Chapter 1 #3
I rush forward and stop it with the palm of my hand. “Wait. Please. I had a—a chance encounter yesterday. There’s someone who wants to buy your building. Could I please leave the offer with you?”
He narrows his eyes. The gold ring around his pupils disappears into the shadows.
“Fine,” he says, just when I think I’ll pass out. “Show me.”
I take the printed sheet out of my purse and hand it through the gap in the door. His face doesn’t change as he looks it over, which is not a good omen.
“He seemed,” I start, because I have to say something. “He seemed like—”
“The building’s not for sale.” The pressure of the door against my hand increases.
“Mister—I didn’t get your name, and I just—”
“Ellison Hollis,” he says, then shuts the door in my face.
“So, that didn’t go how I wanted.” I take another turn around my coffee table. I’m not usually the one who paces during phone calls, but I can’t sit still.
I can’t stop thinking about him.
“He shut the door in your face.”
“Yeah. Exactly.”
“He didn’t slam it.”
“The whole thing raised a lot of questions. Like—why live in a walk-up? Why refuse to sell a property you don’t even live in? Why look like that?”
“Look like what?” Liz asks.
“Hot! Beautiful!” I throw my hands up even though she can’t see me. “I can’t find anything online about the property, and a mysteriously hot man owns it. And he shut the door in my face.”
“He didn’t slam it,” Liz says again, and this time, I can’t help smiling.
I wait two days, then armor myself in my trusty pencil skirt, a pink shell, and a short-sleeved blazer. It’s a hazy morning, warm and a little clinging, and my face is going to be red when I get to the top of those stairs.
And I’m going to get to the top of those stairs.
I go around the block with the lonely rowhouse so I can approach from the front of Ellison Hollis’s building, but I get a shock when I get to the gate.
It’s open. The gate for the lonely rowhouse is open.
I move toward it like I’m in a dream, or a trance. Like maybe it opened just for me, and life is a fairy tale, and I’m about to discover that I won a rowhouse.
But no. The second I’m level with the gate, I see him through it.
Ellison Hollis, coming down the front steps.
It’s right to see someone on those steps. And…it’s wrong. Because he looks like part of the rowhouse. With them both together like that, I can’t miss the resemblance.
Ellison Hollis is as sad as his rowhouse. As lonely. As…abandoned?
Then he glances up and sees me standing there, halfway inside the gate, and his face shutters.
He strides toward me, long legs making the distance between us practically nothing and then actually nothing.
I only have time to slip inside the gate and press my back against the stone pillar before he’s there.
And he is there. He’s tall and lean, but he takes up every inch of space and then some.
The slim gap between us feels alive the way a thunderstorm feels alive.
Like it could split open any second. His eyes are red.
Ellison Hollis’s cheeks are pink from the heat, but his eyes are red, like he might’ve been crying.
“What are you doing here?” His voice is low, like a far-off peal of thunder. Ellison has one hand on the iron gate, like he was going to escort me out onto the sidewalk and slam it shut.
“The gate was open.”
“The building isn’t for sale.”
“Why not?” I blurt, because his face this close to mine is making it impossible to think.
“That’s none of your business.”
“I know it isn’t. None of this is. I didn’t mean to become a listing agent.”
“What?” Ellison leans in another inch, his eyes darting around my face. I put my hands flat on the warm stone pillar and let him study me. “What does that mean?”
“I want to know why. I just—I want to know.”
“Why?”
“Why wouldn’t I? You’re—” I gesture at him, then put my hand back on the stone. “You’re handsome. I think you’re the hottest person I’ve ever seen. And you live in a walk-up, but you own this building. And you’re so sad.”
Ellison’s eyes go wide, like nobody’s ever pointed it out before. I didn’t mean to. I’m lightheaded, that’s all, and the answer got away from me. Of course it did. The full sun is catching every shade of blond in his hair, and every shift between brown and green and gold in his eyes.
The breeze blows a piece of my hair into my face, and Ellison brushes it behind my ear.
We both freeze.
He hasn’t dropped his hand. His fingertips graze the shell one more time. It occurs to me that he’s closer than he was. That there’s almost no space left between us.
“I might have to go back to Indiana.” Why did I say that? “I just want to know about you.”
Leaves rustle everywhere around us. It’s the hedge and the trees from the park nearby, but the sound feels like magic. Like something that only exists inside this gate. The traffic, the people—everything else is muted.
“It means something to you,” I say, because I can see it in Ellison’s face. “Doesn’t it?”
He swallows, and this time, when he breaks eye contact, it’s not to check me out. For a few seconds, he doesn’t seem to be looking at anything. A memory, maybe.
“Someone died here. Someone who was important to me.”
“Oh.” I put my hand to my heart without thinking. The empathy hurts. “I’m so sorry.”
He’s even closer now.
Ellison seems to realize it exactly when I do. I’m so close that I have a clear view when his pupils blow.
We move at the same time. I go up on tiptoe, and he leans down, and he kisses me up against the stone pillar.
There’s no awkwardness. It’s like he’s known how to kiss me forever, and I’ve known how to be kissed.
The warmth of the stone at my back loops around and covers me.
Ellison puts one hand on my neck—gently, carefully—and anchors his thumb on my jaw.
His other hand goes near my head, flat against the stone.
I can’t move. I can move to kiss him, and that’s it. I don’t dare touch him. The way he kisses is confident and cautious all at once. It doesn’t make sense, and it does. He tastes like mint and smells subtly of citrus and—and evergreen maybe. It’s good.
He’s so close that we could be touching. We could. But we’re not, except for his hand at my neck. The kiss gets so deep I can’t breathe, and don’t care if I ever breathe again.
I’ve almost summoned the courage to peel myself off the stone pillar and put my arms around Ellison when he pulls away.
He lifts the inside of his wrist to his mouth—fast, like he doesn’t mean to do it and can’t help himself—and pushes the gate open wide.
With his free hand, he takes my elbow and ushers me out.
I barely feel the steps I’m taking until I’m on the sidewalk.
“Now you know,” he says. “The building isn’t for sale.”
Then he closes the gate.
I don’t know what to do with myself in light of that kiss.
A couple daylong assignments come up through the temp agency. I spend one day making copies in an office in the Financial District and another day taking messages on the next floor down.
In my spare time, I apply for more jobs, scour the internet for information about the rowhouse-without-a-row, and think about the kiss.
I think about Ellison.
I think about the taste of him and the scent of him and the strength of him. How his shoulders looked when he came down those steps, before he saw me. The faraway look in his eyes when he thought of…
Whoever he thought of.
I should be satisfied. It should be enough to know that the building is haunted. Maybe there’s no ghost, but the pain is real.
But people move out of haunted houses.
Why won’t Ellison?
A cold front moves over the city. I spend half a day at the same company setting aside records that are due to be shredded. It’s raining by the time I get home and out of the shower.
It’s the kind of weather that makes me want to give up and move back to Indiana.
It rains in Indiana, too, obviously. But it feels different here. More personal.
Which is, of course, when I get the text from my landlord.
Mike: Hey, Audrey
Mike: Need to get the rest of last month’s rent
Audrey: Hey! I don’t have all of it together yet
I don’t know what else to say. I’ve been stringing together as many temp jobs as I can find, and they’re only getting shorter.
Audrey: I’m working on it!
Mike sends me a thumbs-up emoji.
Mike: You’ll let me know if you need to look for another place?
That’s code for time to look for another place.
Audrey: Of course :)
I get up off the couch and go. I don’t stop for my pencil skirt. I don’t stop for any professional clothes. I just leave in my leggings and T-shirt. I only stop for shoes.
Thunder booms overhead on the walk to Ellison’s apartment. The rain is freezing. I’m a mess when I get to the alcove and stab at the button.
“Yes?”
“It’s me,” I say, my teeth chattering.
“Jesus,” says Ellison, and the door buzzes to let me in.
He’s waiting in his open doorway when I get to the top of the stairs. “Why did you walk here in the rain?”
I don’t answer him. I just keep walking, straight into a kiss.
I’m very wet, and very cold, and for a second it’s horrible because of my wet, soggy clothes, and then Ellison’s pulling them off me.
I’m pulling his clothes off him, because I’m rain-soaked enough for two people.
God, it’s so cold. God, he’s so hot. God, the more clothes he takes off, the more I can’t breathe.
He doesn’t seem real without his quietly expensive slacks and button-down. Another dream-thing from the lonely rowhouse.
I’m too busy trying to make myself understand he’s real to register the walk to the bedroom.
I only manage it when he puts me on the bed and crawls between my legs. A flash of lightning washes the color out of everything in the room except his eyes.
That’s when I’m sure he’s real, and I’m sure this is happening.
He’s waiting for something.
What?
Oh. For me.
I give him a nod—yes, is all I can think—and he dives in.