The same look that’s on Sophia’s face right now.
She lets out all of the air in her lungs and melts down against me, pressing her forehead into my shoulder. My arms snake around her, and I swear to god I hear her cry – just a little bit, different from the time she told me about Envy. This one is softer.
I curl my body around hers as tight as I can without hurting her.
Tonight, I tell her again, to her face, that I love her. I don’t turn the TV on before we shut the lights off. And I sleep the longest I have sober in twenty years.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Davis
New Year’s Eve
“I’m givin’ you thirty more seconds before I come in there and grab you!” I shout from Sophia’s couch.
“She’s gonna take another hour,” her roommate tells me with a laugh. “She’s been in there since three.”
If I was an asshole, I’d strongly consider putting the top down for our ride…if I was an asshole. Which I’m not. When it comes to her, at least.
I pull the sleeve of my suit back to check the time. “Twelve seconds!”
“Shut up, giant!”
I chuckle at her while I push myself up, walking toward her door, and I rest against it as I tick down the seconds in my mind. As soon as I hit zero, I grab onto the door handle and shove it open, lifting an arm to lean against the frame of the door while I look at Sophia’s back. “Time’s up, Sugar,” I tell her with a smirk.
She turns toward me and throws one of her face paintbrushes at me. “You areinsufferable!”
I should probably say something to her, but all I can do is stare at her, letting my eyes scan her from top to bottom. Most of her dark hair is pulled up at the back, with two pieces on either side left out to frame her face. She’s got silver on hereyelids and her eyes are rimmed with black, and she has on a black dress with long sleeves that cut across her shoulders. The bottom of it has a slit that damn near cuts all the way up to her hip, and a pair of skinny black high heels give her a couple inches of extra height.
I let out a low whistle, reaching for her hand. “Let’s see ya.” I give her a spin under my arm, watching her smile light up as the bottom of her dress flares out around her. “Lookin’ good, Miss Costas.”
“Thanks, my boyfriend keeps sending me to fancy stores and making me buy things with his money.”
“I’ll bet he likes it,” I wink. “Come on, we got a stop to make on the way.”
It doesn’t take us long to get to our first destination; we stop in front of a line of little shops, mostly clothing, but there are a couple of other places mixed in, like a hair salon and a pastry café. They’re all closed for the night, but it’s fine, we’re not here to shop.
“When you said we were making a stop, I thought you meant to pick someone up or something,” Sophia tells me while climb out of the car. “Not to hang out on a creepy, dark street.”
“We’re here for your graduation present.”
I take her hand in mine, walking down the row of shops until we land on one smack in the middle. A window takes up most of the front of the storefront, the inside of it hidden by drawn curtains, and a glass door sits at one side of the window. Right over top of it, spelled out in a classy-but-modern font, it says…
“Sugar Rush Nail Bar?”
“Ava helped with the name,” I tell her.
“Eric! This is— you seriously—Eric!”
She rounds on me, and I think she might give me a good whack upside the head for a second, but I just laugh at her. Her hands are out in front of her and her eyes are just as wide as they were the night that I found her in Envy – except,they’re not sad anymore. It’s nothing but excitement behind those eyes.
Pulling the key from my pocket, I hold it out to her. “Go on, take a look.”
She snatches the key from my hand and runs toward the door, lifting up the bottom of her dress while her heels clack against the stone walkway. She looks like something straight out of a damn movie. I stuff my hands into my pockets and follow after her while she turns on the lights and takes a look around the room.
“Rowan and Ava picked most everything out in here,” I explain, “so if something’s not the way you want...yell at them, not at me.”
I lean against the threshold of the door and watch while she flows through the room, trailing her hand over the tables, lamps, chairs, shit that I have no idea what purpose it’s supposed to serve. I’m honestly not sure she even knows I’m still in here with her. She pulls open drawers and digs through them, opens cabinets and flicks on the faucets near the back to check the water flow. She spends probably twenty minutes fussing around the salon before she finally comes back to me, wearing a smile so damn big I think she might explode.
