Chapter 18 #2
Although I’m not looking at her now, I can feel Aurora bristle. “Well, yeah,” she says. “But Kitty completely betrayed her.”
“She did,” I say with a shrug. “Goddard too. It was a scummy thing to do. But the ending was still the same.”
Aurora doesn’t answer, but the tension is still there, and a defensiveness I only partly understand. So I move on once again.
“I guess I’ll try to break the negative cycles,” I say, infusing lightness into my tone. “And if I don’t manage, Nessa definitely will.”
“How is she?” Aurora says.
I grasp the subject gratefully. “She’s amazing.
She’s awesome. I’m in love. I have a million pictures of her.
Look.” I lean across Aurora—invasively, I can admit—to grab my phone, which is still on her other side.
Her breath brushes my neck, sending a shiver through me, but I ignore it.
I grab the phone and return to my spot; then I hold it out and click the button so the screen turns on, revealing the photo of Nessa as my current background.
And to my surprise, a little sound I can’t identify slips from Aurora’s lips—an aw, maybe, or a coo.
I knew it, I find myself thinking with satisfaction. Even the ice queen isn’t immune to Nessa’s cuteness. “She’s cute, right?”
“She is,” Aurora says, and when I look at her, her gaze is softer than usual. “She definitely is.”
It feels like a win, seeing this reaction from her. The screen of my phone goes black after a second, but I can’t quite pull my eyes away from the woman next to me.
“Hey,” I say, because as tempting as it is, I can’t just keep staring at her. “You’re not consoling me anymore.”
“I told you I wouldn’t,” she says.
“I think you gave up too soon. What if I were one of your sisters? Would you still be patting my back?”
She laughs at this, a true, ringing laugh—a burst of unfiltered sound. “That’s possibly the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said.”
I grin, because she’s not wrong.
Then she goes on. “I console my sisters because I like taking care of them. They’re younger and—”
“I’m younger,” I point out.
“Yeah, well,” she says, rolling her eyes. “They need consoling when they’re upset. Even India, and even when she acts like she doesn’t. But you…”
My pulse jumps.
Is she about to say what I think she’s about to say?
When she doesn’t go on, I decide to prod a little. “I…? What?”
But she gives me nothing. She doesn’t even meet my eye.
So I sigh. “Suit yourself,” I say, standing up. My legs are falling asleep. I pause and then speak again. “You’re correct. I can take care of myself.” That’s what she was going to say. I know it. “But it’s nice having someone else there too, isn’t it?”
She gives a slow nod, her eyes distant, her mind clearly far away. After a second, though, she startles. Then she clears her throat. “I’ll head out,” she says.
I gesture silently in the direction of the door, and she stands up too.
“I’m almost done here,” she says as she smooths her hands down her shirt and leggings. It’s a habit of hers, something she does when she’s not sure what to do with her hands.
“I noticed,” I say. “Everything is looking really good. You’re good at this.”
“Anyone can clean,” she says. “But I’m efficient, and I enjoy it.”
We trail out of the living room and down the hall that leads to the entryway. She reaches for the handle of the front door and pulls it open with a lurch. As she’s about to step out, she looks over her shoulder at me. “Can I come back tomorrow morning to finish up?”
“No,” I say quickly. The word is suspiciously loud in the small foyer, too abrupt. So I clear my throat and try to sound more normal. “No. Sorry. I’ve got other stuff going on here then. Let’s just do Monday.”
She looks strangely at me but nods. “All right,” she says slowly, and then she shrugs. “Whatever. That’s fine.”
The tension leaks out of my shoulders as she moves on. I don’t think I’m doing anything wrong, personally, but Aurora probably wouldn’t agree.
Because I may or may not have hired her stupid ex.
Aurora is taking care of the inside of my place, but the outside needed some work too—lawn care and clearing out flower beds and cleaning windows and all that.
So Tyler comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and some Saturdays, like tomorrow morning.
I enjoy that much less than I enjoy having Aurora around.
But I hired him on the condition that he doesn’t tell Aurora—and on the condition that he follows through with his promise to pay back half the loan balance.
I don’t actually have a way to check on that promise, nor the power to enforce it, but he still sounded afraid of me during that conversation. I’ll have to hope that was incentive enough. He’ll be around for a bit longer, because he’s still got several areas left to cover.
Next week, though—Aurora will be gone after that, and who knows if I’ll see her anymore? I’ll be able to connect with her if I want, through Denice, but she won’t be coming to my house, and I won’t be going to her workplace.
We’ll be back to our own lives.
Something inside me rebels at this thought, and my mind begins to churn.
I need to act now if I want to change things. I had originally planned to ask Denice’s advice, but…this may be one of my last chances. It takes me a second to realize that my pulse has begun to race, and although the temperature in my house is perfectly normal, I’m suddenly too warm.
These things don’t happen to me; not really. I have feelings for women, but they’re shallow, superficial—certainly nothing out of my control.
Now, though…something is different.
And before I notice what’s happening—before I can stop myself—a question has sprung from my lips, released into the space between us and impossible to unsay:
“What would you think about dating a younger man?”