Chapter 35
35
SETH MAYS
What would you do if I were outside your door right now?
He didn’t answer me, which was itself enough of an answer, I guess. I didn’t really know what else to do, since my butt was almost completely dead after having driven for sixteen total hours—I do not recommend doing that drive by yourself, by the way—but I’d gone through about half of what little savings I’d had in the weeks after getting fired, and it had cost me a couple hundred in gas and tolls to get here, so my wallet was really running on empty. Even a couple days of hotel rooms, and I’d be living out of my car.
I’d texted Elliot from the bottom of his driveway, which led up a hill and around a wooded corner. I put my ten-year-old FJ Cruiser into gear and followed the curve, and in front of me was a brown house that absolutely screamed Elliot . Brown stained wood, stone, and a garden that looked like it had almost literally exploded all over the place.
It took me far too long to realize that the front door was open, and Elliot was standing in it, leaning against the doorframe. Like some sort of suave romance-novel hero.
I put the Cruiser in park and half-slid out the door, my legs aching and my knee almost buckling from the pain. My mouth was dry, and I held on to the car door to keep myself on my feet.
“I thought you said you were outside my door,” Elliot called.
I swallowed. “I technically asked what you’d do if I were outside your door,” I answered, trying to sound casual.
“I think you should get up here and find out.”
I grabbed my stuff out of the back of the Cruiser and limped down the path, the handles of my duffel cutting into my hand and the strap on the ancient backpack I’d stolen from Noah sweaty on my shoulder. Elliot stayed in the doorway, watching me, looking just as good as he had the last time I’d seen him, wearing a pair of ripped and stained jeans and a muscle shirt in a heather-grey that looked like it had been used as a paint shirt more than once. His feet were bare and dirty, and his dark hair with its white streak pulled back into a short ponytail, showing the small silver hoops in his ears.
I paused beside a massive rose bush, the flowers a strange mix of lavender and gold. “These are gorgeous.”
“Dad’s prize roses. They’re Distant Drums. I didn’t think they’d come back this year, since—” He stopped himself, then offered me a half-smile. “It doesn’t matter.”
I bent and sniffed one, then damn near dropped my backpack when it slipped on my shoulder. “Shit.”
“They do not smell like shit,” he teased. And they didn’t. They were almost spicy, which was weird for a rose, but I liked it. I probably hadn’t needed to get that close but—somehow I’d forgotten just how strong my sense of smell is now, probably because I was still smelling the urinal cakes from the last rest stop I’d stopped at. Their solution to cleaning the bathroom had been to throw more chemicals at it, and I was pretty sure I’d burned out part of my nose just by being in there.
I didn’t respond to his comment, just walked the rest of the way up to the porch and stood just in front of the little welcome mat, woven out of grasses or reeds or something in a diamond pattern.
“I’m outside your door now,” I told him.
“So you are.” He studied me again, his eyes taking in all six-three of me, my sweaty armpits and rumpled clothes, the bags under my eyes from not having gotten a real decent night of sleep since before I’d gotten sick.
“The beard looks good on you,” he said, and I felt my neck flush.
“Thanks,” I mumbled.
Then Elliot stepped forward and took the duffel from my aching hand. “Come in, Seth,” he said gently, then led the way back into the cool of his house.
It was why I’d come all the way here, so I followed him.