The stern set of his boss’s brow faded, and James broke into laughter. He slapped his hand on the cover of his textbook. “God, your face is priceless. Relax, I was kidding.”
Annoyed and relieved, Will gave his boss an impatient look to get on with it.
James cooperated by saying, “Professor Atwood, the department head, was invited to attend a party this weekend. Big formal affair hosted by one of the members of the University board. Since she already has plans, she deferred the duty of attending and rubbing elbows with a bunch of stuffy old people to me. Now, I get to hand the job over to you.”
“You want me to attend a party?”
“And talk to people. Network. This is an opportunity for you to make some valuable connections. And for me to avoid having to socialize with a bunch of people who don’t like me.”
Will frowned.
“Oh, don’t worry, the dislike is mutual,” James said with an encouraging smile.
“So if I attend this party for you,” Will said, just to be clear on the terms, “I don’t have to complete the case study, and I get to keep my job?”
“For the time being, yes. But if you aren’t going to be working on the case study, I will have to find you something else.” He looked much too delighted by the prospect.
Given that he could have just fired Will, his terms were fairly reasonable. And he was right that it would be a great opportunity for Will to meet some influential people.
He reached over the shortest stack of books and shook James’s hand. “Deal.”
Chapter Seventeen
Mist twirls and dips.
Wraps around your body,
clings to your arms.
Ornaments your hair
in smoky strands of silver.
Leah tapped her eraser against the edge of her notebook and read over that last line. She was still writing too many abstract images, and there wasn’t a single focus. The assignment had been to pick one person, place, or thing, and then to write the poem around it.
“Urgh.” She scribbled over the whole thing and flipped her notebook to a fresh page.
The cat sits in the window.
Watches cars.
Falls asleep.
Best life ever.
She was going to fail this class. With a sigh, she flipped the page again to the next blank one. The paper ripped in half. She winced at the sound, which tore through the silent library like a firecracker. A student at the nearby computer looked over with a frown.
Tossing the scrap of paper on the table beside her backpack, she blew irritably at a piece of hair that had fallen over her eye and considered what to write about. Yawning, she propped her elbow on the table and rested her head against her palm, eyes closed.
Thank goodness this was the only poetry class she had to take for her writing major. It was only midway into the semester, and the professor had already assigned the class over a dozen poems to evaluate, five poems to write, and made them buy three different books, one of them his own. That was just tacky.
Normally, Leah enjoyed being challenged because an ‘easy A’ class was a waste of both her money and her time. But she just really didn’t like writing poetry. It came with all these different rules that writing prose didn’t have.
She sighed again and opened her eyes, looking around the library for inspiration. She loved everything about libraries—the musty smell of old books and dusty shelves, the chairs shoved into quiet corners that were perfect for reading, the silence that didn’t have to be filled with meaningless chatter.
Between two shelves across from where she was sitting, she could see two people sharing a loveseat, their heads bowed over a single laptop. The girl was whispering and pointing at the screen, while the guy nodded quietly, smiling as he turned his head to look at her face. They didn’t seem to mind that their sides were plastered together. The girl actually tried to scoot even closer to him.
Leah couldn’t help staring. They were nauseatingly cute. Was that what she wanted? She had been pretty sure of the answer until that moment in the theater. The question had lingered all week, driving her back to the therapy session yesterday where she was forced to wonder about her choices and what she wanted out of love and life and whatever the hell else the counselor had talked about.
The problem was that she still had no idea.
Like this damn poem. Screw the assignment. She picked up her pencil and began to write whatever came to mind first.
Carry me back to that moment
before the wonder dies.
I want to repose
where the old oak grows
amidst the fireflies.
Someone dropped into the seat beside her. She looked up from her notebook to find Helena squinting past her shoulder at what she was writing.
“I hate poetry,” Leah announced.
Helena smiled and shoved her backpack next to Leah’s on the table. “That’s because you suck at it. Just keep practicing. Don’t you also hate sucking?”
“That depends entirely.” She smothered a laugh and ducked sideways to avoid Helena’s swipe at her head.
“Out of the gutter,” she said. “What are you doing for lunch? Want to join me and Jay?”
“Be the third wheel on your lunch date? No thanks.”
“It’s not a date,” Helena said as she played with the zipper on her backpack. “There’s nothing suspicious about eating lunch with a friend. And you’re not a third wheel. If anything, Jay would be the third wheel.”
“You are way too defensive for me to take your arguments seriously.”
Helena swiped at her head again, and Leah snickered as she took refuge behind her notebook.
“Are you coming with me or not?” she asked.
“Not,” Leah said, before laying her poetry notebook back on the table. “I have to figure out what I’m doing for this class. God, I hate poetry.”
“So you keep saying. Anyway, since you’re not working very hard, I wanted to ask you something.”
“Not to chaperone another Jay date, is it?”
“No, you—” Helena made a strangling gesture with her hands. Leah coughed into her palm to keep from laughing again because they were starting to get evil looks from the neighboring students.
“Okay, okay.” She was glad for the distraction anyway. She closed her notebook and turned to face Helena. “What is it?”
“Why are you still attending therapy?”
Leah blinked in surprise. Helena didn’t sound upset that she hadn’t told her. If anything, she sounded happy about it. Like she had just discovered a juicy secret.
“How do you know that?”
“I was taking the city bus last night out to the strip mall, and we passed the church. I saw your car in the parking lot.” With an impish smile, she hunched her shoulders and whispered, “You know, just because you met that guy there doesn’t mean you have to keep going. Have you even gotten his number yet?”
Shaking her head, Leah turned away and put up her hands. “I’m not talking about this.”
“Oh come on!”
Leah shushed her with a hissed reminder that they were in a library.
Undeterred, Helena giggled and gave Leah’s shoulders a small shake. “You’re actually going back there to see him even though you hate it. This is huge.”
“What makes you think he’s the reason I went back?”
Helena snorted. “Oh, right, you went back because you like the cookies.”
“They make very effective paper weights. And projectiles.”
“Would you be serious?”
Leah rolled her eyes and shoved her hair behind her ear with restless fingers. “Fine. I went back so I could see him again. But I haven’t even worked out how I feel about everything, so even if I wanted to, there’s nothing to talk about.”
Thinking about Blue Eyes filled her with nervous energy. It made her want to pace or shake out her hands to try and shed the impatience. She kept feeling like she needed to do s
omething about it except she had no idea what that was.
But she would rather write bad poetry than talk about her feelings again, so she went back to her notebook and flipped it to a blank page.
“Ugh, you are no fun.” Helena reached for her backpack and began organizing her homework on the table.
Several minutes of comfortable silence passed. Leah tried to focus again on her poem, but the concentration just wasn’t there.
Then Helena said, “Actually, that’s not even what I really wanted to talk to you about.”
“What did you want to talk about then?” Leah asked warily.
“Since you’re beginning to have feelings like a normal person, maybe you should try talking to your mom.”
Leah looked up from drawing lightning bolts in the margin of her blank page. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Well, you’ve got that party tomorrow. Maybe you could …” She wiggled her fingers, something she did when she was trying to find the right words. But it was more fun for Leah pretend she just enjoyed making spirit fingers. “Extend the olive branch. Work on your relationship.”
Leah slapped down her pencil and gave her friend an incredulous look. “We’re talking about my mom here, right? You know she doesn’t care about me or Elijah or having a relationship with us.”
“Yeah,” Helena said, her voice quiet. Careful. “But you do.”
Leah tightened her jaw and looked away, that ache blossoming again in her chest. “You couldn’t have waited until we were home to bring this up?”
Helena tossed her hair back and then ran her finger down her textbook page to find where she’d left off reading. “Well, I wanted to catch you before tomorrow’s party, and you know how neither of us are ever home at the same time during the weekdays except for at night when you’re either knocked out or I’m—”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “But why are you bringing this up at all?”
“I know you, Leah. I see the way you look at your mom. And the way Elijah looks at her. For his sake, at least, just …” She gave a light shrug and pretended to look nonchalant about the whole thing. “Think about it.”
“I can’t believe this,” Leah muttered. She picked up her pencil and began furiously doodling dark clouds above her lightning bolts.
Helena was apparently finished because she quietly set about finishing her homework. Leah, on the other hand, could no longer focus on anything but the dull ache pressing at her ribs. She mentally rewrote her poem.
Carry me back to that moment
before the wonder dies.
I want the warmth of her hand,
for her to understand,
and for her love to stop being lies.
Chapter Eighteen
Leah scooted a high-backed chair across the lobby while several people watched on in curiosity. Some even looked offended, although she couldn’t for the life of her figure out why. It wasn’t like it was their chair she’d taken.
She set the fancy chair against the wall right next to a table spread out with hors d'oeuvres and happily sank onto its plush, brocade-covered cushion. Elijah stood a couple feet away, helping himself to everything on the table. Since he’d been picking over the selection for a good ten minutes, she’d figured some seating would be nice, thus the show of dragging the nearest chair across the lobby and into the main room.
Elijah looked over at where she was sitting and, with a questioning tilt of his brow, held out a miniature iced cookie. She shook her head—she’d already eaten half a dozen of them—and he happily popped it into his mouth.
When she arrived at the venue, she had to admit she’d been a little awed. The old building had been an opera house in the late twenties, but now it was a multi-purpose center and a popular venue for fancy parties and the occasional wedding. Leah had never been inside before, but when driving past the building, its tall façade and Gothic spires had always drawn her eye.
The room she was in now was easily five times the size of her whole apartment, and every visible surface gleamed. A giant crystal chandelier hung from a high ceiling inlaid with gold marble and colored glass. The architectural décor alone probably cost more than all four years of her tuition and graduate school.
Servers weaved through the crowd with platters of the same hors d'oeuvres Elijah was having for his dinner. Women in colorful gowns and men in suits stood around, trying to look important as they sipped their wine. The pair of women to Leah’s left had been gossiping about who was wearing what, whose jobs were the most important, and who was sleeping with whom ever since Elijah and Leah first scoped out the hors d'oeuvres table. It was like being forced to watch an episode of The Real Housewives. She wished she had earplugs.
On the other side of the hors d'oeuvres table, near a broad entryway framed with heavy gold drapes, a group of guys stood in a circle. They kept giving her conspicuous looks. A dark-haired one with a green necktie tugged down his suit jacket, gave his friends a final look for courage, and began making his way toward Leah.
She met his gaze, her eyes narrowed. His feet faltered, and he began nervously tugging at his suit jacket again. Since he was still coming over, she crossed her arms and glared so hard that he finally looked away and turned on his polished heel. A couple of his waiting friends began laughing, but most of them just looked confused.
Satisfied for having cut off the unwanted attention, Leah leaned back in her seat and gave Elijah an encouraging smile when he moved onto a platter filled with what looked like tempura-fried sushi rolls.
She fiddled with the lace hem of her form-fitting black dress—it was her go-to outfit for formal occasions, and Helena had agreed she looked great in it—and went back to observing the party guests. How did some of these women walk on four-inch heels? They must have possessed the balance of tight-rope walkers. Leah loved heels as much as the next girl, but she also loved her calves. And being able to walk.
Getting glamored up was always fun, but not so much when it was this awkward. She’d almost dressed in jeans and a T-shirt just so she could be comfortable, but she didn’t want to stand out too much. She must have done all right with herself though because her mom had taken one look at her and had nothing to criticize except her hair. She’d left it down instead of pulling it back.
All evening, she’d been working up the courage to talk to her mom. She didn’t even know what she’d say, but Helena had been right. For Elijah’s sake, she had to at least try.
Elijah finally wandered back to Leah’s side. She gave him her seat before returning to the lobby to drag another chair across the shiny floors into the main room.
“Full?” she asked as she settled onto the upholstery.
Elijah nodded. “This stuff is delicious. I wish we could take some home.”
“Maybe we can smuggle some out later,” she said with a conspiratorial grin. He nodded and grinned back.
Without food as a distraction, it didn’t take long for them to grow bored, so she nudged Elijah’s side and pointed at an old man dressed in a black suit.
“See the bottom of his pants?” she asked.
Elijah squinted at him. “What about it?”
“I think that’s dog hair,” she said. “I bet he’s some kind of dog wrangler. Maybe he’s got a whole army of dogs in his giant house, and he throws pool parties for them.”
Elijah laughed. “And maybe each of them has their own room.”
“Of course! And see that lady?” She pointed to a woman who stood out in a staid gray suit, her hair slicked back into a tight bun. “She’s secretly an undercover spy posing as a school teacher. The boring clothes are to throw everyone off her trail.”
Elijah bounced in his seat, warming up to the game. “Yeah, and she’s hiding secret weapons in that bun on her head.”
She nodded at a guy with his suit jacket and the first couple buttons of his white shirt undone. “What about him?”
Elijah squished his mouth to the side in consideration. “He’s an astronaut. He
’s here taking a break before his big top secret mission to fly to Mars.”
“Ooh, you’ve got competition,” she said, and he laughed again.
“Who’s next?” he asked eagerly.
She scanned the crowd. “Okay, how about—”
Her voice died in her throat. She froze, lips parted, as she watched Blue Eyes shake hands with some old guy in a checkered suit.
Blue Eyes’ hair was combed neatly back, and his suit looked a bit tight around the shoulders, which meant he was one of the few men here whose clothes weren’t tailored. Still, he cut a great figure in it. Even as her thoughts raced with questions, she couldn’t help taking a moment to admire his silhouette and the way his pants hugged his butt. He cleaned up well, but he still stood out in the crowd. Aside from the gorgeous smile on his face, there was something about the way he carried himself and the way he engaged those around him that drew people in like a beacon.
“Leah.”
A sharp elbow jabbed her side. She startled and looked away from Blue Eyes to find her brother frowning at her.
“What is it?” he asked, scanning the faces of the guests where she’d been staring. “Do you know someone?”
She quickly shook her head and then glanced back at Blue Eyes and—shit! He’d spotted her. His eyes widened just enough to convey surprise.
And now he was heading her away. She swiveled to the right in her seat, avoiding eye contact, as if that might deter him. Glaring him into submission probably wouldn’t work like it had with the other guy.
Elijah watched him approach, expression innocently curious. She tugged self-consciously at her dress and then stopped when she realized what she was doing.
“Hey,” said Blue Eyes’ familiar voice.
Bracing herself, she took a slow, fortifying breath and looked up to find that gorgeous smile directed at her. God, the guy should never stop smiling. He should join the UN or something because he could inspire world peace on that smile alone.
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