Beautiful Villain

“How often?”

“It hasn’t happened in a few years.”

“You had nightmares when you got to prison.”

“Yeah.”

“Did anyone find out?”

“My roommates.”

“Ouch. Did they hurt you?”

Her voice is so full of compassion that it kind of hurts a little.

“I made it clear that they didn’t need to mess with me,” I say. That’s all I’m going to tell her about that. I also managed to stop my nightmares long enough that most of the people I encountered never had any idea what I was going through.

Most of them never needed to know what my problem was.

“It must have been very hard carrying this burden alone.”

It was.

Her letters helped more than she’ll ever know. It was nice to have something to look forward to. Getting a letter from Finley was like getting a glass of ice water on a hot summer day. She always managed to make me smile, and once I figured out who she was, it made the letters even more special.

She never gave me her address, so I never wrote back, but I wanted to so many times. I didn’t know what her situation was – maybe she had a boyfriend or a husband – and I didn’t want to do anything that might cause her trouble.

Now I’m kind of regretting that just a little bit.

Maybe I should have told her how her words made me feel.

“I managed.”

“I can see that,” she says wryly, but she doesn’t press anymore. She doesn’t ask me to tell her about the dream. She doesn’t ask me to express any other emotions or reveal any personal details. Instead, she climbs off me. “Come on.”

“What?”

“Let’s go get something to drink,” she says.

“It’s the middle of the night.”

“And a cup of tea might be just what you need to fall back to sleep,” she says. “Trust me.”

I don’t have anything to lose, so I reluctantly follow Finley downstairs. She leads me, sure enough, to the kitchen. She gestures to one of the barstools and I sit down while she starts making us two hot cups of tea. She pours the water into two mugs and then pops them in the microwave. When the machine beeps, she pulls them out, adds a couple of teabags, and hands me my cup.

“You know,” I tell her. “My mother would be horrified with the way you prepare tea.”

“I know,” she says sheepishly. “The other librarians always tease me about this. I know you’re supposed to put the bag in first, and you’re supposed to boil the water, but…it works.”

The idea of the other librarians teasing her bothers me a little, actually. I don’t think it’s very fair that Finley should be so sweet but be teased or made fun of in this way. Then again, I have to remind myself that she’s not my girlfriend.

She’s not my wife.

She’s just…

Saving my ass, apparently. In more ways than one, too. I sip slowly on the tea. The two of us sit in silence for a long time, and soon I feel the tension in my muscles begin to slip away.

“This was a good idea,” I finally say. “Thank you.”