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He grins, forgetting that he hates me. “Where are you headed?” he asks.
“Home.” The word escaped my lips before I had time to think. What if I get off before Elijah? I can’t let him know where I live. My anxiety is readable on my face as I move away from him.
Elijah watches me, the hardness seeping back into his expression. “You want to stop and get a drink?”
I bite my lip and wonder if maybe that would be the lesser of two evils. At the very least, I can slip out the back and hope he doesn’t follow me home. “Okay,” I whisper.
Chapter Nine
Elijah
Is there anything lower than hell? I knew what Olivia was thinking. She didn’t want me to see where she lived. And I knew if I gave her any other option, she would choose it instead. I didn’t want to burst her bubble of security, but I knew where she lived. I had her address in my phone the day I arrived in Middleworth.
We walk in silence down Brunswick Avenue side-by-side with our steps in sync. We look like any other hipster couple—Olivia in her silly knit hat with a huge pom-pom on top, and me in a navy peacoat with my hands shoved deep into my pockets. My mind slips into parallel life where we could actually be this couple. This is how I had pictured it—us returning together to our apartment in a better part of town after work. But that all got fucked up, and she doesn’t seem to care. She has no remorse for what she did, and I curse myself silently for still wanting her.
I hold the door open for her, and Norris stops to stare as I walk in with a pretty woman. He waits for a second to see if I'm just holding the door open for a stranger. But then Olivia looks at me, and nodding, I point to a table. My late mother taught me to pull out a lady’s chair, and I wonder if Olivia thinks I'm being ridiculous. Norris' jaw drops, and I walk over, placing my finger under his chin to shut it.
“Should I get the beers myself?” I ask him.
He looks past me at Olivia. “First round is on the house.”
I wait at the bar, keeping an eye on Olivia. No one better dare approach her. My body language states clearly that she’s mine. I grab the beers off the counter and sit down, passing her one. I follow her eyes to see what she’s staring at so intently. It’s an old wall calendar featuring a Camaro, my dream car, racing across some highway in a southwest desert.
“Not much in the way of décor,” I explain, “but the beer is cold.”
She smiles, looking at the decorative mirrors over the bar painted with Budweiser and Coors logos. “And it’s toasty warm inside.” She glances over at the few old men nursing beers. “I like bars like this. No one bothers you or cares if you nurse the same beer all night.”
We tap bottles and take a drink. The chilled liquid travels swiftly down my throat, and it lowers the heat in my body. I can’t stop looking at her puckered lips as the temptation to kiss her again grows.
“Have you been working on the project?” she asks. “You were always talented at taking pictures.”
My blood freezes in my veins, but I have to keep my mouth in check. One wrong word, and she’ll run out of here. “I can’t talk about it. It’s a secret, what I’m working on.” I take another sip of my beer. “When’s the last time you went home?”
The silence is uncomfortable, halting our cautious conversation. “I spoke to my father the other day, but I haven’t been home in a year. Maybe I’ll visit him for Thanksgiving.” She lifts her bottle to her lips, signaling the end of that topic.
So much is taboo between us that the conversation slips into silence again. The ambient noise of glasses tapping and people chatting in the background fills the gap. I want to talk. I want to ask, but she’ll take off if it becomes too threatening again.
“You want to see my apartment?” I suddenly ask.
She stares at me as if I’ve asked her something too intimate to answer. Olivia bites her lip, and I want to pull her across the table into my arms and kiss those lips until they swell. She glances down at her beer and then nods. “Okay,” she says softly, “yes.”
“Bring your beer.”
My neighbor Biggs is coming down the narrow staircase, and I take Olivia’s hand. She doesn’t pull away. I place a stern gaze on him, daring him to look at her. If he does, I’ll knock him down into the ground. Biggs doesn’t look at Olivia but smirks at me before walking out the front door.
“What was that about?” she asks.
“Ignore him,” I reply. “He’s troubled.”
Her eyes widen, and I suppress a grin by pressing my lips into a frown as we continue upstairs.
She looks around my apartment and stops in front of the wall across from my bed. I’ve taped some of my projects up so that I can ponder them and make changes. Slash marks from a pencil have dug lines out of the surface. Olivia reaches out gently and brushes her hand over the paper, tracing the lines. I stand beside her and wait for her reaction to my work.
“You are very talented,” she whispers. “You always were.”
I place my hand on her lower back, and though she still has on her coat, I feel her shiver. She seems uncertain if she should take it off. Olivia doesn’t move away from me. I slide her coat off her shoulders and toss it onto a chair. She stares at it as if her armor is gone.
“You can put it back on,” I tease her as I take off my own coat.
