I also want to go back inside and put Kyle through the window. Both, at the same time. That’s just where I am.
The street’s loud the whole way back. Neither of us says anything.
I keep my arm where it is and everything else where she can’t see it.
Chapter 11
Elara
The elevator doors close and I’m still thinking about Kyle’s stupid face.
Not because I want to be. Because my brain won’t stop replaying it — the smile when I jerked back, the wall stopping me, his hand coming up to my—
Erik’s arm tightens slightly around my shoulders.
My body relaxes.
Just like that. One second I’m wound so tight I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears, and then his arm adjusts, barely, and something in me lets go all at once like it was waiting for permission.
I go rigid.
What was that?
What was that?
I’m not moving. I’m not totally sure I’m breathing. People don’t just — deflate. Not in elevators. Not next to the neighbor. There’s a process to calming down, there are steps, you talk yourself through it,and I did not do any of the steps. Something reached in and switched me off and the switch was his arm.
Okay. Let’s think about literally anything else.
The café.
The deadline.
The oolong article, which is still due, which does not care that I’ve had a day. Gerald probably needs water. I should water Gerald. That’s a thing I can hold onto, the watering of Gerald, a normal task for a normal woman who is normal —
The tension drains out of me again, slow and stupid, like it didn’t get the first memo and is only now lying back down.
Fine. Whatever.
I’m tired and it’s fine and this is just — him. Nothimhim. Him as in the situation. The Kyle of it all, the adrenaline crash, the small enclosed box where I can finally breathe after all of that. That’s all this is. A box. Physics. You’d relax too.
The floor numbers tick up.
I stare at them like they owe me money because I refuse to look anywhere else right now.
Erik doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move his arm. The elevator smells like him, like the forest he always somehow smells like, pine and cold air and something underneath it I don’t have a word for and am not going to go looking for one.
I only notice because I notice things.
I’m a writer. Noticing is the job.
I could tell you what the elevator smells like on any given Tuesday.
This is professional observation and it is completely beside the point and my face is doing something warm that I would like it to stop doing.
The doors open and we make our way down the hall.
His arm drops when we reach my door.
