Chapter 10
Lacey
After a dinner that was a little more phone-staring than actual socializing on both our parts, Adrianna gives me a one-armed hug outside the restaurant, her foam takeout box squeaking as it bumps my shoulder.
“I gotta get going, I’ll talk to you later?” I ask with maybe too much forced casualness as we wade into the parking lot.
Adrianna frowns as she rattles her overfull keyring and starts mashing her car fob, clicking the lock and unlock buttons until her car’s headlights flash. “It’s nine at night, who are you meeting?”
I backpedal slowly. I was kind of hoping to just jog off and avoid any questions. I needed her to pick me up for dinner so that Clayton would think I spent the whole night with her. The last couple days he’s insisted on dropping me off and picking me up from work.
“Do you remember the uh . . . um, hench-guy I told you about before?” I explain weakly. It’s not that I’ve been purposefully keeping Ellis a secret, I just haven’t told anyone. Definitely wouldn’t tell Clayton; he’d think I was doing it on purpose to hurt him. Laura would have a field day.
We talked a lot at dinner about a couple of TV shows we’d both been kind of bored by, how the lady who’s supposed to re-braid her hair keeps canceling on her, the last mutant attack leaving two roads near my apartment closed.
I hadn’t been able to find the nerve to bring Ellis up.
I already know he’s another bad decision, and I don’t need to hear it.
I try to brace myself for her reaction, but the way Adrianna spends a moment staring at me with her eyes wide in shock is not great for morale.
“It wasn’t on purpose, I just ran into him a couple times,” I start to say, backpedaling, minimizing, holding back that every time I bump into him I can’t help but sink deeper into this terrible crush. “It’s stupid. Like, I know it’s not going to go anywhere—”
“Did you find out if he’s got six nipples?” Adrianna interrupts.
My laugh takes me by surprise. I half-giggle. “Uh, not yet. Should I ask?”
“No, I want you to find out and document—for science, and for meeeee,” she moans dramatically. She pops open the lid of her leftovers and grabs a couple fries, leaning against my car. “So, what’s he like?”
“He thinks he’s funny, that’s for sure.”
“And is he?”
“Some of the time. He’s such a ham,” I tell her, shaking my head fondly.
She laughs. “You always go for the corny ones.”
I didn’t realize how much I needed someone to be excited with me about my stupid little crush. Everyone always tells me I’ve had such shitty taste in my past romantic partners, I’ve wondered if my libido was inherently untrustworthy.
This time, I tell Adrianna everything, for real, as she drives me the couple blocks to the vacant lot.
I don’t leave out all the little details I’ve been holding back—the way his smile makes me melt, how his hair flops over his forehead after he runs his fingers through it, the unabashed, unrepentant way he flirts with me.
She giggles with unbridled enthusiasm at every new thing, spurring me on.
Our breath clouds in the air of the warehouse district, as I wait and check the dark, clear skies. The moon is way too bright tonight. A flock of pigeons takes off in a fluttery, anxious swarm that makes my own pulse pick up.
We’re chatting, leaning against her car when I spot Ellis just before he glides down, skimming past us on the marshy salt breeze and landing in a deep crouch farther in the parking lot. He then draws himself up to his full height, and my God, I’m never not going to be awed by his stature.
I’ve got goosebumps, but not entirely from the cold. Even though I saw it just last week, there’s something about seeing his entire wingspan move as one fluid piece.
Adrianna stands on her tiptoes to get a better look over my shoulder, while simultaneously hiding behind me. She pushes her circular glasses up, and they immediately begin sliding down the flat bridge of her nose, as they always do.
“Oh my gosh, is that himmmm,” she whispers, hanging onto the word like a crumb stuck under a keyboard cap.
Ellis jogs over, raising an eyebrow at the girl semi-hiding behind me. “Your friend?”
“Yeah, uh . . . ”
“And this is Bat-Thing?”
Ellis makes a face and casts a sidelong look at me, and I flush a little. Ok, so I did tell her about that part.
“Reporting for duty. Are you joining us?”
“No, no, just dropping her off,” she says cheerfully, then nudges me. “Don’t forget what I said about science.”
She dashes off to her car before I can get out a reply. Ellis gives me a questioning look that I wave off. I’m not repeating that conversation for him.
With Ellis, I think we’re officially past the point of taking a picture of a guy and sending it to her before I meet him for a date, and to be clear this isn’t a date, but it’s still good that she knows who I’m with and where.
It’s hard not to be enchanted by a fresh coat of snow. The way it covers the city makes it look magical. It only takes a few hours, though, before the dusting of white rots into slush.
And I, admittedly, on more than one occasion, have dived straight into a fresh layer of snow with high hopes of making gorgeous snow angels, only to find that after the first inch or so of fluff it’s just slush and mud underneath.
I really like Ellis. I’m a little scared of how much I like him. Every moment I’m with him feels dangerous, like any instant I could forget myself and just give in to how much I want him. And this thing we’re doing, it’s not going to last. It can’t.
He stops and very clearly checks my ass out, leaning to the side to get a better view. I purse my lips to avoid smiling, but it is gratifying. Maybe I did spend a little extra time picking out some tight black leggings for this occasion.
“You look a little cold,” he says unexpectedly, his brows creasing as he takes in my sweatshirt. Ok, that’s less gratifying.
“I didn’t have a coat I was willing to wear into the sewers,” I tell him, and before I even finish he’s shrugging out of the denim jacket he’s wearing over his black flying suit.
Maybe if I had a single brain cell that wasn’t utterly distracted by the shape of his shoulders as he takes his jacket off, I would have said something polite and insisted I was fine.
“It’s not a sewer. It’s the city’s underground waterways. It connects all the storm drains,” he says, and that does make me feel marginally better about the tunnels we’re about to go spelunking in.
I can feel his residual body heat in the jacket as I pull my arms through the sleeves. The moment it’s on, his warmth and smell surround me.
I am never giving this back to him.
I don’t care if I have to commit some light thievery to keep it, either. I’m going to go to bed curled up with this jacket. There was just the slightest remnant of his scent left on my sheets from that night, and it faded almost immediately.
“Ok, rules for the tunnels. You don’t take a single step where I don’t show you. Don’t touch anything. For the love of God, don’t fall in,” he says, counting off each rule on a different finger. “I don’t think you’ll mutate, but it’s a pain to get that stuff off.”
“Geez, what do you think—I’m like five?”
He pauses before answering that, clearly chewing the inside of his cheek while trying to think of a response that isn’t just a yes. “Don’t play coy, I know you’re a wander-off-er-er.”
“Er-er,” I scoff back at him, and toss my ponytail over my shoulder.
Getting into the waterways is easier than I initially expect.
There’s a metal frame that works well enough as a platform to enter it.
Inside, the brickwork vaults into a ten-foot tunnel, with ledges on either side barely a couple of feet wide.
It all has a sickly greenish lighting, from the occasional grime-covered wall sconce.
Water flows freely down the center, and every so often a mostly transparent blob like a jellyfish is carried on the current. The ooze doesn’t dissolve in water, it behaves almost hydrophobically.
I follow behind Ellis on one of the ledges, the tunnel quickly branching into a system of similar hallways.
We pause at an intersection, and Ellis crouches on his heels to watch the water closer. We wait for a few more blobs of ooze to come from one direction more than the other. After a while, he stands, and we head further into the waterways.
We pass a number of grated openings in the walls, over more drains that must lead back to the streets overhead.
A couple have coffee cups and food wrappers caught in the grates as gray slush drips through.
A few rodents crawl along the brickwork.
Occasionally, we pass by service doors. Some are clearly as old as the architecture of the waterways, the brickwork outlining them.
I’m glad he’s leading the way because I’m having a hard time following the iridescent shimmer of the ooze. My mind is in the gutter, and not just because I’m shuffling around in the city waterways.
Following behind gives me a little too much time to admire the breadth of his shoulders, the taper of his hips, the shape of his butt as he walks, the way his tail flicks.
I can’t stop eyeing him, greedily, hungrily. Every twenty feet or so I think about pushing him up against a wall and kissing him. Every twenty-fifth foot, I remind myself I can’t, because we actually have to stop hooking up. For real this time.
What ends up being more convincing is that there’s no section of the wall I feel confident in even possibly touching.
Ellis takes a step from one ledge lining the wall to the other, and I stop just before a large chunk on my side that is missing. He holds a hand out across the way, fingers curling through mine instantly.
His grip is firm and steady as I take a careful step around it. He comes back to my side again, but I notice he doesn’t let go. He keeps holding my hand as he leads me down the passage, and when he catches my eyes, he gives it a little reassuring squeeze. My pulse stutters.