Chapter 24 Molly #2
‘I don’t hate him, I just wish he would’ve talked to me.
I don’t know.’ She shrugs her shoulders.
‘Feels like a miracle to find someone you actually like these days, and then to have them like you back–to be compatible, attracted to each other and have fun together, it just feels so rare. Like how the hell does anyone fall in love any more?’
‘And if you do fall in love, how do you ever really know they’re not going to hurt you?’ I ask, adding my relationship quandary to the pile.
‘Well, that one’s a given,’ Hailey says simply. ‘We all hurt each other. Relationships might be about hurting each other in a million little ways forever, but I think the trick is doing your best and finding someone you want to forgive as many times as they forgive you.’
‘Have you been reading those book club self-love books again?’ I ask, but I’m moved and shaken by the concept.
My parents have been sickly in love for my whole life, though Mom would say that there were some years that they didn’t like each other as much as they loved each other.
In those times, I guess, they were trying to do a lot of forgiving both ways, for the little ways we’re all bound to do wrong by each other.
But it was in that forgiving, the holding on, the loving-despite-not-liking that they found their way back to each other.
‘Love just feels a little like trying to catch a tiny leaf in water,’ Hailey says, and returns to her soup. ‘But I have to believe we’ll get it sorted.’
I laugh, a light burst, but I hold up my glass in agreement. ‘Maybe one day.’
‘To one day,’ she says, and taps her glass against mine.
Rain falls against the windows in the gym on Monday afternoon and I listen to that instead of music while I run.
Rainy days were my favourite as a kid, second only to snow days.
I just loved the gloomy grey of the sky, the heaviness of the clouds, the smell of rain in the air, and I still feel that thrill to see it now. It’s a good day.
Plus, it’s the week of Thanksgiving, so most people are off or travelling.
The building feels especially vacant, and the gym likewise.
It’s the kind of week where people in the office barely pretend to work, meetings get cancelled or moved, IT requests from US staff slow to nothing, and I get lots of writing done in my journal.
Today, amid my mouse-wiggling, I’ve been reading one of the romance books I swiped from Elijah’s drawer and have been passively working on a short story about a pop star who gets beamed up by a team of aliens and decides that life with them is more fulfilling than her life of fame on Earth.
So, basically I’ve been really productive.
I’m almost two miles into my lunch run on the treadmill when I’m startled to find Elijah, damp-looking jacket and hat on and a paper bag hanging at his side.
His Drummond lanyard dangles around his neck as he stands to the left of my treadmill, and his eyes roam over my body in a way that’s much too openly hungry for a public place.
‘I like your outfit,’ he says, almost breathless. Can vampires even be breathless? Does he need to breathe?
I’m wearing a workout set that Hailey got me for Christmas last year–cranberry-coloured shorts a matching crop top.
They’re the nicest workout clothes I own.
Usually I opt for a too-big, too-old T-shirt and bike shorts, but by some providence I decided to wash the nice set on the night before I would be perceived in the gym by Elijah.
‘Thanks,’ I say, slowing the treadmill to walking. ‘You’re early.’
He usually meets me in the cafeteria when I’ve already changed after my workout. I didn’t even know he knew where the gym was.
‘I picked up Thai food for you.’ He holds up the bag.
‘Why?’ I ask, touched but astounded.
‘Because you like it,’ he says. I hear the unspoken–and I like you. It makes me feel buzzy, and warm inside. ‘And you’re my friend. Plus it’s so stormy out, not a bit of sun. Figured I’d take my chance while I could.’
‘Thank you.’
Elijah’s eyes stroll unabashedly down my body again, and even while heat rises on my face, I thrill at his attention.
I don’t know that any of my exes so clearly…
desired me. Matt liked me, I know. He often said I was hot, especially if I was wearing the dresses he bought me, but he didn’t peruse my face and body like I was something tremendous and lovely.
‘Do you work out?’ I ask, gesturing to the gym. ‘Kenneth needs to know.’
‘Not really,’ Elijah says. ‘Exercise doesn’t do anything for me–my body doesn’t really change and there’s no exertion in it unless I’m in broad daylight.’
‘You were this ripped when you were changed in like sixteen thirty?’ I ask.
‘Had a physical job,’ he explains. ‘I worked in the stables and with my father on the grounds of a castle in North Yorkshire.’
‘Hence the shoulders,’ I say. He looks at said shoulders in confusion, like he doesn’t know they’re a quarter-mile wide. ‘Are you a fast runner?’
‘Faster than any human, sure,’ he says. I take a big sip of water, some dripping over the side of my mouth and down my neck.
I wipe it away, as his eyes are fixed on the spot where the water travelled.
I’m all sweaty, drips sliding down my back and between my boobs.
I usually try not to get too sweaty on my lunch break, but the locker room is equipped with showers for days like today.
‘What about non-humans?’ I ask.
‘Werewolves might be a different story.’
My eyes shoot wide, and I have a dozen questions about lycanthropy on the tip of my tongue, but the gym door beeping as it unlocks for someone makes me bite them back.