10. 10 #2
My head turned to him, and he was going through a pile of photographs. Marching across the room, I stood to his side and looked down at the photos with him. They were all of him and another woman. His hair was cut short, but it was unmistakably him.
She was pretty, blond hair and blue eyes shining brightly. All of the photos seemed to have been taken by her on a cell phone. Elias smiled along with her, though some of the photos she’d taken when he wasn't looking. I watched as he flipped through them.
A photo of them at a beach, one of them in the car. They went to dinner together and she snapped a photo of Elias smiling with a glass of what appeared to be whiskey.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“Julia.”
I’d heard that name before. “The pants?” I’d thrown her pants into the trashcan at the first opportunity after we were cleared from quarantine. Elias hadn’t minded.
“That’s the one.”
“Well,” I sighed. “Julia’s got giant tits.” I wouldn’t have noticed if she wasn’t wearing a v-neck in every photo, but she made it hard not to look.
“They were fake,” Elias said. “Not that it matters.” He threw the photos onto a desk, and they landed with a splat, spreading out along the wooden surface.
“You look happy.”
He shook his head. “I was trying to be. I’m pretty sure I was drunk in every one of these pictures.”
I couldn’t help the feelings get the better of me.
We both had a past, had both been with plenty of people before we found each other, but I liked to ignore that.
I preferred to live in my own fantasy world where only Elias and I could exist, but he told me how his relationships went, how they ended.
Julia, in particular, was kicked out of his life on a whim.
Banished, for what? I never pressed him on it.
Maybe she was it, too, and he couldn’t handle it.
It felt like a stone was sitting in my stomach and I knew that it didn’t deserve to be there. These photos had nothing to do with us. Unless they did.
I cleared my throat. “Did you love her?”
Elias was visibly annoyed. His face scrunched up, brows pulling together. “Do you not have more important questions? Like, how did these get here? I haven’t even seen half of these. This is fucked up.”
“Clearly she has something to do with you or me. There’s some kind of clue here. So, answer me,” I said, my voice stronger. “Did you love her?”
“Did you forget how I kicked her out of my house and never spoke to her again?” His hands rubbed at his face. “Doesn’t sound like love to me.”
“Eight months is a long time, it’s only natural that you loved her,” I said. We’d been together for almost eight months, too. “You never told me why you kicked her out. Were you protecting her?”
“I was protecting myself.” He looked to the floor. “I panicked.”
“Hmm,” I pondered. It was hard not to wonder when he’d panic with me.
He couldn’t leave me here to do this on my own, not with Dr. Petrova’s change imminent.
Or, maybe he would “protect himself” and call for an emergency evacuation, only to regret it later when he got notified of my death.
Julia must have been blindsided. He’d taken her on a weekend getaway then left her in the dust.
“Please don’t brood,” he said. “The last time I saw her was three or four years ago, so she definitely has nothing to do with why we are here. I don’t know why these pictures are here other than to torture me, and to confuse you.”
“I’m not brooding,” I argued.
“It’s pretty clear you’re brooding. I can see it on your face.
” He put his hands on my shoulders and looked me dead in the eyes.
“All I’m saying is that someone put these pictures here so we would fight about them, and then we’d be distracted.
Just because I don’t like talking about this doesn’t mean I’m going to lie. ”
I looked away first, my voice shrinking down. “What is so difficult about telling me whether or not you were in love with this woman?”
“Because it doesn’t matter,” he groaned, stepping away. “No, I wasn’t in love with her, and I wasted eight months of her life so I could be a little less lonely. I feel like shit about it. What do you want me to say?”
I exhaled, not feeling any relief after getting the answers I probed for. “Honestly, I don’t know.”
He sat on the desk, leaning forward to put his head in his hands. “Remember what I said six hours ago?”
“I do.”
“Please don’t make me say it again. It’s exhausting.”
I sat on the desk next to him, my feet not quite hitting the floor. He looked up, his expression weary. Taking his hand in mine, I leaned my head against his shoulder.
We couldn’t carry on this conversation. I could shove my growing anxiety to the back of my mind while we explored. We had a lot of ground to cover before Novikov came back, and we didn’t have a timeline to work with.
“Okay, let’s recap.” I had tortured Elias enough, squeezing answers out of him until I had tired him out. “There’s only one person realistically responsible for this.”
“Taylor,” he said.
“Right. The dog name and these photos. . . Clearly we are on the right track. We are meant to be here.”
“I think I should tell Parsons that Dr. Petrova escaped, we can’t kill her, and we need to be evacuated.” His voice sounded desperate, his composure rattled. “They can just blow the place up.”
“No,” I said. “We need to keep going.”
“For what? More emotional turmoil? The place is cleaned out, it’s just a game now.”
“Maybe he wants us to turn back.” If we’d made it beyond the door, it was only a matter of time before we found something Taylor was trying to hide. Every step of the way was designed to make us turn around, and I didn’t want to give in to that feeling.
I stood from the desk, tugging Elias’s hand as I did, and forced him to stand with me.
“I’m too distracted. I can’t protect you when I’m like this.”
He had a lot to think about: my attitude toward him yesterday, and no doubt his own feelings toward me. Maybe he thought I’d be another Julia, too.
“We’re a team?” I asked.
He nodded. “A great one.”
“Then let’s forget everything else and focus on what we are here to do,” I said. “As a team.”
His thumb and forefinger touched my chin. “I have a hard time doing that when it comes to you.”