Elijah wanders around the living room for a moment, and I watch him. I watch him and try not to break out in goosebumps imagining it being Benjamin. I imagined what it’d be like to have him in myactualspace so many times, and now it really does feel like he is.
Which, of course, just makes me feel like a shit person for using an innocent person as a substitute for what Itrulywant.
“Do you have any liquor?” Elijah asks, turning those eyes onto me. He feels more… intense now. Almost as if as soon as he entered my space, he shed the skin of a rabbit in favor of that of a wolf.
“Yeah,” I say, heading into the kitchen to escape that piercing gaze. “I have whiskey.”
Elijah makes an approving noise in the back of his throat, coming to lean against the bar.
When I pour two shots and turn back to where he stands, I find his eyes tracing the lines of my shoulders and my waist shamelessly, just as he did in my doorway not long ago.
Something hot is burning within me, and I consider for a moment that bringing him home was a horrible idea.
“Here,” I mumble, setting the shot in front of him. We take them, and after one more (on his insistence), he sighs.
“I haven’t drank this much in one setting in so long,” he mutters, briefly disoriented before he shakes his head and sets his attention on me again. “Okay, Row. Show me those pictures of yours.”
Ignoring the sudden use of the nickname my family uses, I guide him to my darkroom. I have a few pictures hanging to dry on the line, but I guide him to my computer. I open the file that holds my most recent shots, the ones I have gotten most of the way through editing for that magazine in Texas.
“These are some shots I did recently. They’re for an agricultural magazine, so I went all over the place and took photos of farmland and the animals that occupy it,” I explain.
I can feel the heat of him against my back where I sit in my office chair. He’s leaning over my shoulder, one hand resting on the desk next to me. Warm breath tickles my ear, the smell of his soap invading my senses.
“These are incredible,” he says, leaning in just a bit closer. If he pushes any further, I’ll be able to feel the full length of his chest against my back. “I really like the one of the horse and the dog.”
“Yeah?” My voice comes out high and unsteady, my eyes glued to the screen in front of me. Like a teenage boy, I’m floundering.
“Yeah. There’s something sad about it. The horse can’t touch the dog without crushing him, and the dog can’t help but chase him anyway.”
I turn my head to look up at him, my heart beating erratically.
What the fuck?
Elijah feels my gaze and tilts his head to look down at me. We are far too close. I can taste the whiskey on his breath.
“What?” he asks.
“I…” But I don’t know what to say.
What Iwantto say is: you’re beautiful. Why is it that when you stand close enough, Iget whiffs of citrus? How are you weaseling your way into my space? Do you remember me?
Do you remember me?
I startle, and Elijah leans back.
“Are you okay?” he questions.
“Yeah. Want another drink?” I’m out of my seat and out of the room a moment later, making two cocktails out of whiskey and Coke.
I’m trying to wrap my mind around the question, around how fucking right it feels on my tongue. But it doesn’t make sense.
If I had met Elijah before, I would have remembered it.
I find him admiring my camera as I return to the darkroom, fingers steady as he turns it over in his hands gently.
“This looks old,” he states, feeling me enter without looking up.
“It’s a Hasselblad,” I explain, watching him set it to the side before he takes his drink from me. I’m trying not to let our fingers brush. “It can take pictures digitally, but it also handles film. That’s why I like it so much.”
