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“Are you coming along then?”
I put my phone away, my curiosity getting the better of me as I follow Eric and we head down the street together.
Steam rises from the streets as the cold rain travels through our clothes, running in rivulets down our fingers.
We don’t get a cab as we rush along the pavement with crowds of other people. The flash of car lights whizzes past us as the storm continues to grow and ominous pregnant clouds converge overhead.
I recognize the grey brick building ahead and follow Eric through the side of the building into a dank alleyway. My nose scrunches as I notice a small rat fleeing behind the metal green dumpster.
Eric leads me to a dark metal door and opens it, standing aside to let me in. I cast a glance at him and take a deep breath before hesitantly stepping into the building.
It’s dull and dingy inside with the musty smell of a place that hasn’t been used in a long time.
There’s a long flight of twisting stairs leading upstairs with old flowery wallpaper walls surrounding us. Faint sounds of a violin and piano being played come from the top.
“What is this place?” I breathe as Eric wanders ahead of me.
“You should see it for yourself,” he says, in a low voice.
Somehow, Eric doesn’t come off as a creep, so I follow behind him. Lex would be throttling me right now if she knew what I was doing. There are all my safety lessons from Kindergarten flying right out of the window. The dark wooden stairs creak unsteadily as we finally reach the top floor.
There’s less light here and the classical music is coming from the dark oak door in front of us.
I curiously stand back as Eric unlocks the door with a set of keys, before pushing it open and walking in through the entrance.
“It’s cold and I’m sure you don’t want to freeze to death standing out there,” he says, as he pushes his dark, wet, dirty blonde hair away from his glistening skin.
I step inside and close the door shut behind me. It’s just a studio apartment. I breathe in relief. The place is bathed in warm yellow light and crammed with tall bookshelves that are spilling with numerous books.
There’s barely any space to walk either because there are multiple divans with more books and pages strewn across their surface. The biblichor smell of books fills my nostrils with the nostalgia of sitting in libraries, buried in book after book.
The apartment also holds a particularly clean, cool scent that solely belongs to Eric.
I notice the classic music piece that’s playing on the brown vintage record player.
There’s a bed to my left against a dark grey wall, low to the ground already made up with white sheets and a grey comforter.
The storm persists outside as the dulcet tones of the music fill my ears with its eerie melody.
“This place is amazing,” I whisper, turning around to Eric who’s taking off his coat, before pulling his t-shirt above his head.
I stifle a gasp as I watch him lean by the hearth to get a fire going. The blaze is weak at first until it grows into a raging dance of flames, licking against the sides of the blackened stone hearth.
Eric shifts his shoulders as he adds another piece of wood into the flames and I have no other option but to stare at the intricate curves and dips of his muscled back or the way the stray drops of rain linger on his pale skin.
And then I have to remind myself that this is totally inappropriate and wrong.I shouldn’t be staring.I’m not entirely sure where Hudson and I stand with our relationship, but it still feels wrong to look at another man.
Eric stands up and turns his body towards me, the shadows from the flames play against his skin as he nears me.
“What’s the piece?” I ask, swallowing hard, as I try to clear the unnecessarily dirty thoughts going through my head.Okay, so he has a really nice body.“Of music, I mean.”
“Charles Widor, Piano Quartet in A Minor,” he says, closing the space between us.
I gulp, stumbling back as my butt came against a desk. “So, what were you doing at the theater?”
I almost want to kick myself for asking such an idiotically general question.You’re so lame,I tell myself.
But Eric doesn’t seem to mind because he just smiles. “Wuthering Heights. When I was teaching my first literature class, I did that book with my students. It’s one of my favorite classics. Catherine and Heathcliff. You can’t get better than that.”
Wait, what?
“You used to teach?” I can’t hide the surprise in my voice. “You said was.”
Eric smirks. “I’m not that old. I’m 28. I did that before I began my writing career.”
“What do you write?” I ask softly.
Eric is up close. I can almost feel his hot breath against my skin. “I can let you read some of my work if you want. It’s mostly erotic romance.”
His eyes flicker to mine with his mouth extremely close and before I even know what’s happening, he leans in and his lips brush gently against mine.
