Page 65 of Slander
"Rent's due soon." Her thumb runs the rim of the cup. "And I've got most of it, from my last school check. But there's no check after this one, Njal. They put me on leave without pay, and leave's going to turn into me being fired, we both know it's going to. I've been sitting here all morning doing the math in my head, and the math doesn't work past about the middle of next month."
She says it fast, like she's been holding it.
"I've never not made rent in my life." Her voice tightens. "I had a job at nineteen, and a job all through college, and a job every summer. I have never once had to wonder if I'd make it,and now I'm wondering, and on top of everything else it's the part that's got me ready to throw up. Stupid, right? The town thinks I'm a monster, and I'm worried about a rent check."
"It's not stupid." I keep my voice even. "It's the most sane thing you've said in two days. The big stuff's too big to hold. So your head grabs what it can count. Rent's a number. Numbers feel like something you can do something about." I lean forward. "And you can. Because I've got it."
She blinks. "You've got what?"
"Rent. This month, next month, however many months it takes until this is over, and you're working again." I say it plain, like the fact it is. "Say the word, and it's handled. You don't think about it again."
"Njal." She sets the cup down. "That's—no. That's crazy. You can't pay my rent."
"Why not?"
"Because—" She gestures between us, at the air, at all the undefined space we've never put a name to. "Because we're not even—Njal, we're not dating. We've known each other for a few weeks. You don't pay rent for a woman you're not even dating, that's not—people don't do that."
I look at her for a second.
And I realize she doesn't know.
All this time, all the mine I've said into her skin, and the actual words have never once been laid out in the daylight where she could hold them.
"Sophie." I lean my forearms on my knees so we're level. "We're not dating, you're right. Dating's not what this is."
Her face does something uncertain. "Then what?—"
"I claimed you." I watch her take the word and not know what to do with it. "That's not a thing I say lightly. In my world, it means you're mine. Mine to stand in front of. Mine to take care of. Mine to put my whole family behind when a town turns onyou, which—in case you missed it yesterday—already happened. My father called you ours before he ever laid eyes on you. That's what being claimed means."
She's staring at me.
"You—" She stops. Starts again. "You claimed me. Like a—like a parking spot. A library book."
"Like a woman I'm not letting go of." The corner of my mouth pulls. "But sure. Like a library book, if it helps."
"You didn't ask me." She's somewhere between outrage and something else, something coming up warm under the outrage, and I'd bet my bike on which one wins. "You don't get to just—decide a person. There's supposed to be a—a conversation. A nice dinner. Somebody's supposed to say will you be my girlfriend like a normal human, not announce I've been claimed like a flag planted on the moon."
"You want me to ask you?"
"I want—" She huffs, and there it is, the warm thing breaking through, fighting her mouth into almost-a-smile. "I don't know what I want. I want this to be a normal thing that normal people do. And instead, I've got a biker telling me I've been claimed, and his daddy adopting me sight unseen, and apparently a whole motorcycle club that considers me theirs now, and I'm—Njal, I'm a second-grade teacher. I drive a truck. I have a hound dog."
"I know what you have." I reach over and take the hand that's been worrying that cup all break. "I've been paying attention. And I'm telling you what I am, which is yours, and what you are, which is claimed, and what that means, which is your rent is the smallest problem you've got, and you can let me take it off the pile."
She looks down at my hand around hers.
"You really would just pay it," she says, quieter now. "Like it's nothing."
"It's not nothing. It's for you." I run my thumb over her knuckles. "Which makes it the easiest money I'll ever spend."
She's quiet a long moment, and when she looks up, her eyes are wet in a way that's got nothing to do with rent.
"My whole life I've belonged to people who were ashamed of me the second I stopped being convenient," she says. "My father. The church. They claimed me right up until claiming me cost them something, and then they set me down on the curb."
Her voice wavers and holds. "And you're sitting here, in a coffee shop office, telling me your family decided I'm theirs before they met me. That a whole club's got my back over a woman they've never laid eyes on. I don't—Njal, I don't know how to handle that. I don't have any words for it. The only thing I've ever known is the kind that leaves."
"Then let me teach you the other kind." I bring her hand up between both of mine. "The kind that doesn't. We've got time. You can learn it slowly."
She wipes her face with the back of her free hand and laughs, wet and embarrassed, and lets me hold on.
