Page 24 of Stuck with You

It was hard to strike up a conversation with someone who didn’t want to talk to you. I normally had no trouble talking to girls, but Clary was different. She was impossible to impress, and half the time I was around her, I felt like an idiot.

It didn’t help that she was unnervingly beautiful. My tongue had a tendency to twist whenever I looked at her, and today was no exception. I was hardly a nervous person, but I had to wonder how any guy could manage to keep their thoughts straight when talking with her. It seemed impossible, but she’d had a boyfriend a while back, which proved it could be done.

Daniel. He’d been a dweeby teen when I last saw him, but even then, I’d been jealous of the guy. He was a serious brain and was probably going to go on to build spaceships or develop the cure for cancer when he left school. But his brains weren’t what really impressed me. No, it was the fact he’d always seemed totally chill around Clary. How had he convinced her to date him? The kid must have superpowers or something. Either that or Clary only dated smart guys, in which case I was screwed.

I might have done better in school if I’d ever really applied myself. I should have had some smart genes with two doctors for parents, but I was guessing intelligence was one of those things that skipped a generation. At least, in my case, it was. I tended to coast through school—not particularly nailing it or failing it. No, I had to believe that book smarts weren’t the only way into Clary’s heart.

Clary slowed as we heard shouting from across the road. I turned to the noise and chuckled. Rosalind and Herb were at it again. My two neighbors were in their eighties, and they were a cute couple until they started bickering. Herb seemed to be trying to leave their property, but Rosalind kept calling after him.

“I told you not to leave the house,” she yelled.

“And I told you I need fresh air.”

“There’s fresh air in the backyard.”

“I like the fresh air on the street better.”

Rosalind folded her arms across her chest as she scowled at him. “Well, you forgot your mask, you idiot.”

“I don’t need a mask,” he shouted. As the two of them continued their argument, Clary turned to me. The tightness in my chest eased slightly now she was facing me and I could see her eyes again. I hated when she kept them from me.

“What’s up with your neighbors?” she asked.

“Nothing unusual. Rosalind and Herb argue a lot.” It happened so frequently I barely thought anything of it anymore.

“They’re very loud.”

I laughed. “Yeah, but I think that’s just how they show their love. The louder they shout, the more they care. They’re both really sweet, actually.”

Clary lifted an eyebrow in doubt, but this was the closest we’d come to a conversation in a while, so it felt like a win.

We put cards in the rest of the mailboxes on my street before heading back to my truck so we could go to Clary’s house. There was a flyer on the front windshield when we got to the truck, and I grabbed it off. People were always papering our cars with useless promotions. I would have thought they’d take a break during a pandemic though. I went to scrunch the flyer into a ball, but when I saw what the flyer was about, I shook my head.

“Did you know that the pandemic doesn’t actually exist?” I asked Clary, showing her the flyer as I climbed into the driver’s seat.

She was already in the passenger seat, and she lifted one eyebrow as she took the flyer from me and looked over the page. “The globalist elite don’t want us to have our freedom?” She rolled her eyes and placed the flyer down. “I guess it’s one of the less absurd pandemic theories I’ve heard going around.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard a few crazy ones too,” I agreed.

“Okay, give me your best one…”

I was silent for a moment as I tried to decide what to hit her with, and I grinned when I remembered a good one. “Did you know that the Russian government released lions into the street during lockdown to stop people from leaving their houses?”

“Did you know that it’s all just a marketing scheme made by hand sanitizer companies?” Clary fired straight back.

“That can’t be true because the virus was sent here by aliens who are about to take over the world.”

She laughed. “Aliens taking over the world; not sure it gets any more epic than that.”

“It doesn’t.”

It was kind of nice to laugh about something so serious and scary. If you didn’t find a way to make the best of the situation, the whole thing just became too miserable to bear.

“Actually, I did hear one theory about the virus that seems plausible,” I said.

Her expression sobered at my words, and she looked genuinely curious. “What is it?”

“Well,” I started. “Apparently, there’s a way you can stop yourself from catching it…”

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