Natural Selection (6 page)

What if she had ruined her one and only chance?

***

Kasper waited until after dark before venturing out again, needing that time to recover after his considerable embarrassment. It
had been some months since his last “public appearance,” and though it had been longer since they were quite that bad, Kasper at least had time to prepare for them. He was not undignified without proper notice.

H
e could not blame Emilia for the ambush; she did know, after all, how to push all of his buttons. And if he wanted to damage someone, psychological would be the way to do it—damage without leaving a mark.

He started by cruising around the
laboratory she frequented on Thursday evenings for her dermatology course, stopping to stare into windows and imagining her dissecting the dead faces of felines with her brows knit and struggling to keep the strings from her headphones from contaminating samples. 

From there, he went to the campus library
, unimpressed by its singular structure and lack of security. But he only stayed long enough to envision how he could correct the mistakes before driving past the launderette she used and her grocery store.

Her apartment complex was the last stop.

Like the animal shelter, Kasper wished Frankford had alerted him to the condition of the building, how decrepit it was. Then again, hadn’t it been his decision not to know the details of her life? Hadn’t that been the way he had justified looking in on her again? That it wasn’t really a breach of her privacy if he had to imagine the specific elements?

He had spent too long in the small car to spend any mo
re time in there than he had to. So he parked in a spot that clearly did not belong to a resident and stood outside. Watching the buses and vehicles that passed, he was strangely relieved that they were just as broken and elderly as Emilia’s. It was this, in addition to the flags in the windows of red and white and the stickers on bumpers that had cartoon bears on them that reminded him he was in a college town.

Another place he did not belong.

Her admission should have been enough, but it wasn’t. Now that he was that close, had seen her with his own two eyes again and not just in his mind, he knew he couldn’t stop until she banished him for good.

He walked directly into the building, slightly disturb
ed that the device that prohibited unwanted visitors from entering was out of order. The lobby of the apartment was relatively clean, even if the plants were artificial and carpets torn. Kasper already knew which apartment number was hers from the letters he never opened. But he had never imagined the hallways to be so dark or the stairway so creaky. Naturally, he had pictured the place where she lived to have more windows and the colors on the walls to be far brighter.

Kasper stopped at her door, more nervous than
he had even been at that wretched canine establishment. What if she called the authorities on him? Laughed in his face or screamed to alert the neighbors? It had occurred to him, after all, that perhaps the display at the shelter had only been the first punishment she had orchestrated, and as the mistress of his heart, she could hurt him far more than anyone else.

He spent several minutes yelling at his hands for not working.
Damn you, brain, work with the rest of me! What if someone sees you before you get the chance to see her?

It took a few seconds longer, but Kasper did manage to raise his hand and knock on the door. The moment he did however, a terrible howl emerge
d from within.
Blast! He had the wrong apartment! But how was that possible? He had to get out of there before—

A half
-step away from the door, he heard it open, heard Emilia’s soft, scolding voice, and saw the view of her foot kicking at something he could not see. Yet, whatever it was that had her distracted seemed to disappear altogether when she glanced up and saw the source of the knocking. She paled before running out, shutting the door behind her, and throwing herself into his arms.

Her hair was only just damp
, and his memory was reassured by the way she smelled of strawberries and vanilla. To entice his senses further, she was wearing little more than a thin t-shirt and what he guessed to be flannel women’s boxer shorts. Yet while he was brazen enough to look at them, he did not dare touch them to confirm the material’s authenticity.

“I’m sorry,” s
he whispered to him. “I’m so sorry.”

He kept his arms out at his sides.
What if he allowed himself to embrace her and was unable to let her go?

“Emilia—”

“I don’t know if I meant to hurt you…” She shook her head against him and clutched him tighter. “But I know I did, and I’m sorry. I wish I could take it back. It was so immature.”

“I deserved worse.” He did his best to choke back his emotion and failed. “I still do.”

Luckily, the sound of howling and clawing at the door distracted them both so that she was forced to pull away from him. And as unpleasant as the noise was, he was glad for it, as it prevented the clicking sound of his teeth gnashing together. “What in the world is that?”

“Oh
.” She laughed. “That’s Tut.”

Who? Was it possible she had a new lover
? Had she gotten over him as he hoped?

Yet when she opened the door, he did not see an
other man but only a dog: a lousily mangy mutt who drooled with delight at the sight of Emilia, pawing at her and kissing her face.

Perhaps another man would have been better.

And when The Mutt saw him, it trotted over and sniffed at his shoes, skeptical. Kasper took a step back.

“He’s
had all his shots.” She laughed again.

“Of course
,” he said quietly.

“Do you want to come in?” She ope
ned the door all the way, and they watched Tut run back inside, tired from his short excursion, to return to his bed.

“Of course
.”

Kasper followed her inside
, torn between smiling and crying at her framed poster of
Carmen
and the well-organized shelves that were so obviously hers. She clearly had made this place her home, and that was good, it was what he wanted. At the same time, it pained him. As relieved as he was to see her obvious happiness, it was only another reminder of how easily she had adjusted, of how well she had forgotten him.

“I know it isn’t much—”

“No,” he said, looking away from the walls back to her. “It’s you… it’s lovely.”

Turning a light shade of pink, she looked away from him and directed her attention back to the mongrel.

“Y-you have a dog?” Kasper still did not look away from her.

She smiled.
“I adopted him from the shelter.”

“Your work does not end at work then?”

Kasper watched her bare toes run back and forth against the floor, suddenly feeling the most powerful urge to examine the bottoms and tickle them until she begged for mercy. “It isn’t work if you enjoy what you do.”

He attempted to smile.
“And you accuse me of being too charitable?”

They looked at Tut at the same time.
He had curled up until his head was hanging outside of his bed, revealing the inside of his pink and brown ears.

Emilia’s smile lapsed into a frown.
“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Did you
need a new project?” He felt the anger rise up before could stop himself. “Another
thing
to pity and lavish your affection on?”

“What?”

Why should he have been surprised to see her bestowing her friendship on another hideous creature? She had, after all, made him her
pet
project—why shouldn’t she have had another animal to replace him?

“You wanted something ugly around
to feel better about yourself? Something to fix?”

“Don’t call my dog ugly—”

Kasper swore to himself, spitting in the air until Emilia stopped him.

“Stop it!” she snapped
. “I have neighbors. Besides, who are you to judge why I love my dog? I’ll have you know that while he might not be pretty or the brightest bulb in the box, he is a good companion and makes me laugh.” She glanced over at the dog, a smile slowly blossoming on her face. “In that sense, he does remind me of you.”

Kasper took a step back and felt his shoulders slack
en. As quick as he often was to anger, his little peach could be just as spontaneous with a similar rage. How had he forgotten that so easily? Especially when it was one of the first things that had attracted her to him? He tried to secure his springing heart and restarted.

“You named him Tut?”

She nodded proudly. “I thought that was clever.”

“Another child of insec
t?” He nodded. “I suppose it was…” He smiled slightly. “It was.”

The
tension was broken between them by his expression, yet now that it was, the many questions that begged to be answered filled the air, practically dripping from the walls with saturation.

“Wha
t are you doing here?” she asked finally. “What do you want?”

“I-
I missed you.”

“I miss
ed you, too.” Emilia sighed, and he tried not to read too much into her use of the past tense. When he did not respond however, she tried a different tactic.

“
How are Mrs. Levkin and Mr. Shiraz?”

He rol
led his eyes. “As intrusive as ever: meddlesome, interfering, irksome…They send their greetings.”

Kaspe
r watched her face light up at the familiar insults, and it stoked his bravery enough to make the next move in their conversation.    

“Do
you like school?”

She nodded.

“Your work?”

She nodded.

“Is the money enough? I could give more—”

“I don’t want your m
oney,” Emilia insisted. “I never did.”

“Yes.
” He sighed and gazed at the floor, feeling a sudden shame that he had even brought up the subject. “I know that.”

“I know you don’t care about the shelter. Why
are you really here?”

“I-
I wanted to make sure you were happy—”

“You could have answered any one of my pho
ne calls to do that, my letters or e-mails.” She bit her lip and broke his stare. Not for the first time, it seemed she could not look at him.

“I didn’t want to ruin your chance at happiness.”

“Then you wouldn’t have shoved me away in the first place.”

Kasper shook his head, unwilling
, it seemed, to listen. “I should not have come. But I am glad that you have made a good life here, that you are content—”

Her laugh was outrageous then, not unlike the wild cackling of a mad woman. And Kasper had to admit it scared him in more ways than one. But before he could ask about
it, respond in any way, she took control of the situation, spinning to face him with a look of disbelief and horror on her face that he had not expected.

“Content? How can I be
content
when the only person I ever loved practically banished me from my home state? You think I’m happy here?” Emilia threw her hands up in exasperation and rolled her eyes. “Yes, okay!
Sometimes
I am happy here, but it is a happiness forged out of necessity, survival, a do-or-die response—”

He rushed her then, no longer able to control the lust boiling inside of him—a feeling he had not even entirely been aware of.
What was truly marvelous was how she did not argue, letting him take her face in his hands and kiss her with all the passion that had been pent up inside of him for a year. Emilia kissed him back with just as much vigor, inflicting as much of her rage upon him as she could before he pulled away.

“Forgive me—” He was breathing heavily.

Emilia tried to make herself breathe, to make the dizziness he had bestowed on her fade. When that didn’t work, she let her anger go instead.

“No, y-
you can’t do that! You can’t come here and mess up what I
do
have by trying to confuse me! You can’t kiss me and then apologize!”

“
I want you back, Emilia. I feel no remorse for making you go—I had to give you that much of a chance—but my shame for letting it happen under the circumstances it did and not asking for your forgiveness sooner is suffocating me.”

She scoffed
and picked up a teddy bear wearing a Cornell sweater. Kasper could sense her coldness toward him immediately, and it vaguely reminded him of the cold that descended on the dead. Was that the chill he felt now? Would she kill him by crushing his last hope?

“I can’t tell you—”

His eyes wandered from her mouth to her fingers while they played with the bear’s ears. What he would have given to be that plaything in her hands…