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I’m stuck with a chatterbox. I put her off for a moment by removing my squishy shoes again. They need to dry. “I don’t talk about myself.”
She feels her head for pins and plucks them out, dropping them to the floor. “Why do you hate talking?”
Probably due to questions like this. But I just grunt.
She crosses her arm over her forehead, staring at the ceiling. “If I’m around you long enough, will I be able to tell the difference between your grunts and growls? Is there a code?”
“No.”
She sighs. I get about ten more seconds of blissful quiet before she comes up with a new topic. “I’ve been wanting to be something more than a bank teller. But I don’t know what it would be. I don’t have a lot of options.”
I sip my bourbon.
“I guess I would rather work someplace that matters. I mean, I know banks are important. And I’m good with people. I could talk toanyone, really. But moving money around, it’s not very satisfying. Do you get that?”
I do, but I have no words for it. I can only grunt.
“You’re easier to talk to than I thought,” Ensley says. “Everybody’s always full of bad advice or telling me I should be grateful for what I’ve got, given how I grew up.”
This comment cuts my silence. “I hated how much your family struggled,” I say.
“He speaks!” Ensley sits up. “Did you really? Hate it?”
“I hated that you guys were hungry all the time.”
Ensley tugs at the collar of the coveralls. “I missed out on a lot. I didn’t get to go to prom. By the time my baby sister was a senior, they had fairy godmother programs for dresses. But I had to skip.”
I didn’t know that. “I would have taken you.” As soon as I say it, I force the cup to my mouth.Shut up, Drew. Shut the hell up.
She grins. “Maybe if Mom had been around, she could have figured out something for me to wear.”
My vow of silence evaporates. “I would have bought you a dress.” And I mean it. But her prom was the same time as my college graduation. I wasn’t talking to Garrett anymore. I had no idea.
She closes her eyes, her face dreamy. “I would have died and gone to heaven if you asked me to prom. But the age gap was bigger then.”
I can only grunt at that. It’s definitely less now that she is twenty-six to my thirty.
“I had the hugest crush on you,” she says. “Oh, that’s a terrible confession. Never mind. I didn’t. I hated your guts.”
This is new. My gut tightens. “A crush?”
Her gaze meets mine and I expect my dick to stir again, but it’s something else I’m feeling. Something closer to what comes over me when a wounded rescue is brought to the clinic.
“I did. I got this crazy notion that you were going to save me. Big strong Drew would swoop in and carry me away from my misery andlet me live in his big brick house. We’d go to prom and have a big fancy wedding like in movies.”
Jesus. That hungry twelve-year-old had pinned her hopes on me, and I hadn’t even noticed. “My house wasn’t that big.” And it had misery of its own.
“But your house is what started the fantasy. I went there once to find Garrett. Your mom let me in. The living room was so clean. I could see the floor. And the kitchen! It was bright and there were freshly baked cookies on the stove. It was heaven.”
My throat gets tight. “I hope Mom gave you one.”
“She did. I remember holding it, not wanting to eat it. I’d never had a warm cookie before. Sometimes we got a packaged one in the free lunch at school. But never one so fresh.”
I can’t stand it. “Ensley, you should have all the cookies you can eat.”
“Oh, I do now. I have my own apartment, and there is always cookie dough in the fridge.” She flashes a smile. “See, you had an impact on me, without even knowing it. Cookies make me think of safety. Of your house. Of that wonderfully naive idea that someone like you would show up and carry me out of my hard, stupid life where there was never anything to cook, and four kids to feed, and a dad who never noticed we existed.”
We fall quiet, the rain pounding the roof. Thunder booms, but the lightning is invisible to us.
