“You’re going to get sick of looking at me. I don’t do tricks.”
Elijah snickers. “You don’t need to.”
I roll my eyes, but I’m secretly pleased.
“Tell me about what we’re going to be doing today, then?”
I hum and look at them. I don’t know what causes the panic, but I think it’s the lack of panic. It all just seems too real, too fast, and my mind flashes to the Collins pack and their smooth words and how they said all the right things.
“Actually, I was thinking I’d like to spend the day with my family.” The words tumble out of me, and I wish I could take them back.
Elijah looks down at his plate. “Of course. Absolutely, that’s fine. We can-”
“No,” I say quickly, hating myself. “Actually, I wanted to just spend the next couple of days with my family. Before the Valentine’s event. It would just be nice to, umm…” I trail off, suddenly aware of how much I’ve upset them.
The urge to cry is almost unstoppable.
The silence is heavy, no one speaks into it. No one wants to break it.
Mack forces a smile. “Sure, we can take you home.”
“Oh, I can walk-”
“We’ll take you home,” Mack says with finality.
Elijah gets up and stands there not looking at me. “I, uh, have work tonight, so I won’t be able to take you home. But have a good day, and yeah…” he looks at me helplessly, and I can see he’s struggling to figure out the appropriate thing to say.
I want to argue with him, stop him from worrying about the words, fix the hurt that’s bleeding into the room.
Instead, I harden myself and double down.
“Okay. Thank you for helping me with my heat.”
Elijah rocks back like I’ve hit him. I clench my hand on my thigh hard enough so the nails bite into my palms.
“Okay,” Elijah says and jerks his head in a nod and slinks out of the room.
Mack takes my plate to the sink and then gestures to the door. “Ready to go?”
I look to where Elijah disappeared and nod, ignoring my pain. “Yeah, okay. Let’s go.”
We get in the car and drive, but he abruptly pulls off, going down a back road that leads up to the top of the hill.
“Are you kidnapping me now, Mack?”
“Ha ha, very funny. No, we need to talk.”
He parks the car and undoes his seatbelt, turning so he can look at me.
If I were with anyone else, I would be scared.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
I shake my head.
“All right, then you should probably just listen. If you want us, you should know a couple of things about us.”
I stare out at the blue ocean. There are a few clouds that leave the water looking black in places. It goes on forever.
