Page 7 of How to Bare Your Neck and Save a Wreck
He led the stranger to an empty booth where the wavey designs within the decorative sand dollars looked a bit like genitalia—he’d rated this one low for minimal effort and an overall lack of creativity, but as he helped the person sit, hewondered if he should have added a star for availability in times of crisis. He was almost surprised to find the stranger still there when he returned with a glass of water.
“Drink this.”
The stranger made a sound, weak and hollow, but he took the cup with only a single tremor, his gaze steady. Was he actually drunk or was he justthatsad? The second one seemed worse somehow.
“Are you good?” Shane asked. “Do you need me to get someone?”
He paused from drinking to shake his head. “No.”
Shane noticed that he hadn’t wiped at the fresh streaks running down his cheeks and had the oddest impulse to do it for him. But cheek touching, Shane was pretty sure, sat squarely at the top-most level of the friendship ladder, and whether or not the two of them had run into each other before and Shane just couldn’t recall his face, he didn’t actuallyknowthis person. “No, you’re not good or no, you don’t need someone?”
“I believe in this case I’m not good precisely because Idoneed someone.” His voice was so soft, so broken, even when raised above the music. It tickled something at the back of Shane’s mind, but he couldn’t place it.
His gaze went mindlessly to those lips again, a second tear now cresting them, but he looked away before his attention could settle. Whatever this poor person—this human, if he was anything like 99% of San Salud’s population—was going through, he did not need Shane’s misplaced desires for a specific vampire on top of whatever had caused his public emotional breakdown.
“It’s pathetic.”
“I didn’t say that,” Shane objected.
“You’re thinking it.”
He hadn’t been thinking it in thoseexactwords. “Iwasthinking that I’d rate tear-streaked mascara a three out of ten on the fashion trend scale, due to the inherent effort required in crying every time you want to wear it.” It had felt like a joke in his head but the stranger only winced, finally lifting a hand to his face. Shane watched him wipe uselessly at the tear stains with a growing look of misery, and added, “I hear it’s therapeutic to trauma dump on strangers at bars, if you want to give that a shot?”
The stranger laughed at that, wet and choked. “Is it now?” He looked skeptical. “There’s not much to tell, truthfully. I’m pathetic and a bit miserable, and tonight I couldn’t manage to convince myself otherwise.”
“We all have our bad days.” Shane had no right to judge. He was pulling himself out of a few badyears—or trying to anyway.
The stranger glanced away again, taking another sip of his drink. “You were filming when I interrupted.”
“I have a video channel,” Shane replied. “But it’s not very large. You probably haven’t heard of it.”
He seemed to hesitate, running one hand through his hair. “You’re Shane and you rate stuff?”
“Oh my god.” Shane wanted to cover his face in his hands suddenly. “Yes, that’s me. How embarrassing.”
“Don’t be. Your videos are very… introspective.”
That was not the word Shane had assumed most people would go for, even if it was the truth—or at least, the truth as far as Shane tried to make it. But then the strangerkepttalking.
“Do you ever worry that judging things means you’re imposing negative value on something that already feels bad enough about itself?” He wiped back another tear as he said it, but the question seemed thoughtful, like he wasn’t sure what his own opinion on it was.
Shane hummed. “I suppose the real question would be: can restaurant tables feel bad about themselves?”
“Of course they can.”Thathe did seem certain of, or perhaps it was just the slight relief that was slowly creeping across his features. Maybe this distraction was good for him.
“Ah, is that why chairs squeak at us when we sit down sometimes?”
“No, no—chairs are masochists. They like to be judged. But there are people watching these videos, and you could be affecting their opinions on things. Asking them to view one thing as better than another, when they’d have otherwise not thought to compare the two.” He said it so bluntly, like he wasn’t worried about offending Shane. Or, more accurately, that he didn’t think he would.
And he was right. “I suppose I probably am. But am I responsible for other people’s decisions?” It was a serious question, one he didn’t think even he had the answer to all the time. “If the burrito place I rate lowest in San Salud goes out of business, is that my fault, the fault of the customers who listened to me, or of the people making the unfortunate burrito?”
The stranger nodded slowly, wiping at his face once more. “Perhaps we’re all equally responsible for the world we create, and how that world affects those around us.” Then, as though they weren’t trading philosophical dilemmas in a vaguely sexual sand dollar-themed booth, he added, “Though if the octopus in booth ten has an emotional breakdown after you rate him poorly, I will legally back the cephalopod in court.”
That brought a smile to Shane’s face, the first one since talking with Nat earlier that day. He huffed comedically. “You assume I’d ever rate an octopus lower than a seven without very good reason.”
The stranger’s brows lifted. “What counts as a good reason?”
With his expression entirely serious, Shane replied, “He murdered my great aunt.”
