Page 5 of Freedom
~*~
Jake sometimes suspectedhe was the slowest bastard in the continental U.S., but he had, eventually, figured out what Tobias liked.
He liked seeing new places, he liked the Eldorado (who wouldn’t?), he liked the freedom of the road (new places every night, strangers smiling at them with vague politeness), and unless something had radically changed in the last week, he liked being with Jake. Okay, so that last hadn’t taken any stretch of deductive reasoning (the funny squeeze around Jake’s chest every time he rememberedI like being with youmade him think about finding the closest defibrillator), but Jake knew it for sure now.
Tobias liked fresh fruit and the Discovery Channel. He liked sunshine, trees, and apple juice. But of all the things Tobias liked that Jake had carefully, precariously sussed out, books were the most obvious.
Tobias liked watching the scenery roll past the Eldorado’s window, but he spent most of the time reading while Jake drove. He read before bed too, while Jake channel surfed idly and bumped Tobias’s shoulder with his own. And talking about books was the surest, safest way to light him up, like now, when the noise and bustle of a new restaurant pushed him farther into his seat.
Jake took a sip of water and tried to sound casual, as opposed to sneaky. “So, you finished that book about the kids digging holes?”
Tobias brightened, straightening and leaning toward Jake like the question was a line drawing him closer, letting him forget everyone else in the room. “Yes, I did. Stanley found Zero in a r-rowboat, and they climbed a nearby mountain to find water. They ate a lot of o-onions there too, so later when they got caught in a h-hole with a bunch of yellow-spotted lizards, the lizards didn’t bite them.”
Jake asked Tobias about whatever book he was in the middle of pretty much every time they stopped to eat. At first he’d asked just because fuck, it was something for them to talk about, right? And nothing opened Tobias up the same way. But gradually he’d realized that he really did care. Books weren’t something he had time for unless it was research for a hunt, and even then, hell, sometimes he’d rather just wing it, stupid as that was. But with Tobias, it didn’t matter if he was explaining the fine points of snail farming or the plot of an old-timey children’s novel. Jake got the same low thrill as listening to a favorite tape with the bass cranked high or fine-tuning the Eldorado’s engine until she purred just right again. “Because their breath stank?”
“Because the o-onion juice was in their blood,” Tobias said patiently.
“Huh.” Jake sat back. “Maybe we should start munching onions in the Eldorado in case any of those lizards skedaddled out of Texas.”
There it was, a quick flash of a grin before Tobias ducked his head down for a second before he raised it again. “No, Jake, I don’t think so.”
“All right. I guess I have enough problems choking down French onion soup and crap like that, let alone eating the things raw, so that part of the plan would be pretty hard to pull off. What happened after they were saved by their onion blood?”
“In the hole, they found a s-suitcase belonging to Stanley’s ancestor, the first Stanley. It was full of treasure, and Stanley u-used it buy a new house for his family and to help find Zero’s mom.” Tobias paused, tilting his head with a sudden idea. “A lot of books end with treasure.”
“Yeah, that’s what everyone wants at the end of the day,” Jake said dryly. “Find a big sack of gold, make all your dreams come true.”
Tobias looked out the window, over the parking lot of gleaming cars, shining bright enough in the sun to make him squint, his forehead knit in thought. “I don’t want a sack of gold. I don’t know w-what I’d do with it.”
“You could buy one hell of a library with a sack of gold.”
Tobias’s mouth quirked again, and he looked back at Jake. “I don’t want justonelibrary. Libraries are n-nice. You can visit any of them. I’d rather see them all.” He straightened with a sudden thought. “We could use the g-gold to put gas in the Eldorado.”
Jake smiled down into his Coke, not sure why he wanted to conceal the curve of his mouth. Stopping at that book sale had to have been one of the five best decisions in his life. A month ago, Tobias had been full of hesitations, flinching from Jake, touching the spines of books gingerly, as though they could bite him for his presumption. Now, all these moments of confidence, from the way Tobias handled his latest novel to how he took thatwefor granted, did funny things to Jake’s heart no matter how frequent they were becoming.
“Anyway, that br-broke the curse,” Tobias added. “Over the lake and Stanley’s family, the bad luck.”
Jake looked up, eyebrow raised. “They didn’t set anything on fire? No salt and accelerant?”
Tobias shook his head, still smiling faintly. “Rules were d-different in this world.”
Jake might have kept going, found out what other rules had been different or what Tobias would read next, but the waitress brought their plates, and any literary discussion was trumped by turkey clubs and french fries. He’d always loved food: the mouthwatering goodness of a prime burger, the satisfaction from a cold beer. Everything was ten times better with Tobias. And today wasn’t a day when Tobias stared at the food as though he wasn’t sure what he should do with it or couldn’t quite believe that Jake wanted him to dig in. He ate steadily and with almost as much gusto as Jake; he’d picked up Jake’s habit of cleaning up every last bit of sauce with a few carefully applied french fries, though he was much more thorough about it than Jake had ever been.
Jake appreciated his company. In its own way, the comfortable silence was as satisfying as their conversations, to the point that it took him a minute to realize that Tobias was staring intently at something over Jake’s shoulder rather than sinking in the same zoned-out food coma.
Jake twisted to look (not a threat, Toby didn’t look spooked enough for that), just as Tobias said, “I’ll—I’ll b-be right back,” and placed both hands on the table to push himself up out of the booth. Jake watched in astonishment as Tobias strode to the long empty bar counter and leaned over to speak to the waitress.
Jake realized that he’d half risen out of his seat, tense as though he’d just found a pile of fresh shapeshifter slough. But someone talking to Tobias when he couldn’t hear, Tobias getting up and walking away from him, didn’t count as life-threatening danger, and no, he did not almost just pull out his fucking knife.
Before Jake could quite get his heartbeat and adrenaline under control, the waitress had answered—Jake still couldn’t hear anything, dammit, had Tobias noticed something suspicious that he hadn’t?—and Tobias had returned to his seat.
Toby probably looked calm and composed to anyone, but Jake saw the set of his shoulders and the way he spread his fingers wide over the table, as though he hoped the surface would keep him steady.
“They have blueberry and rhu-rhubarb pie,” he said. “Three-fifty a slice.”
He was looking Jake in the eye, mouth set, trying not to show what that had cost him. As though walking away from Jake on the spur of the moment was no big deal. Like he got up to inquire about dessert options every day. Like he never folded down on himself, no matter how animated he’d been a second before, when the waitress surprised him.
Jake realized he should say something, respond to the information about the pie, accept what Toby had just given him in the spirit it had been offered. But it was hard to string words together when Tobias had completely run him over with awesome, and he wasn’t sure he could convey how proud he was without sounding like he had a head injury.
