Chapter 7 #2
Now that I’d claimed my own space with my friends, I didn’t feel pulled in six directions at once. And because standing in front of Xerses no longer felt like waiting to be handled.
It felt like choosing to stay.
And God help me, it was exactly what I wanted to do.
Roxanne called everyone toward the terrace for after-dinner drinks, and the evening moved.
At breakfast, a place had been set for me next to him. At brunch, someone handed him my coffee order.
“How do they know how I take my coffee?” I asked Avril.
“Maman asked Xerses who I guess knew, and then she told the staff.”
“He knows how I like my coffee, but that is a terrifying chain of command.”
“That is a Persian mother with a mission.”
Hope slid into the chair beside me. “You look settled.”
“I look like a woman who got handed the right coffee without asking.”
“Kelly.” Hope’s voice went soft. “You’re allowed to be comfortable here.”
“I’m allowed to be a guest here. There’s a difference.”
“Is there?”
“Yes. Guests leave.”
Hope found my face. Then she stole my sugar cube for the coffee.
“I wanted that,” I said.
“Consider it a belonging tax,” she said and dropped it in her cup.
The terrifying part was how quickly I adapted.
On Saturday afternoon, Roxanne organized one of those family outings that somehow felt casual while still involving enough logistics to invade a country.
We were all heading into town for a late lunch, some pre-graduation shopping, and whatever other emotional nonsense this family could wring out of Virgin Cove on a sunny day.
The foyer became a tangle of people collecting bags and sunglasses and children’s jackets not for children but because Roxanne apparently traveled like weather.
I came down the stairs adjusting an earring and found the room already in motion.
Hope and Avril by the front console. Miley on her phone.
Charlie trying to steal sunglasses from Jeff.
Britney talking to Michael in the low, concentrated voice she used when deciding whether to be kind or destructive.
And Xerses. Waiting. He had his jacket over one arm, sunglasses in hand, looking like he had all the time in the world and had chosen to spend exactly this stretch of it on me. That hit harder than it should have.
My steps slowed for half a second.
His eyes moved over me once, like he was allowing himself the luxury of seeing me.
My friends noticed too.
Hope’s mouth started to curve. I met her gaze from halfway across the foyer and shook my head once.
All my attention went back to him. It was like we were alone in a crowd. By the time I reached the front hall table for my bag, Xerses had stepped closer.
“You took your time.”
I studied him. “I own mirrors. It’s very difficult to compete with your family.”
“There is no one else as magnetic as you.”
The low pulse in his throat told me he’d heard all of that.
He held out my sunglasses. I stared.
“You had them on the breakfast room side table,” he said.
“Did the staff give them to you?”
“I found them.”
I blinked. He had? I took them from him carefully, mostly because contact was becoming too charged for something as innocent as sunglasses.
“Thank you.”
He smiled and leaned a little too close and reminded me my body had no moral center.
That detail made us look like people who already looked out for around each other naturally.
And that was a lie. I needed to remember that.
Outside, the day was bright enough to hurt.
Summer heat lay over the drive. Salt air moved in from the water in warm gusts.
People split between cars without much thought.
Michael and Britney with the twins. Jeff and Miley together.
Charlie and Hope and Avril piling into one SUV in a blur of noise. Isabel with Roman.
I should have hesitated before getting into Xerses’ car but I didn’t.
That was the second ugly truth of the weekend. The first had been that I liked being chosen beside him. The second was that I no longer felt awkward climbing into his world.
His car smelled like leather and him. The door shut and cut off the noise outside instantly. I fastened my seat belt and looked out toward the sweep of lawn and ocean beyond it before I could accidentally look at him instead.
He started the car and pulled us down the drive.
The compound receded behind us. We passed the White stone, blue sky and hydrangeas.
I turned my face toward the open sliver of window and let the sea wind cool my skin.
“Say what’s on your mind,” he said.
“I’m thinking this is all moving so fast.”
“Define fast.”
“Fast as in your mother is already calling me habibti and your brother tried to steal my sunglasses and you got them back for me.”
“Charlie steals everyone’s sunglasses.”
“That does not make it less alarming.”
“It makes it a day in my house.”
He kept his eyes on the road.
Family was easy for him. I held my breath and then asked, “That’s it?”
He glanced at me once. “Would you prefer arguments and shouting?”
“No.”
He nodded. “Good.”
I stared at his profile for a second. He looked good doing things no one should be allowed to look that good doing, like driving or breathing.
“You’re being a good man,” I said.
The rest of the drive into town was easier than it should have been.
By the time we met the others on the main street in Virgin Cove, I was laughing.
We moved through town in a pack.
Shops. Lunch. Roxanne buying things for no discernible reason other than joy. Parvis somehow turning a stop in a local bookstore into a conversation about intuition and markets with the owner. The whole thing should have been exhausting.
And everywhere we went, people did the same small social math they’d done at the compound. Doors and pathways. Kelly and Xerses. Together.
In the afternoon when I stepped into a little gourmet shop to get out of the sun.
“That hot sauce has a warning label,” Xerses said behind me.
I shook my head. “You followed me into a condiment aisle.”
He shrugged. “I followed you into a shop. The condiment aisle was your doing.”
“You say that like you didn’t want to be here.”
“I didn’t say that.”
I looked at him. He looked back. Something warm moved between us that had no business existing near artisanal mustard.
I reached automatically for the thing I knew Xerses would mock, but I realized I did it because I would be closer to him. I slowed and he smiled.
What I was seeing now was more charged than that. I grabbed the mustard and wobbled backward.
He looked at me like I was alive in ways he hadn’t planned for as I paid for my choice.
When we got back to the compound before dusk, everyone split off toward rooms and showers and preparing for the next required appearance.
I set my bag down in the guest room and stood in the middle of it.
“You are not falling for him,” I told the curtains.
The curtains were silk. They did not care.
“You are temporarily insane from proximity and good coffee and a man who remembered your sunglasses.”
I sat on the bed.
“Sunglasses,” I repeated. “He remembered your sunglasses. That is not romance. That is observation.”
But it felt like romance.
My own pulse was still not fully normal when I realized I was in trouble.
When I’d walked next to him or with him, all I’d wanted to do was stay.