Chapter 13
Elias exited his car and headed up the stairs.
He paused briefly, debating whether to knock.
He wasn’t typically one for pop-ups, but he wanted to speak to Eri face-to-face since she’d been giving him that same standoffish energy since his conversation with Marco.
It may not have been enough for someone else to tell, but Elias wasn’t someone else, and he figured the best way to understand it was to see her.
He knocked on the door, and it was only a minute later when he heard shuffling from the other side. There was a brief beat of silence, and then the door opened.
“Elias, hey. What are you doing here?”
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he responded. He didn’t see any reason to beat around the bush. And sure, she hadn’t been avoiding him per se, but her energy towards him had changed, and he would classify them as the same thing. “If you don’t want to see me, tell me, and I’ll leave.”
Eri shook her head. “Will you come in?” she asked as she stepped aside and opened the door wider.
He stepped inside, and she gestured to the couch as she closed the door. Two textbooks, her laptop, and a notebook were on the coffee table. He took a seat on the couch, and she sat on its arm a few seconds later.
“I haven’t been avoiding you.”
“You have.”
“I haven’t, not really. If I were avoiding you, I wouldn’t text you back at all or answer the phone, and I wouldn’t have opened the door,” she countered.
She had him there. Elias changed his words to be more direct. “Okay, you haven’t been avoiding me, but you’ve been acting differently, keeping me at bay. More than you did before we started dating. You want to tell me why that is and be honest with me, Eris.”
He could tell he’d caught her off guard. It was the first time he’d used her government name since meeting her. She probably wasn’t even aware he knew it.
She sighed. “I was…a little overwhelmed by the effort you put into changing my mind about the holiday. That you even wanted to.” She paused briefly.
“It was a lot, and the nicest thing anyone outside of my dad and Avian has ever done for me in a while. I wasn’t sure how to accept it and what it might have meant. I needed time to process.”
Elias studied her momentarily as she fidgeted with her fingers. There was something she wasn’t telling him. He assumed it was why she disliked the holiday to begin with, but he wouldn’t push her on it. She would tell him when she was ready to.
“Come here,” he requested, and she moved to sit beside him, but he pulled her onto his lap.
“I can understand you feeling overwhelmed. But when and if something like that happens again, talk to me about it. Let me know. Don’t start giving me different energy, closing off, or pushing me away unless you want me to go.
And if you want me to, tell me that. We’re both adults. ”
“Okay. Yeah, I can do that,” she agreed.
She didn’t sound too confident about it, but he’d take her at her word. Elias moved her off his lap. “I’ll go so you can get back to what you were doing.”
Eri grabbed his wrist. “You could stay. I’m finished for the day. I can make us dinner, and then we can watch a movie together. It could be the rain check I asked you for.”
“I’ll stay.” He refrained from pointing out that it didn’t have to be the rain check she asked for. That if she wanted him to stay, she didn’t need a reason to ask him to. “You want some help cooking?”
“No,” she responded while closing her books and notebook. “I’ve got it. You can choose a movie for us to watch.” She stacked everything on her laptop and disappeared down the hall.
Elias was scrolling through movies when Eri returned a minute later and entered the kitchen. After a few more minutes of scrolling, he decided on a random horror movie for after dinner.
From where he sat, he watched her move around the kitchen, pulling out different ingredients.
It would be the first time in a while that someone he was dating cooked for him.
That thought made him think of his conversation with his cousin a few days ago.
They hadn’t established what they were doing, what they were, and Elias knew they needed to, but he was fine waiting a little longer.
If he’d overwhelmed her on their Valentine’s Day date, he didn’t want to push her.
He’d told Marco that he wouldn’t have an issue with starting over if her wall went back up, and while he’d meant it, he would prefer not to.
He was making slow and steady progress, and he wanted to continue that way.
He wanted to earn her trust so that she would know he was willing to do so, but he also knew that she could easily withdraw if their current situation had been anything to go by.
Eri must have felt him looking at her because she turned over her shoulder, eyes locking with his. Those syrup-colored doe eyes always seemed to draw him in.
“Did you need something?” she asked.
“No, I’m just enjoying the view,” he responded.
He didn’t have to be closer to her to know that red bloomed over those cinnamon cheeks from his words.
She opened her mouth to respond before closing it and turning back around, and Elias refrained from chuckling.
Unsure whether she had because she couldn’t think of a comeback or because she wanted him to look.
He moved over to the dining table. He kept her company since she’d refused his help.
“Did Avian tell you we chose a venue?” he asked.
“Yeah, she texted me about it yesterday. I’m going to add it to the digital flyers and the site we made, and then you all will be good to launch and advertise,” she responded. “I think you’ll get a pretty good turnout.”
“If it goes well, I think it might be something we do every other year.”
“That’s a good idea. Doing one every year might get a bit tiring.” She turned on the stove. “How’s the bike coming?”
“I should have it finished in a couple of weeks.”
She turned to look at him. “Do you have pictures of it?”
“I do, but they won’t do it justice since it isn’t finished. I can take you to see it next weekend.”
“Okay.” She turned back to the stove. “It’s supposed to be warmer then, too, if you’re still up for taking me for a ride.”
“We can do that.” It would be the first week of March, and the highs would reach around seventy degrees, as opposed to the fifty-five degrees February had been giving them.
The conversation continued as she cooked, and if it tasted as good as it smelled, he’d have to figure out how to get her to cook for him again.
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
Eri placed her fork on the plate and pushed it away after taking her last bite. She picked up her glass of juice, leaning back in her chair. They’d spent dinner catching up on things they probably would have already known if she hadn’t been putting some distance between them.
If he’d noticed, which she’d been pretty sure he had, she’d expected him to call her out on it at some point.
However, she hadn’t thought that he’d show up at her house to do so.
That had sent the butterflies in her stomach into overdrive.
That is, after her stomach had sunk when he’d told her to tell him to leave if she didn’t want to see him.
Eri wanted to see him, but it had all felt like so much.
She’d been aware she could have talked to him about it, but she wasn’t sure how much she should divulge. She wasn’t ready to let him in on the entire situation. The thought of doing that still scared her. But she owed him an explanation, and Eri figured there was no better one than the truth.
He’d taken a day that she’d thought had been tarnished for the rest of her life and breathed life back into it, giving her new memories to push that dark one to the back burner.
The effort he’d gone through, the thoughtfulness of it all, had overwhelmed her because they were barely dating, and he had gone out of his way.
Processing that had proven tougher than she’d thought. When she’d gone to her session with her therapist yesterday, Cherell had not pushed but had told her that if she kept hiding, eventually, she’d be stuck in that space, unable to get out.
Eri didn’t want that. She’d allowed herself to stay closed off for a year after her assault, and while things were currently easier, she knew people could regress during stressful times and fall back into depressive states.
She wanted to move forward, not backward, but she knew it would be a slow process and take her a little more time.
“Your birthday is in a couple of weeks, right?” she asked. If she remembered correctly from a passing conversation, it was in the middle of March. Do you have big plans?”
“Nah. I’ll have a little gathering at the house. Food, drinks, games. Nothing major.”
“If you let me know what day and time you want to have it, I’ll make you an e-invite,” she volunteered.
“So you can have something to add to your portfolio,” he teased.
She glared at him playfully. “No, because I want to.”
He chuckled. “I’ll let you know in a couple of days.” Eri stood, gathering their plates, only for him to take them away from her. “I’ve got it,” he told her.
“It’s fine. You don’t need to help; you’re my guest.”
“Oh, you thought I was going to let you do them. That’s cute.”
“Elias—”
“Sit down, Amate. I’ve got it.”
Eri knew she wasn’t going to talk him out of it. Instead of trying, she said, “We’ll get finished faster if we do them together. Besides, you don’t know where anything goes.”
“I watched you pull everything out. I know exactly where it goes.”
“Elias,” she whined, because why was it so hard to get this man to let her wash dishes in her own house?
He paused on his way to the sink. “Don’t whine like that, Amate, or I’m going to think you’re asking me for something else.”
Eri felt her cheeks heat as those intense eyes bore into hers.
Was it possible for a person to have vibrant teal eyes?
His were the prettiest mix of blue and green she’d ever seen.
Not really leaning towards one more than the other.
Pulling herself out of her thoughts, she cleared her throat and walked past him.
“I’ll rinse,” she said. She wouldn’t respond to his comment and wasn’t giving him another choice.
They washed the dishes in relative silence, and when they finished, they went into the living room to watch the movie he’d chosen.
As he started it, Eri turned off the light and sat on the couch.
She wasn’t sure what he’d picked but knew from the opening scene it was a horror movie.
She was okay with those as long as there weren’t a lot of jump scares.
Eri jumped slightly as the first person was killed at the end of the opening scene. She’d been prepared for it, knowing it would likely happen, but that had helped little. Subconsciously, she moved into Elias’ side, and without missing a beat, he wrapped his arm around her.
They were forty-five minutes into the movie when a scene caught her by surprise, and Eri damn near ended up in his lap with the way she jumped. The ax that was thrown on screen looked like it was coming at them before taking the head off the next victim. Elias chuckled and pulled her onto his lap.
“You don’t have to pretend to be scared, Amate,” he teased. “If this is where you want to be, I won’t complain. This seat is always reserved for you.”
“I’m not pretending,” she said intelligently, which only drew another chuckle from him. Eri huffed and turned her attention back towards the screen.
She tried to refocus on the movie but was too distracted. His cologne surrounded her, and she was very much aware of their position—how he wrapped one arm around her waist and ran the thumb of his other hand up and down her thigh.
It was twenty minutes later when she jumped again from someone being stabbed through the eye with a fireplace poker, and from the deep rumble she could feel against her back as he laughed, she knew he was about to tease her again.
“Are you sure you’re not pretending?” he whispered in her ear. “Because it’s starting to seem like—”
“Shut up and kiss me,” she cut him off as she turned on his lap.
“Bossy little brat,” he smirked, gripping her chin, and when his lips touched hers, Eri no longer gave a damn about what was happening on the television screen. All that mattered was the way he kissed her like he was trying to steal the very air from her lungs, and she didn’t mind that at all.