimes, when I call on a random night because I can’t settle down. The path