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“Don’t you need to get back to school?” I asked, daring to instigate the first question that might indicate everything wasn’t completely hunky dory in our world.
“Are you sick of me already?”
I folded my arms in response. Of course I wasn’t sick of him, I just didn’t understand how he could be there in the middle of the school year. Honestly, I still couldn’t believe that he was there. Eli had become my fairytale, and fairytales didn’t happen in real life. Prince Charming wasn’t real; I had learned to rescue myself.
I eyed him, curiosity seeping from every pore. Under the night sky, Eli didn’t wash out like most people. Most people looked like shadows of themselves when the moon came out, their eyes sinking and their skin going ashen. Eli though… Eli looked magnificent in the moonlight. The combination of his dark skin and wicked muscles made him appear a granite golem sent from the gods themselves.
“Why aren’t you in school, Eli?” I asked the question that had been plaguing me since his arrival.
“I got a letter,” Eli answered cryptically.
“A letter?” I asked, intrigued. “What did this letter say?”
“I’m not going to tell you what it said.” Eli smiled, turning around so he was walking backward and facing me directly. My knees buckled at his smile and I cursed my traitorous muscles. “But after reading it I felt I needed to see you.”
I frowned, hating this riddle game we were playing. “Cut it out, Eli. Who’s sending you letters?”
“No one any more,” Eli said, still vague as ever.
“Was it Mrs. Nelson?” I guessed.
“Can we stop talking about why I’m here, and focus on the fact that I’m here?” Eli grabbed my hand. I jumped at the contact, nearly tripping over a pile of sand. “And talk about the fact that I’m here. You’re here. We’re together.”
I took my hand back. “For how long? A day? A week?” My heart had broken apart when I lost our baby. My body had crumbled to ash when he left for college. I simply would not survive if we kept up like this, acting like we were a regular couple.
We weren’t a regular couple. We were soul mates, like two halves of an Oreo cookie. The longer he stayed, the more I became aware that without him I was a letter with no words, a blank page without the ink.
“Come home with me, Grace,” Eli murmured, his voice like a lullaby.
“To where, Georgia?” Of all the places I wanted to be, Georgia was the absolute last. Having said that, of all the people I wanted to be with, Eli was, and always would be, first.
Eli shook his head. “No, back to my place. Here in Santa Barbara.”
“Like your hotel?”
“It’s gettin’ late out here. I can see the goose bumps forming on your skin.” Eli rubbed his palms up and down my forearms to rid me of goose bumps. Of course, he only succeeded in giving me more goose bumps. “Lets keep talking back at my place.”
I knew that if I said okay I was only throwing myself further down the rabbit hole. I knew that if I went with him I’d sealed my fate as effectively as if I’d given fate the gun herself.
I looked to Eli and said, “Okay.”
TWO MONTHS BEFORE
“What is that?”
“A backpack.”
“I know what it is. Why do you have it?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Are you fucking serious?”
“Could you not cuss at me please?”
“Sorry…” Eli ran a hand over his head, obviously irritated. “It’s just, I got word that you were leaving, but I didn’t believe it. I didn’t believe you would just leave like this.”
“What did you think was going to happen?” I responded, shoving a shirt into my backpack. I refused to look at Eli, but that didn’t mean I hadn’t memorized everything about him the moment he’d walked in my door. His hair was shorter now and the faint outline of a beard was growing on his jaw. It had been just a few short months since Eli had left, but in those months he’d changed drastically. My heart felt battered when he walked in my door. He was changing without me.
