Page 142 of The Kiss Of Death
“I don’t like charity,” I spat, striding toward his son, who nervously shuffled in his chair. “Move.”
The child complied, so I took his chair and pried open the computer’s casing.
“Give me whatever tools you can find,” I instructed the kid. His father gave me a look with raised eyebrows, so I added between clenched teeth, “Please.”
Mr. Henry approached cautiously. “What are you doing?”
“Fixing this old thing,” I said.
“Okay, so what did you want to talk to me about? How are you doing, Levi?”
“Spectacular. I’m glad you asked,” I replied, snatching the pink box of tools from his son’s grasp. “You were the one who diagnosed my mother’s autism. Why didn’t you try to help her? You know we never fit in here in this town.”
Mr. Henry blinked. “I tried to reach out to her, but she said she was fine.”
“And you believed her?” I snapped, my eyes gunning at him.
He cast his eyes downward, avoiding meeting mine. He was a good man, and that was precisely why it made me feel better toblame someone else who wasn’t me—it was too easy to make him feel remorse for failing one of his patients.
The kid tugged on his sleeve with a smile. “Can I watch him, Dad?”
“It’s a private conversation,” Mr. Henry continued.
“I don’t care about my privacy,” I said, disassembling the computer to reveal its circuitry. “So back to the topic. I finally learned to love someone. I think. If love is about wanting to live for that said person and not wanting to die. Being obsessed with everything about her and being afraid that something will happen to her. She has been constantly on my mind for nine years now. I’m exhausted, and I want this fucking—sorry, big word—pain to stop. But it does not. So I’m here so you could teach me how to stop feeling like—” I searched for a polite word.
“Like a loser,” the boy piped up, chuckling. I’m glad someone was having fun at my expense.
“Thank you. A loser, exactly. A pathetic loser.” With a small brush, I removed the dust covering the vents and cooling fans. The machine hadn’t breathed correctly in years, almost like I was feeling right now without Dalia. “And then, I lost her.”
“That’s a form of love, but what strikes me is your self-loathing regarding this feeling, as if you view love as a weakness.”
“I wasn’t born to know and feel love, Doc,” I said, identifying a few loose connections and corroded contacts.
“You don’t know what love is about. You need to learn how to love correctly. When you feel love, you feel overwhelmed, and that’s normal. It’s new for you.”
“Dalia doesn’t love me.” I swallowed harshly, a knot in my heart forming. I could fix the hardware issues of that computer before moving on to the software, but I couldn’t fix that damn knot. “Not anymore at least.”
“And how do you know that?”
I spun the chair around and displayed a thin smile. “Because I forced her to be with me, and I destroyed her life.”
He snorted at me. “You can’t force someone to be with you.”
“I can prove the contrary.” I raised a brow and turned the PC back on. “I forced her to be with me, just like I’m forcing access to your computer right now.”
With a series of keystrokes, I initiated a thorough system scan. Lines of code flashed on the screen as the diagnostic tools identified and fixed software glitches, corrupted files, and outdated drivers.
Initially resistant and sluggish, the computer, just like Dalia was, gradually responded to my interventions, awakening from its digital slumber. The computer powered on, the familiar startup sequence unfolded on the monitor, the hum of the old hard drive spinning to life.
“That was so cool,” the boy cheered.
Glad he thought so.
“You can’t force someone to have feelings for you,” Henry said, covering his boy’s ears. “Did you force yourself on her?”
“No.”
“Did you ask her to be your girlfriend?”
