“She wouldn’t do that,” I respond immediately. “She’s not like that.”
“And you know this how?” he asks with a humorless laugh. “You grade a few papers, have a few fantasies, maybe do a few things you shouldn’t have, and suddenly you think you know what this girl is capable of?”
“Careful, you’re sounding cynical.” I roll my eyes.
“If you saw the kinds of things I do in my job, you’d be more careful about the power you give others over you.”
“She’d get in trouble too if she reported anything.”
“I doubt it would be quite as much trouble as you’d get in.”
He has a point there.
“Look, nothing else is going to happen, so there’s nothing more to worry about,” I insist. “It was a temporary lapse in judgment because she’s hot, that’s all.” Even as I say the words, bile rises in my throat, and I can tell I don’t mean the statement at all; I just don’t want Elijah to see the deep shit I’ve gotten myself in.
He takes a swig and gives me a pitying smile. “No offense, but with the way she looks, and knowing how smart she has to be to wind up in your class… I think you might be fucked, my friend.”
He has no idea.
“Thanks, dude.”
“Well, if you get fired, you can always come work for me. I’ve been thinking about expanding lately. Or trying out different things. It’s all been getting a bit stale.”
“Private investigatingis getting stale?” I ask incredulously.
He shrugs. “It’s always ‘my husband is cheating on me’ and ‘my family member stole my expensive trinket’, it gets old after a while.”
“You could always be a bounty hunter,” I offer.
He raises his eyebrows before pursing his lips in thought. “Now there’s an idea. I am pretty good at tracking people down.”
We eat in comfortable silence, trying to ignore the fact that I am possibly throwing my career down the toilet.
“How’s uhh, Juliet been lately?” he asks, swirling the liquor around his glass. “She’s been gone quite some time, right?”
“Yeah, she seems to be doing all right. She owns her own bakery and is trying—and I assume failing—to fix up the house she’s renting. Still hasn’t asked our parents or me to come visit, though.”
He sighs. “That’s rough.” I nod without responding, so he continues. “Any reason why she just up and bailed like that?”
I shake my head. “She never said. Think her ex might’ve been a douche though.”
His grip on his glass tightens, whitening his knuckles. “Yeah, I heard a bit about that guy. He didn’t sound so great.” Eli downs the rest of his whiskey and gives me a grim smile. “Must be nice. To be able to run away like that, whether she ran away alone or with someone.”
The idea of running away with Summer to some place where no one would ever know that I had been her professor is so enticing that an ache echoes through my chest.
I shake the feeling away and raise both eyebrows, surprised. “It never occurred to me that maybe she went there with someone else.”
He snorts out a harsh laugh. “You think she’s spent these past few years alone?”
“Believe it or not, Elijah, some of us don’t need constant companionship.”
“I’d hardly call what I do ‘companionship,’” he muses.
I shrug. “If Juliet has a partner, she hasn’t shared that tidbit of information with me.” I sigh. “I’m sure she’ll get over whatever it is that drove her away in the first place and finally invite her family over. Or maybe she’ll come back to visit someday soon.”
His blue eyes meet mine, and he holds my gaze. “If she does come back to visit, let me know,” he says seriously. “I wouldn’t mind seeing her again.”
I scoff. “No hitting on my sister, Eli. We have to have some boundaries.”
