Ryder sighs and scrubs his face.
“Listen,” I tell him. “I’m not thrilled either.”
He doesn’t respond. It’s almost as if he doesn’t even hear me. In fact, it seems like he’s never heard me. I’ve been friends with Rooney long enough to know that’s her major complaint with men: “They just don’t listen, Willa! They don’t try to understand.”
Ryder so far seems completely typical in this aspect.
“Hey.” I poke his arm and earn his abrupt attention. Well, hi there, muscles upon muscles. Damn.
He straightens in his seat, turning to look at me. Even in the shadow of his ball cap, his eyes are an unfairly striking shade of grass green.
“What’s your deal?” I ask.
His gaze drifts to my mouth, then down to my hands, where I’m spinning my phone across my desk. Suddenly, his hand lands heavy over mine, stilling my fidgety movement. Breath surges out of my lungs. His grip is warm, his fingers long, his palm calloused. He’s closer and I get the faintest whiff of evergreens and soft, clean soap.
His fingers curl gently around my phone before Ryder swipes it and holds it to my face, assuming correctly that I use Face ID to unlock it. Once it’s open, he creates a new blank message sent to a number I don’t recognize. I stare down, watching those three bubbles, then glance up to him, as his thumbs fly over the keys.
I’m deaf, the message reads. This is how I can talk to you.
I gape. He can’t hear. That would explain…well, so much. But still, even if he’s deaf, there’s no defense for him kicking me and pulling my hair.
You started it.
Fine, I started it. Because he was being a jerk.
He wasn’t being a jerk. You’re the jerk. He couldn’t hear you and you assumed the worst and treated him like garbage.
“Ugh,” I groan, blowing a puff of air from cheeks. Then, I pick up my phone. I’m about to text when his hand lands heavy on mine again. I glance up and my heart does a weird flip-flop. The dude’s got an intensity to him. He swallows up the chair he’s sitting in, his legs stretch out long past the desk. He leans an elbow on its surface, and his lumberjack bicep has its own zip code. He’s actually a little intimidating. Well, he would be. If I were the intimidated type.
Ryder points to his eye, then sets a finger right outside my mouth. I shiver at the brush of his fingertip tracing my cheek.
“You can read lips?”
He nods, but with his spare hand, he gestures how people do when they want you to slow down.
“Slowly. If I speak slowly.”
He nods.
“But you don’t talk?”
He shakes his head. My shoulders slump. How the heck are we going to communicate? I only know a little American Sign Language, because one summer every evening after my shift at the bookstore I nannied a seven-year-old named Lola, who was hearing impaired. Mom taught me some ASL that she’d learned in her nursing years, and I memorized quite a bit to take care of Lola, but you know how it goes—use it or lose it—and it’s been years. I lost it. Actually, I do remember one key expression, one that Lola and I used regularly.
I’m sorry. I make a fist and circle my hand over my heart. “I didn’t know,” I tell him. “I thought you were just an asshole lumberjack.”
His mouth twitches with amusement. Glancing down to his phone, he types, Lumberjack? What, because I wear flannel?
“And a beard. And boots. You’re in Los Angeles, Brawny, not the Pacific Northwest. How are you not roasting?”
He tips his head down, and if I’m not mistaken I almost made the asshole smile.
It’s thin, he types. I wear nothing under it.
My cheeks heat. The lumberjack seems muscly. It’s not hard to imagine the six-pack and pecs of steel hidden beneath soft, threadbare plaid. I teased him about it, but the man can wear flannel. It clings to the curve of his rounded shoulders, the swell of his bicep, yet leaves enough of his shape to the imagination that I’ve just spent thirty seconds stupidly ogling him and wondering what kind of heat he’s packing beneath that woodsman-wear.
I snap out of staring, then, to hide my blush, bend over my phone and type instead of saying it. Well, at any rate. I’m sorry about the misunderstanding.
His reply is stunningly fast, but I guess if that was the only way I could talk these days, I’d try to get pretty quick at it, too. It’s okay. An understandable misunderstanding. And speaking of, at the restaurant, that was a family dinner. We aren’t friends—MacCormack’s my brother-in-law. I’m about to throttle him because this situation is entirely his fault.
I look up and gape at Ryder. “Seriously?”
He nods, then types, Yep. Blame The Nutty Professor.
That makes a snort of laughter sneak out. I cover my mouth, trying to hide how funny I found it.
Also, I don’t sign much, he writes. This is…newer.
I read his text, then glance up at him. “You mean you haven’t always been deaf?”
He frowns and taps my lips with his finger, leaving my skin burning from his touch. Turning to his phone again, he types, Open your mouth. Slow down. You mumble worse than my brother. Like your jaw’s wired shut.
The lumberjack is bossy. Blunt. It’s supremely annoying. Irritation barrels through me, a hot flush staining my cheeks. Sweeping up my phone, I type, Sorry I skipped my elocution lesson this morning, Professor Higgins. I wasn’t expecting to be accosted by a bossy hard-of-hearing lumberjack.
His eyebrows shoot up as his thumbs fly over the phone. Excellent. A mumbler *and* a shaming ableist.
Gasping, I slap the desk and turn toward him. “Am not!”
My phone dings. Simmer your sweatpants. I was teasing.
I’m only slightly relieved he wasn’t actually accusing me of shaming him for being deaf. I scowl as I write, Are you always this much of a jerk?
Are you always this much of a hothead? he fires back.
Our eyes meet as both phones clatter to our desks.
Taking a long, centering breath, I decide to rise above the petty insults and get down to business. “How are we going to do this?” I ask.
Ryder shrugs, then picks up his phone. Do you have a Mac laptop?
I nod.
Good, he types. Bring it to our first work session. We can sit across from each other and text in Messenger like we’re talking. It’s odd at first, but you’ll get used to it. Unless you want to request a different partner. I get that it’s not an ideal pairing.
Something knots in my chest as I read those words. He dismisses himself so readily. It’s like he expects to be discarded because someone might find him inconvenient.
I don’t mind, if you don’t, I write.
The ghost of a smile tugs at his mouth as he reads it, before it’s wiped away with a stoic expression. When his eyes meet mine, he shrugs again.
My phone dings with a new message.
Works for me.
“You mean that asshole’s coming here?” Rooney shrieks.
I wiggle a finger in my ringing ear. “Yes, Roo. It was a big misunderstanding. I mean, I still find him infuriating, but there’s a reason he didn’t give me the notes. He couldn’t hear me.”
Rooney’s eyebrows shoot up. “What?”
“He’s deaf. MacCormack just didn’t seem to find that important to tell me when he referred me to Ryder. Ryder told me it’s MacCormack’s trip. In his mind, good people figure it out by being open-mindedly diligent, and bad people fail because they get butthurt the moment Ryder doesn’t respond. I failed. I assumed he was ignoring me and pretty much devolved to wrestling him in class.”