“No, it went great. Or at least I thought it did. We went to lunch, went to an arcade, had dinner, and watched fireworks.” Elias left out the part where she kissed him, not seeing a point in kissing and telling. “I thought she had a good time, but things have been…different since then.”
“Different how?” Marco asked, leaning against the counter.
“When I text her, she takes a while to respond. When I call her, she’s off the phone in like an hour. I asked her out, and she asked if I would take a rain check for sometime later.”
“And how is that different from normal?”
“Before when I texted her, it would take her exactly five minutes to text me back, like she was purposely making me wait. It’s honestly kind of cute. The shortest conversation I’ve had on the phone with her is three hours, and she typically prefers to give me non-answers when I ask her something. So asking for a rain check is…foreign.”
His cousin thought for a minute. “Maybe she’s been in class when you texted her.”
Elias shook his head. “I don’t do that. I don’t text her while she’s in class. Something happened on that date that I didn’t realize.”
“Maybe you’re right. Maybe she’s focusing on getting her projects done.”
Elias wanted that to be the case, but he knew it wasn’t. He’d only thrown it out there because he didn’t have another reason for her to be pulling away. He’d gone over their entire day several times, but he couldn’t find anything that could have caused her to want to cut down contact with him.
“Maybe, but I have this feeling that isn’t it, and I can’t explain how I know, but it’s like if Avian was having a bad day and tried to hide it from you.”
“Nah, that wouldn’t work, I’d still know,” Marco responded.
“Exactly.”
“Have you tried talking to her about it?”
Elias sighed. “I want to, but I’ve slowly started demolishing that wall she has up, and if I ask and she feels like I’m pushing, it’s going to go right back up.”
“So? If it does, do you plan on giving up? Because if you have to work for it again, it isn’t worth having, right?”
“I didn’t say that, and yes, I’d start over. I just wish I knew why she was pushing me away, why she has this wall up.”
“Questions only receive answers when they’re asked.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Now, about doubling your chair rent,” Marco said.
“Go to hell,” Elias replied, and his cousin laughed.
Elias glanced at his phone but decided he would wait a couple of days, and if things continued the way they were, then he’d speak to Eri about it. If that caused her wall to go back up, then he’d deal with it. However, he was sure that knowing why she had one skyscraper high in the first place would also help him navigate; he wouldn’t ask her about it. She would tell him when she was ready, when she trusted him enough to do so, and Elias was fine with earning every bit of trust she gave him.
“Where is Avian?” Elias asked, changing the subject.
“With your girlfriend, making signup forms for the tattoo event.”
“She isn’t my girlfriend,” Elias responded.
“And maybe that’s the problem,” Marco replied. “Maybe the two of you should have ironed out that detail after your date.”
Elias hadn’t thought of that, but he also didn’t think that was it. Doing that would have been moving too quickly, and he’d learned over the past couple of months that a steady pace would yield better results with Eri. She had a pace she wanted to go at, even if she hadn’t told him. He could tell, and he was fine with following her lead.
“We don’t all move as fast as you do,” Elias replied. “You didn’t give Avian a second to breathe before you claimed her,” he teased.
Marco chuckled. “I knew what I wanted. I went after it, and I got it.”
Elias couldn’t argue with that. He was currently attempting to do the same, but his approach had to be different, and he was okay with that. It was easy to see that Eri wanted the same thing he did, and he didn’t care how long it took them to get to the end result.
However, his cousin was right. While they hadn’t talked about it, they needed to, even if it was only to establish aloud that they wanted the same thing and were moving in the same direction. Elias thought he’d been making what he wanted painfully clear, but perhaps his saying it to her would get her to let him in a bit more if she knew he had no intention of going anywhere and wasn’t afraid to work for what he wanted.
