Chapter 17 – Elias #2
The Benadryl, oxygen, and epinephrine work fast, and my swollen tongue has gone down. When Doctor Wicker arrives, he gives me a corticosteroid shot before checking my vitals.
Sage watches intently as if memorizing everything he’s doing to utilize at another date. Doctor Wicker then gives her instructions to monitor my symptoms for the rest of the night and hands over a card telling her to call him if I show any signs of the inflammation returning.
“I am so sorry,” Sage says, the moment he leaves. Her eyes well up with tears, and I wave her over to the couch where I’m sitting. Doc let me take off the oxygen mask but said to keep it nearby just in case.
“There’s nothing to be sorry about,” I say, wrapping my arms around her waist when she sits on my lap.
She hugs my head to her chest, and I stifle the urge to motorboat the plush mounds.
Inappropriate, Elias. She’s clearly traumatized.
“You could have died!”
“I’ve had plenty of allergic reactions, and I’m still here.”
“Walnut and chocolate chip cookies are my favorite, and I just wanted to share something I love with you. I legit almost killed you.”
“I should have asked before taking a bite.”
Sage gasps. “Wait. We had Pad Thai that one time. Doesn’t that have peanuts?”
“Thai Villa is a nut free restaurant. And even restaurants that aren’t nut free are fine. Cross contamination doesn’t give me that big of a reaction as eating a whole nut, but it’ll still make me itchy, and my throat will swell slightly. I’d rather not risk it, though.”
“Oh. ”
She sighs, and we sit there in silence for a few minutes. I listen as her frantic heartbeat slows now that the adrenaline of my allergic reaction has waned.
“Could you imagine if your enemies learned this? Death by nut!” Sage giggles.
She loosens her hold on me and leans in for a kiss but pauses, her eyes wide.
“I need to brush my teeth. I put a lot of walnuts in the cookies and ate two before you got here. I need to clean up the kitchen too.”
“Don’t worry. My cleaning staff already scrubbed it down while we were in here with the doctor.”
Sage’s mouth drops open.
“I didn’t even notice. I should have taken care of it. This is my fault.”
I swallow hard. She thought of all this for me? Brushing her teeth, cleaning the kitchen, wearing gloves...
“I’m surprised this is the first time you’ve had a reaction around me. I really like nuts. I buy the cans that have the cashew, walnut, and peanut mix to snack on at work.” She gets off my lap and winks at me. “Good thing I like you more.”
I sit on the couch, stunned, at... everything. Sage not hesitating to help ease my symptoms. Her being proactive to make sure I don’t get sick again. Her insinuating that she would give up her favorite foods for me .
After I’ve shaken off my disbelief, I head into the kitchen and start setting out everything for dinner: dough, sauce, pepperoni, sausage, cheese, onions, bell peppers, olives, and mushrooms.
When Sage returns from brushing her teeth, her face lights up upon seeing the spread.
“Pizza?”
“ Homemade pizza.” I point over my shoulder at the brick oven next to the stove.
“I was wondering what that was when I snooped earlier. I didn’t open it though.”
“Find anything interesting?”
She shakes her head, biting her lip. “I didn’t get far because I got hungry, so I came in here and made a sandwich, then I craved the cookies and... well, you know the rest.”
Now that everything’s ready for assembling, we need some tunes.
“Help me pick out some music.” I say and take Sage’s hand, leading her into the living room to my bookcase full of records.
“Lord, how can I? There must be a thousand records here!”
I shrug. “About 500.”
Her eyes scan over the spines of the albums. She nearly jumps for joy when spotting one of interest. I have them organized in alphabetical order, so I know exactly which one she picked, but she doesn’t let me see as she hides it behind her body.
She pushes me out of the way to stick it on the platter.
“Go stand over in that open space,” she says, pointing to the area near the windows.
When I don’t move, she puts her hands on her hips.
“Be a good boy and do as Madam Manilow says.”
“Madam Manilow?”
A grin spreads across her face. “That’s my name on the Madam app.”
Before I can open my mouth, and maybe she can see my face fill with rage and jealousy, she holds up a finger.
“Don’t get your panties in a twist. It’s solely virtual.”
“For your information, I’m a boxers guy.”
“Yeah, because tighty-whities wouldn’t be able to hold that horse in your pants.”
She points at the open space again.
“Go, Boss Man .”
I hold up my hands in defeat and do as Sage demands, but make a mental note to look into that fucking app.
The moment Great Balls of Fire by Jerry Lee Lewis starts playing, she shimmies her way over to me and takes my hand in hers then places my other hand at her waist.
“I don’t dance.”
“Neither do I.”
“Yes, you do. I watched you on the dance floor of Underground Park Slope. ”
“That’s different. I was just moving my hips around. We’re going to swing dance.”
The song is past the intro, and I move when Sage moves.
We’re making shit up as we go. I twirl her around and she spins, and I tug her back toward my body.
We gallop around the open space of my living room for the rest of the song and despite having no clue what I’m doing, I seem to be in sync with Sage.
By the end of the song, I’m smiling until my cheeks hurt.
I’m also struggling to breathe.
“Oh, shit,” Sage says and rushes over to the table for the oxygen tank. It’s not a large one. I always keep small portable ones nearby whether it’s here at home or in the car.
She hands me the tank, and I sit on the edge of the couch to slip on the mask.
“Probably not the best idea to be dancing around after trying to kill you,” she says, rubbing my back while I breathe.
“You didn’t try to kill me.”
After a few minutes, the album Sage chose—which is a compilation of rock-n-roll hits from the fifties—changes songs to Can’t Help Falling in Love by Elvis Presley.
I take off the oxygen mask and stand, holding out my hand. Sage shakes her head.
“Hand, woman!”
She scoffs but smiles and gives in .
“Slow dancing I can do,” I say, giving Sage a wink. “Rain check on the dance party for another night when I haven’t just had an allergic reaction?”
“I’ll hold you to it,” she says.
“I don’t doubt it.”
Sage sighs and lays her head on my chest while we turn in slow circles in the middle of my living room.
I don’t think I’ve ever slow danced in the middle of my living room. Or any living room, for that matter. It’s only something I’ve seen in cheesy rom-coms.
My life isn’t romantic.
But for Sage, I’d hold up a boombox outside her bedroom window while it plays In Your Eyes by Peter Gabriel.
I’d pay a marching band to play in a stadium while I sang to her from the stands.
I’d buy a ukulele and play it on a plane while singing a song about growing old with her.
I knew since the night we met she was going to be different. Especially when she didn’t hesitate to choose death for the man who groped her. When she didn’t let my dark side scare her. When she showed me her compassion and empathy by kissing the tattoo on my wrist in tribute to my mother.
I might have jerked it away from her in that moment, but it’s only because I was confused. I was surprised . I was also worried that if I told her what happened, she wouldn’t understand and leave .
The song comes to end, and Sage is the first to pull away.
I already miss her warmth.
We return to the kitchen, and Sage helps me assemble the pizza. She gasps when Unchained Melody by The Righteous Brothers comes on and we proceed to recreate the pottery scene from Ghost with the pizza dough. Except a lot messier because the dough sticks to our fingers.
It is far from sexy.
My favorite part of playing house with Sage is finding out she can sing. She’s belting out words, hitting the notes, and outshining the artist.
“You’re a singer?” I ask when the song is over.
“I’m alright,” she says with a shrug. “I do love me some karaoke, though.”
“I’ve never been to karaoke.”
“What?”
“I never went to prom or been camping. Never went bowling or played laser tag. Never went to a haunted house—Mom wasn’t a fan of Halloween. The last time I played a board game, or a video game, I was just a kid.”
Sage is next to me now, assembling her pizza since we decided to make two, each with our favorite toppings. I chose everything. Sage forwent the sausage, olives, and mushrooms.
She frowns. “Is it because your father wouldn’t let you?”
“Yes.” I pause, not sure if I want to talk about what I went through in my childhood, but it’s only fair since Sage has shared so much with me already.
“I blocked out a lot of my memories from my childhood because of him. Mostly the bad things. I remember the good parts, like playing board games with my mom and Lance when I was twelve. Mom also got me a Nintendo for my thirteenth birthday. I used to kick my brother’s ass at The Legend of Zelda.
But when I turned sixteen, my father threatened to destroy the game system.
He said it was a distraction from my responsibilities to the QBM.
I didn’t want Lance to lose the games, he deserved to hold on to his childhood as long as possible, so I pretended I was no longer interested in playing with him.
I did everything I could to distance myself from him because if I showed him any sort of love or care, my father would have focused on him instead of me.
I know Lance was upset about that, but I did it to protect him. ”
Sage stops assembling her pizza and puts her palm on my forearm.
“Have you told him any of this?”
“I can’t. He would be heartbroken. He would blame himself.
He already thinks I hate him. He thinks I blame him for what those men forced him to do to our mother.
I didn’t blame him, but I did shut him out.
I regret it, but at the time, I was only sixteen.
I felt guilty that he had to be the one to do it.
But I shut him out because I knew that my father would punish him if he found out.
I told Lance not to say a word about that night.
My father tried beating it out of him, and when Lance refused to speak, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital.
It was better that way. I was Percy Carter’s heir.
He saw Lance as a mistake and the reason his wife was dead. ”
Since both of our pizzas are nearly assembled, I turn from the island and preheat the oven.
“What happened after Del got out?”
“He was released when he turned eighteen. I picked him up and was an even bigger asshole, basically telling him to take care of himself because I didn’t have time to be a parent to him.
Our father was diagnosed with cancer at that point, and he disappeared upstate to die in hospice.
He refused to let us see him in his state.
Not that we wanted to. I already had too much to take care of because of Percy.
He forced responsibility over the QBM on me, and he left it such a fucking mess.
Corrupt to the bone, his own soldiers not trusting him and going rogue. ”
“I’m so sorry, Elias,” Sage says.
I take the pizza peel and slide it under her pizza then transfer it to the brick oven. She watches in awe as I repeat the move with my pie.
“It was a relief that he died. My father was pure evil. He eventually found out my brother was forced to slit our mother’s throat because he beat me until I gave it up.
I think he was more pissed about being targeted than our mom being killed.
He tried to connect Lenetti to the murders up until the day he died, then he left Lance and me all his notes.
Now we’ve taken over the investigation.”
“What piece are you missing?”
“The actual order. It’s complicated, but I don’t want to start a mafia war until we have solid proof.” I lean up against the kitchen island, arms crossed, while we wait for the pizza to cook. “And we still haven’t figured out who blew up Noah and Lance’s apartment building.”
“I thought Noah said that was an accident? A gas leak?”
“Nope.”
Sage scoffs and shakes her head. Oops. Didn’t mean to spill the beans on Noah’s secret.
I push away from the island to stand in front of Sage. Extending my arms on either side of her to trap her in, I lean down.
“Have I told you how beautiful you look today?”
She shies away from the compliment.
“Don’t lie. I feel so gross right now. I’m bleeding, bloated, and cramping.”
“Hmm.” My lips graze over the side of her neck, and she gasps ever so lightly. “Did you know sex can help alleviate period cramps?”
“Can it now?”
“Yep.”
“How do you know that? ”
“I just know.” I slip my hand down the front of her leggings, and she freezes. “Have you never fucked while on your period?”
“No,” she answers, her word barely a whisper. “Chase thought it was gross, and I never considered it for any of my one-night stands.”
I tease her opening, my fingertip grazing over the string of her tampon.
She whimpers.
“Tell me to stop, and I will.”
She bites her lip, lust and hesitation lighting up her face in a fight for dominance.
“I don’t want you to stop,” she finally says.
Slowly, I pull down her leggings and help her step out of the material.
“If you feel uncomfortable at any time, let me know and I’ll stop, okay?”
She nods.
“I need you to use your words, Sage.”
“Okay. I understand.”
“Good girl.”