“E.G., I could sit here and tell you I don’t know why I texted you, but I do know why. I texted you because I knew you would come, and maybe that’s…not right.”
She didn’t have the emotional vocabulary for what she was really trying to say. I didn’t want to look that close at whatever this was either.
For now, all I needed to do was focus on getting us home. Let that consume all my mental bandwidth.
I pressed the button to engage the engine.
We didn’t talk as I reversed out of Derek’s driveway. Nor did we talk as I drove us back toward the freeway.
It wasn’t until the silence had become unusually tense that Anna again turned to face me.
“On a scale of one to ten, how much shit am I going to get for this?”
I didn’t bother to look at her, keeping my eyes on the road in front of me. My hands at ten and two on the wheel.
“One thousand.”
“Good,” she said, slumping back into her seat. “Not as bad as I thought.”
EIGHTEEN
ANNA
She stayed awake for the rest of the night repeating what he’d said.
He successfully pulledthe car into the parking lot of my complex and I could feel the tension subsiding in him. We hadn’t spoken again since I asked him how much shit he was going to give me, which meant that would probably wait until Monday, but now I could feel a different sort of energy in him. Something simmering just underneath his neutral expression.
“Thanks again,” I started when he popped open his door. “You don’t have to walk me up, I’m right there.”
He was already up the first set of steps before I could catch up to him. I’d been yammering at him the whole time about how I didn’t need him to walk me to my door when I finally stopped because we were already there.
“Keys,” he said, and because he was in such a weird mood, I didn’t think to tell him I could freaking unlock my own door. Instead, I handed him the keys.
He opened the door and stepped inside.
“I need a drink,” he announced. “Do you still have that bottle of whiskey I brought over?”
“I do.”
I don’t know why I kept it. Like I told him before, I didn’t drink the hard stuff. I didn’t drink much at all. A beer, a glass of wine here or there since I’d turned twenty-one.
I didn’t know much about my biological mother, but the assumption was she was most likely an addict who couldn’t care for her kid.
Because of that, I’d always stayed far away from drugs and limited my drinking to social occasions. I’d had two beers at the club, but any buzz from that had quickly worn off when I’d realized Claire wasn’t stopping.
But E.G. had said at the time it was an expensive bottle of whiskey, so throwing it out seemed like a wasteful thing to do. Besides, I sort of always thought that at some point he’d come back for it. Or maybe next September 28th, he’d return.
I made my way into the kitchen and pulled it out from a cabinet over the refrigerator. I had a couple of mismatched glasses. None of them appropriate for high priced whiskey, but he would have to make do. I filled a finger’s worth and walked it back to the living area where E.G. was making himself comfortable on my couch.
Sitting back, legs spread, in that way only men can get away with, he lifted his arms over his head to stretch, and his t-shirt rose up over his stomach. Enough that I could see it was covered in a light smattering of hair.
It struck me as shockingly intimate. I wasn’t supposed to see that part of him. I wasn’t supposed to know what his naked stomach looked like, and yet there it was.
“Are you going to hand me my drink or are you going to just stand there?”
His words helped pull me out of my head. I blinked, then took the few steps to the couch and handed him his drink. The only other place to sit was my purple bean bag chair, so I settled into it, with my legs crossed, watching him warily. Like a wild beast I’d allowed inside my apartment. It was only a matter of time before he attacked.
Which was why I was so nervous. But also, strangely excited.
