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“Likewise, sir.”
“You work for me?”
“Yes, sir. This is my third summer here. Johnny Hall hired me.”
“He’s good people, Johnny.”
“Yes, sir. It’s a beautiful building.”
Mr. Forbes smiled. “That it is.” He turned to Ellen. “Sweetheart, I have to talk with the building inspector. Give me ten minutes, okay, and then we’ll grab that lunch.”
“You bet,” Ellen said. Her father walked away.
“I should get back to work,” Lucas said.
“Oh, sure, sorry, Lucas, I didn’t mean to keep you.” She smiled. “We should grab a drink, since we’re both here for the summer. Talk about law school.”
“That’d be nice.”
“Are you free tonight?”
He hesitated.
“I meant as friends, Lucas,” she said gently. “I know you’re seeing someone.”
“No, no, I’m...not.”
Since he’d seen Colleen with that other guy, it felt as if a hard, wooden block had filled his chest, as if that hot, soft place that Colleen had created with her very first glance at him had petrified into something unbreakable.
A beer with a pleasant woman who’d never been anything other than nice? Why not? “Sure. Let’s grab a beer,” he said.
He met her at a bar near her place. They had a drink. They had another. Two beers for him, two glasses of white wine for her. He paid and walked her home, the smell of chocolate from Blommer’s thick in the air. Talked about mutual friends, professors, the usual.
When they got to her place, a town house on North Astor Street, she asked him if he’d like to come up. He said yes. When she offered him another beer, he took it. When she told him to have a seat on her sleek gray couch, he did. Then she kissed him, and he kissed her back, slightly drunk and feeling oddly surreal.
He hadn’t kissed anyone other than Colleen in four years.
Colleen, on the other hand, had already moved on.
Ellen was nice. She smelled good. Her lips were soft.
“Do you want to stay?” Ellen whispered.
“I don’t have anything with me,” he said.
“It’s okay. I’m on the Pill.” She smiled and kissed his neck.
So he took her to bed for the simple reason that she was nice, and she was uncomplicated, and he was almost unbearably lonely.
The hard place in his chest remained.
In the morning, he thanked her for a nice time and said he’d call her. She smiled, said she had a nice time, too.
Nice.It was the only word applicable. Ellen was nice. They’d had a nice time. He’d been nice, too.
Jesus.
She didn’t seem to have any expectations, and she didn’t seem needy or desperate. It certainly hadn’t felt like his heart might stop because he loved her so much. It had just been sex, and despite the reputation of the twentysomething American heterosexual male, Lucas was finding that just sex and making love were miles apart.
