Page 41 of Christmas Coffee

Celyn

That girl is stuck in my head. I’m lying in bed and the memory of Nova’s voice haunts me. The sound, the light tone, is like a melody that I can’t forget. I hear it when she’s not there, especially when it’s dark and the room is quiet. There’s no way to escape and I’m not sure I want to. I can see her face with the spattering of pale freckles over the bridge of her nose and the little crinkles at the corners of her eyes when she smiles. They sparkle, those eyes. It’s like she actually has fairy dust molded into her hypnotic, emerald gaze.

She’s nineteen. The thought shatters the illusion that I could actually be with her in any meaningful way. Add in all this shit with my uncle and if I lose this bet and fail this test, I have nothing to offer her. Who the hell would stay with a broke failure? I can’t do that to her, and since it’s a real possibility I keep my distance.

I sigh and roll over, face down on the mattress, and pound my pillow flat. I just lay down and I should have passed out as soon as my body hit the sheets, but I’m still smiling like an idiot. I swear to God, my face hurts and I know that it’s from being around her so much. The past few days all rolled together into one long blissful blur. Her company and chatter isn’t mindless. She doesn’t act her age, which throws me. There’s a cunning mind in there, one that I’d hire in a heartbeat and put in a position where it could actually do some good if I weren’t stuck in this nightmare.

Sleep eludes me, so I get up and pad across the dark room. The wooden planked floor has a chill clinging to it tonight. I grab a robe and head down the hall, and flick on the kitchen lights. Manhattan lies below me, covered in a blanket of white. It’s nearly 3:00am and the city’s constant pulse has slowed to a whisper. Not turning on any lights, I grab my laptop and sit on the leather couch and pick up the remote that flicks on the long narrow fireplace in the travertine stone wall across from me. The flames dance as I open the lid to my computer and pull up my web browser. I’m not the one who hired her, it was Quin who did that, so I didn’t run her background check—he did—but the info wasn’t put into her file. At least that’s the rationale I offer myself for cyber-stalking Nova.

I Google her and find pages of information about her old company. As I scan the articles, I see her face, only a few years younger, in an article about changes in the marketplace—how the next generation will defy categorization and still exceed all expectation. Smiling, I shake my head and read the article. It’s Nova to a T. She won’t be shoved into a box or pigeonholed. The woman isn’t a statistic and that’s part of what makes her an anomaly, because it’s true. She doesn’t fit anywhere. The massive brain in that young body is an oddity, but she has wisdom that only comes with life. That’s the part I’m curious about. I dig deeper, finding older articles from when she had her startup with some guy named Ben. I stare at the picture of them and notice the way her body is angled into his, like they were a couple. Shit. If that’s true then things went to shit for her recently. She lost more than her job. This douchebag had something to do with her current leeriness and rough edges, but there’s also something there that’s older, wiser, and whatever it was—it came long before Ben.

I go further back and then try a different approach—personal background reports that include everything from speeding tickets to police reports. Something happened to her. I can feel it. I’m filling in her information and when I get to the bottom of the form, my finger hovers above the submit button. Am I really this guy? I want to understand why she’s the way she is, but this seems invasive. I don’t suspect she did anything wrong, but I’m guessing someone did something to her. Why else would a fifteen-year-old move away from home? And move in with a guy? And start a business? She threw her entire existence into that company and now she has nothing. A lesser person would have crumbled, but there’s something there holding her together, something that’s worse than losing the shirt off her back.

I swallow hard and lift my gaze to look out at the city. I could ask her. Talk to her like a regular person. I don’t have to find out this way and it’s probably better if I didn’t. The problem is that if we talk and I know her more, I’ll like her more. I can’t risk that.

I shove my finger down and press SUBMIT.

I’ll find out in forty-eight hours what happened to her, if there’s something there. Maybe we can’t be together, but that doesn’t mean she has to take on the world alone. I can watch out for her if I know who her enemies are, at least I hope I can.