by Eden Butler
“It’s not that. And I’m sorry.” She faced me, curling her arms together again. Her body was stiff and I got the feeling that holding herself like that was something she did to keep her hands off me. Wasn’t real sure why that bothered me, but it did. She took a step closer, body still ridged but her eyes still held that hungry, eager look again and I wondered what she thought of me and why the look on her face seemed so familiar.
“I’m a little thrown off, to be honest,” she said.
“By me?” I tilted my head to watch her close, not getting what I’d done to throw her off.
She watched as I took a step, that hungry, confused expression not moving from her face. There wasn’t any fear or worry in that look, but her stance didn’t change and she kept on holding herself together, knuckles white as she balled her hands into fists, like she was worried what she’d do if I got too close.
Took all I had to not smirk like an asshole at that thought.
“By your aura…your…presence.” She waved a hand, again motioning at something around me, not at me exactly. “There’s something I can’t put my finger on.”
I didn’t buy any of this aura mess. I knew I had a body, a good one for how hard I worked it. I knew, somewhere inside there might be a spirit or soul, wasn’t real sure the difference but I suspected there was more than zeroes and ones to this world. I still believed I was part of it. But auras and cleansings and all the hippie crap she seemed to believe in? Nah. That was a pill she offered that I didn’t have the stomach for.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t shake the feeling of there being more to her. More to the feelings I caught in the half hour I’d been around this crazy white chick.
My mentor Roan had always taught me to listen to my gut and right then, my gut told me not to jet. Not just yet.
“You…you wanna finish?” I grabbed at anything that would keep me in that apartment. The juju shit was weird, but seemed to be strangely ... good. “You know, finish with the…” quick wave around my body, at the invisible whatever-it-was that I guessed was supposed to be my aura, “the ju…ah…the aura cleansing?”
The whites of her knuckles had returned to their original pink color and I relaxed a little, moving slowly back to the sofa, arms spread wide on the back; an invitation to work me over again. Her frown disappeared and she dropped her arms to her side, relaxing as she moved toward me.
She knelt in front of me, still cautious, movements slow as she dragged her fingers to the back of her head to braid her long, chestnut hair. She worked quickly, efficiently, flicking long strands behind, in between, around another as she worked, not watching me as she spoke. “Not sure how good it’ll be now.”
“Not sayin I believe all this,” I waved a hand, grinning when she rolled her eyes, “but I’d hate for you to blast that chanting nonsense all night because you couldn’t finish the job.” She smiled when I shrugged and I guessed she didn’t buy my nonchalant act. “You seem like a chick that likes to finish a job.”
She purposefully ignored my crappy attempt at flirting and moved her hands to her lap, sitting straight. “I like solving problems.” She was dead serious.
“You think I got a problem?”
“Hello, you can’t sleep. Even without my ‘chanting nonsense’ music playing.” Her laugh was quick, a little loud and I liked the way it sounded, even if it was poking fun just a bit. Reminded me of the noises blue jays made when I went to the park on my lunch break. The woman recovered from her humor, head shaking.
“You got a point?”
She moved slowly, but all those colors and sounds came with her as she crawled closer, a few loose strands of hair falling out of the braid as she sat next to me on the sofa. “You offered. And yeah, maybe I do need to finish the job.”
“I’m Nash, by the way. Nash Nation.” It came out in a whoosh of air, like something I’d kept to myself but wanted out in the open. Had no idea why I’d said that.
“Oh…okay.” She started to say something, and I interrupted her, answering what I knew would be the same smartass question I’d heard my whole life. “No, I’m not from Nashville. Never been. Don’t much care for country music. Nash was my granddaddy’s best friend in the war. I got landed with his name because he’d saved my granddaddy and their entire unit on the beach in Normandy.” The small pillow at my feet was blue and red with small sparkling rhinestones edging the seam. I picked it up, to have something to do with my hands as she watched. The silence stretched. “You got a name?”
“A few, actually.”
She didn’t bother looking sorry for the smartass comment and I didn’t bother calling her on it. She knew who she was. “Okay then, wanna give me one?”
She shrugged, a casual gesture I tried to pretend I didn’t find hot. That smile, though, even a monk would be affected by that smile. “Willow.”
“Like the tree?”
“Like the movie.”
For a split second—hell, for longer than a split second—with that teasing look coming from that bold, Technicolor woman, I thought maybe that smile and her flirting might just make me forget about the kind of women I’d dated. All of them.
Nash
No juju worked on me. That’s what I told myself for the hour Willow tried clearing my aura, and I’d been right. Sleep continued to be evasive, the still-griping side piece insomnia was too damn clingy that night, but this time it was mainly because the smell of jasmine clouded my sinuses and stayed on my skin despite the overly long shower I’d taken when I finally made it back to my place.
I hadn’t touched Willow in all that time. Not once. Not even casually. Still, my nose, my skin all smelled like the smoking hot hippie chick who’d convinced me she could help me get some sleep.
I didn’t see her much after that. She stayed out my sight, an on-purpose thing that kept me calm. It went on for a week, with me making no plans to see her. But Willow wasn’t the type of woman you could hang out with—for any reason—and then just forget about. She made my already crazy ass thoughts more chaotic and I’d only spent an hour with her. When I’d left her apartment that night, I told myself I didn’t need the distraction. That she wasn’t my type, no matter how good she smelled or how warm her non-touch felt. That I had just been imagining that freaky connection we seemed to have because I had been so damned tired. Yeah, I admit it, I used the sleep deprivation excuse every time I thought of her.
But we lived in the same building. There would be accidental meetings—passing each other in the lobby or at the mailboxes next to the manager’s office. There were also times when we met at the elevator, the awkwardness a little thicker than in just some other random encounter. Still, Willow wasn’t a woman that could be ignored completely, regardless of door banging and drum thumping and aura cleansing. I saw that clear enough when no less than three different fellas tried getting with her just in the time it took for her to get the mail out of her drop box.
She turned down each one, even Milo Wilson, the seventy-five-year-old janitor who cleaned the building in exchange for the five hundred square foot ground entry apartment next to the manager’s office. Yeah, even he knew a good thing when he saw one.
“You know…” her voice came from the back of the elevator when I slipped inside, idly thumbing through my phone so I would seem busy, only pretending to notice Willow over my shoulder as Mrs. Walters got out on the second floor.
“What?”
She moved to my side, ever-present smile on her face as she looked up at me. “I wanted you to know that I can hear you clear as a bell from my apartment.”
“Payback for those damn monks,” I mumbled, still seeming absorbed elsewhere. She didn’t like me ignoring her, that was made plain enough when she grabbed my phone, taking Instagram from my fingertips and forcing me to look at her. “Willow…”
“I’m just saying I can hear you. At night.” She slipped my phone in my jacket pocket as if she knew me. Like we were friends and not just neighbors who’d only met once. I
had no idea why I didn’t tell her to mind her own business. Jasmine didn’t smell that damn good. “When you have your…you knows.”
“My what?”
I’m 6’2, pretty built. Weights at the gym and the occasional CrossFit session sometimes are the only things that keep me from losing my head when the work gets too hairy or my business partner Duncan rides me too hard. I swear that man is worse than the naggiest wife in the world. But for as big and square as I am, Willow didn’t retreat from my glare or get the message that I wanted her to stay out of my business.
“The noises you make…because you don’t sleep. I hear it all.”
I pulled my phone back out of my pocket, holding it in my left hand to keep it out of Willow’s reach. “You don’t hear anything.”
“I do so.” She sounded like a kid then, and acted like one, making a grab for my phone which I held up, still out of her reach.
I didn’t even look at her, or do anything but watch the floor numbers rise while she gawked at me. That killed her. I knew it did. Willow didn’t seem like the kind of woman who was used to being ignored. Or liked it.
A few heavy sighs, that constant stare at the side of my face and I had to fight the smirk that made my top lip twitch. Then she actually snorted.
“I can hear you pacing, Nash. Back and forth, up and down all night.”
“How you know it’s me pacing?” One brief glance down at her and I let the smirk pull up my lip. “There’s other back and forth, up and down things I could be doing.”
“That’s not…” Her cheeks went pink and my smirk became a full-fledged smile. “Oh…you aren’t…”
“I’ve been known to do a few back and forth, up and down things…”
“That’s not. Well…I mean, I don’t think...”
I laughed then. Couldn’t be helped. Those round, sweet cheeks were completely red after that and I heard her low curse as the elevator doors opened and I headed for my door.
“You need your rest, Nash. I know you do,” she called after me. In the reflection of the wall of windows to my right, I spotted her leaning out of the elevator, that mop of curly hair falling into her face.
“Night, Willow.”
“I can help you, you know…”
The last sound I heard was her yelp as the elevator alert sounded for keeping the doors open too long. Then, there was quiet. At least for a little while.
Two hours later, Left for Dead and three games of Call of Duty still hadn’t made me tired. Duncan had sent two messages while I was in the shower, then another one as I threw together two chicken Cesar wraps. I didn’t respond to any of them. The man never slept, was always on the clock, reason enough for the two divorces he had before he’d hit forty.
I probably should have called him. I thought about it, thought about updating him on the new projections my assistant Daisy had sent from the contractors beta testing of our software. My plan was to revolutionize data security by perfecting the social engineering tech that kept banks and financial institutions from being hacked. The software had been free sourced for decades, but mine piggybacked on the hacker’s ISP, reverse attacking them with a nasty virus I’d invented. Duncan had plans to go wide with our company and it made him nervous that I didn’t worry about it as much as he did. But then, worrying was his job. Mine was the product, period,
But later, as I lay in my bed trying to relax, Coltrane’s sax soaking into my ears, not even my annoyance with Duncan could keep my thoughts from straying to Willow. Hell, I even ended up thinking that a tunnel visioned asshole like him would have been smitten by Willow and her hippie vibe, if he ever had a reason to meet her. Everyone was smitten by her, and damn, but I had to admit it bothered me, which pissed me off even more. Four hours later, I was still awake, completely bored out of my mind. From my bedside table, the Ambien bottle seemed to stare at me, the blue and pink font a taunt, promising peace and serenity. All you had to do was pop that small blue pill into your mouth. One small pill would squash the insomnia. But only for one night. The insomnia would come back the next night and the next, I knew that. To get rid of it, I’d have to take those little blue pills every night, probably for the rest of my life. That cost was way too high, especially factoring in the side effects: the wild pounding of my heart and the fever that came out of nowhere, the listlessness, the empty, bottomless feeling that left me with zero desire to feel anything at all. The last time I had tried that mess, it took me a week to claw my way back. No, Ambien had to be a one-time-only, last resort. I wasn’t that far gone, not yet.
For a second, thoughts of tapping on Willow’s door popped into my head, but I ignored them as quickly as they came. She couldn’t help, no matter how much she believed she could.
Instead I got out of my bed, picking up the tennis ball from the side table in the living room, bouncing it to the ground as I walked to the stereo. If Willow could play her monk chants at ungodly decibels, then she’d have to be okay with a little Coltrane coming from my surround sound. Headphones were fine usually, but sometimes you needed the music to fill the world.
Two long, drawn out notes rattled my speakers and I swear I felt that go deep, to my gut, inside me as I kept my focus on the wall and returning the tennis ball to its surface again and again. That sax went on and on, leveling the faint crackle and pop that came from the speakers—there was a hint of breath in that white noise, something you wouldn’t notice if you only listened a couple of times. But I was a Coltrane disciple. I knew each breath as they came, the cleft of the crackle and the pause just before the long tones, moving between B, A, and G, a million other combinations came from that horn. I knew the direction of each chord and the steady beat of the bass as it thumped and rattled right alongside that slow, smooth sax. The song moved forward, the next started up and I zoned out, not even realizing how each thunck of the tennis ball against the wall was timed perfectly with the beat of the music. That is, until the rumble of a knock rattled my front door.
“Shit.” It was the only thing I could think to say. A glance at my microwave over the open kitchen’s wide, marble island, told me how late it had gotten. Another hard knock and I dropped the ball, muting the stereo before I opened the front door.
“You’re kidding, right?” Willow had braided her hair again, not seeming to care that the double braids gave her a redneck country girl vibe. “You cannot be serious with all this noise?”
“Noise?” My tone was harsh and just to annoy her, I stood in the door way, crossing my arms before I leaned against the frame. “Coltrane is poetry, not noise.”
“I meant the bouncing ball.” She made to push me aside, but I didn’t budge. “Nash, let me in.”
“Why?”
She watched me then, frown pushing away the calm, simple smile she’d worn seconds before. “Because I can help get you to sleep.”
“Oh? How you plan on doing that?” My gaze was purposeful, as penetrating as the slow, wide smile I gave her. The look was intentionally hard, slipping to her mouth, then down her body just long and slow enough to be insulting. It got me the reaction I wanted.
“Is it impossible for you to not act like a horny teenager?”
“I’m not horny.” My laugh came quick, got louder when Willow barged passed my door. “I’m just teasing you a little.”
“You’re shamelessly flirting.”
“Would I do that, Will?”
I could tell by the way she cocked her head, and how she smiled at me that she liked that, the little nickname. It had come out of nowhere but felt right, and I’d been rewarded with a smile I’d not seen before. It looked good on her. “Absolutely.”
I stayed in the doorway while Willow took inventory of my apartment, not judging, but probably recognizing how sparsely it was decorated, with a bunch of posters on my wall but little else. Tupac and Dizzy Gillespie, Einstein, and quotes from both Langston Hughes and Neil Gaiman designed by small time artists. But Willow wasn’t checking out my art or posters; she was assessing.
One nod of her head, an agreement she made to herself, then she faced me, pulling off the loud yellow sweater she wore, stripped down to the sleeveless white tee underneath.
“Okay. The couch will do.”
“Do for what?”
She pointed to it without answering, throwing a stare so serious I almost thought she was sincerely pissed that I’d flirted. Almost. “Lay down.” And when I didn’t move, Willow adopted the best drill sergeant tone and pointed at the brown leather of my couch. “Now.”
Nash
“It’s not gonna work.”
“It’ll work.”
“Stubborn fucking woman…” I flinched when she smacked me, pretending that little slap hurt worse than it did. “Stop beating on me.”
“Stop being an asshole.”
The scent of jasmine was everywhere; it hung like a cloud in my apartment as Willow’s hair slid against my face. She touched me softly, fingertips over my temples, hair tickling my face as she stroked and rubbed my forehead.
I tried to keep it light. “I don’t let anybody talk to me like that, you know. Not even my twin sister.”
She stopped moving and I opened my eyes, staring up at her as she gave me a stupid fake shocked expression with her mouth hanging open. I could sense the smartass comment before she made it. “Oh lord, there’s two of you?”
“Yeah, but we’re not both bad.”
“So it’s just you.”
“That’s it, I don’t have to put up with this nonsense.” I sat up, had nearly made it off her lap when she tugged me back down. I tried to make it light, but I was really starting to get annoyed.
“Stop it. You need at least four hours of sleep. You said it yourself when I asked what you were working on the other night.” She glanced at my open laptop and the incomplete code and blinking cursor I’d left waiting for me. “You said you have a meeting this week. The big one?”
“I’ll manage.”