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“I can’t do this here. Can we go home?”
I rubbed her back and pulled her chin up to look into her teary eyes. “I’m here for you. You know that, right?”
She nodded and glanced up at the building. “Can we go?”
“Sure.” I released her and helped her to the car, shutting her in firmly. As I walked around the car, I looked up at her building for what scared her. All I saw was eight floors of impenetrable blue glass.
After we were safely away from her building, I asked, “Want to tell me about it?”
“No.” In spite of the warmth in the car, she shivered in the seat with her arms wrapped around her.
“A smart girl I know told me once it helps to talk.”
She repeated the one-word answer. “No.”
I gave up on questions and placed a hand on her thigh instead.
A block later she said. “Not in the car.”
It used to be I couldn’t get her to shut up, and now she refused to talk.
Women.
* * *
Kelly
It felt so good,so safe to be with Adam after that terrible experience. I hadn’t wanted to let go of him outside, but I could feel the evil heat of dozens of eyeball staring out the windows of the Smithsonian, looking down on the traitor, me. What had been a welcoming place this morning was no longer that.
I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I’d been summarily convicted and publicly humiliated as if I were guilty. I had to get away from the judging eyes.
Now I needed a glass of wine—no, a bottle—and another hug, neither of which I could get until we reached his place. I couldn’t even go to my own house. Everything sucked.
The car was traveling damnably slow, and the irony of the situation almost, but not quite, brought a smile to my lips.
I’d asked to talk about him and Dennis, and he’d shut me down cold. Now here I was, the supposedly open, oversharing one, clammed up and refusing to speak. The difference was, my self-imposed silence was only going to be a few minutes.
“I got suspended,” I blurted out, unable to obey my own rule and hold it in.
He pulled the car to the curb and stopped.
Exactly what I didn’t want. “Please keep going. We need to get home.”
His eyes held mine with a steely resolve. “If you agree to talk to me.”
“Not here, please.”
He pulled into traffic and sped up.
“They think I stole from them.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
I didn’t dare say more until safely ensconced in his place. I wrapped my arms tighter around myself, wishing they were his. “I need a drink.”
He sped through a yellow light.
I closed my eyes and counted silently. I needed something, anything to calm me.
