by Amelia Stone
I frowned. “Using me?” I repeated slowly, like the words didn’t make sense.
Because they didn’t. I mean, I was not an egomaniac, and I definitely wasn’t the kind of asshole who walked through the world thinking every woman wanted him. I knew from experience that attraction is about more than just looks. Sometimes two people just don’t have that chemistry, that electricity.
Like when you touch someone’s hand and it feels like lightning charging through your veins.
But I really thought Taylor and I had clicked. She laughed at all my jokes, she was interested in every story I told her, she listened avidly when I talked about the things that interested me, she…
Jesus. I stopped to listen to my own thoughts, and I was floored by how douchebag-y I sounded. Me, me, me.
I stared at her, staggered by the realization of my complete and utter self-absorption. How had I never realized that our relationship had been entirely one-sided? I’d never once stopped to think about her motivations for going out with me. I’d just taken her interest for granted, and what was worse, I hadn’t even bothered to get to know her in return. In fact, now that I stopped to really think about it, I realized that every single thing I liked about her was rooted in the fact that she liked me.
Now who was the insensitive jerk?
“It’s true,” she replied, pulling me from my self-flagellation. “I was using you to make someone else jealous. I…” She trailed off, muttering to herself. “I thought I could forget… wanted to get over…”
She huffed in frustration, then stared at me for a long moment, her expression shadowed in guilt. Finally she stood, pacing over to the front door.
“Look, I’m sorry,” she said, turning back to face me. “I’m really sorry. I behaved horribly tonight. All week, in fact. I was leading you on.” Her big blue eyes pleaded with me. “Will you forgive me?”
I nodded, feeling dazed by the complete one-eighty this conversation had taken. “Of course,” I said automatically. Because I don’t hold grudges.
And besides, it wasn’t like I was innocent in all this, either. When I hadn’t been focusing on myself, I was making eyes at another woman.
Taylor looked relieved. “Thank you.”
That shook me out of my stupor, finally. I shook my head. “It’s me who should be apologizing. I never really treated you the way you should be treated. I didn’t even try to get to know you.”
Also, I think I have a crush on your best friend.
But of course I didn’t say that, because I like having balls. Even nice girls went nuclear when their friends dated their exes.
She laughed, and it sounded kind of bitter to me. “That’s not your fault. Apparently I don’t let anyone get to know the real me.” She looked up at me with blue eyes that looked sad. “I don’t even know if there is a real me.”
And with those enigmatic words, she went into the house, leaving me standing on her porch, more confused than I’d ever been in my life.
As I was driving home, my sister called me. Despite how tired I was from the weirdest night ever, I didn’t even hesitate to answer. I would always find the energy to talk to my favorite girl in the whole world.
“Big brother!” Ellie crowed as soon as the hands-free picked up the call.
Even though I was happy to hear from her, I frowned at the stretch of pavement in front of my windshield, wondering where the hell she was calling from. The background was noisy; the thumping bassline of some song I didn’t recognize rattled my eardrums. It sounded like a bar, or club maybe.
“Ellie Belly! Where are you?” I asked.
I could almost hear her rolling her eyes at her childhood nickname. She got annoyed every single time I called her by it, which was of course a big part of the reason I did it.
But mostly it was because our dad had given her the name, the first day he’d met us. It made me smile every time I used it, remembering how much he loved us.
On the other end of the phone, Ellie made a grown-up happy noise. “I’m at a party!” she trilled, sounding more than a little tipsy. “Willow’s book released this week, and she’s already at number six on the New York Times bestseller list! So we are celebrating!” A cheer went up behind her, and she shouted something unintelligible to someone in the background.
I had to stop and think for a moment about who Willow was, because I really was just terrible with names. Some friend of a friend, maybe?
“Okay,” I said slowly. “Congratulations?”
Ellie let out a tinkling laugh, a sound I never got tired of. My little sister had an innocent quality to her despite her twenty-six years, and there wasn’t much that could dampen her spirits.
And believe me, we’d been through more than enough in our lives to test that.
“I’ll pass along your enthusiasm.” Her tone was dry, but I could hear the smile in her voice.
“Thanks.” I chuckled. “So, you having fun?”
“Oh, man, so much fun! There are tons of interesting people here, and I’m wearing a new dress, and I am just feeling. so. good!” Her laughter chimed through the phone, and I smiled. At least someone was having a good night.
Maybe too good, though. “How much have you had to drink?” I asked, feeling the urge to check on her.
My sister held her liquor surprisingly well, considering she was as tiny as I was huge. Still, no matter how many times I told myself that she was an adult and could take care of herself, I worried. I’d never quite shaken the protective instinct I’d formed at an early age, especially not when it came to her. It had always been my job to shield her from life’s traumas, and I wasn’t about to stop now.
“I’m doing just fine, big brother,” she assured me. “Besides, Krista is here with me.”
I let out a relieved sigh. Ellie’s best friend since college, Krista Summers, never drank, and I knew she’d look after my sister almost as well as I could.
“That’s good,” I said absently as I exited the three-and-a-half mile causeway that led from South Bay to Lindenhurst. I hung a left on Montauk, going on autopilot now. “How do you guys know, uh,” I fumbled, having already forgotten her name.
“Willow. She’s Krista’s cousin, dummy,” my sister chided, laughing at my weird inability to never remember anyone’s name.
A light bulb went off in my head. I’d met Willow once, years ago, at some Summers family thing Ellie had dragged me to. The wedding of Krista’s older sister, maybe? It was hard to keep track. Ellie’s best friend had about a million cousins. Her family was from South Bay Island, in fact, and half the population of that tiny little hamlet seemed to be related to her.
“That’s right,” I said. “Tall, blonde, curves for days?”
My sister snorted. “Of course that’s what you remember.”
I shrugged. “I’m a man, sis,” I reminded her. “I may not be good with names, but I remember those hips of hers.”
Ellie laughed again. “Anyway,” she drawled. “I am out on the Island for the weekend.”
I perked up at that. My sister lived in the city, in a cramped studio in Hell’s Kitchen, and I didn’t see her nearly as often as I would like. We both worked too much, and the hour-long train ride each way didn’t help.
“Oh, yeah?”
She hummed an affirmative. “Well, technically on South Bay,” she added.
I groaned. “I was just out there.” And now I’d missed her. I frowned as I turned onto Ocean Avenue.
“Really? What for?”
I paused. How to describe my evening? On the one hand, there was the whole confounding break-up with Taylor, and the three-ring circus that was Harry the Mother Lover. On the other hand, there was the weird, instantaneous pull that I’d felt for Larkin. Still felt, if I was being honest with myself.
I wanted to see her again. As soon as possible. I hardly knew what I’d say, how I’d approach her. I couldn’t even really say why I wanted to see her. She confused me as much as she intrigued me, if not more. She had a fu
ck-off streak a mile wide, and her wardrobe, grooming, and even the way she carried herself gave off an aggressively unsexy vibe.
Though if I was being honest with myself, I did wonder what she looked like under those huge sweaters. Like I said, I am a man. But I wasn’t entirely sure she’d be up for showing anyone a bit more of herself. She’d been pretty disgusted by the idea of having sex on the first date, and I wasn’t entirely sure that was all due to Harry the Rat.
Because she obviously was not dealing well with her husband’s death. I could only imagine the morass of emotions she’d feel about the idea of sex with someone other than him.
But still. I had a strong desire – one I didn’t even fully understand – to chip away at the walls she’d put up around herself. I wanted to know her better. The little glimpses I’d gotten of the woman beneath all that grief and anger were fascinating. She had a razor-sharp wit, and she was quick on her feet. It would be a hell of a lot of fun to talk with her, to debate and argue and find common ground.
And it was obvious she cared fiercely about her friends and family. I thought of the way those lavender eyes had flashed when she said she’d learned sign language for her niece. I suspected that once I peeled away some of those bitter outer layers, Larkin would turn out to have a sweet center. Because anyone who grieved as deeply as she did had to know a thing or two about love, right? The emotions were two sides of the same coin. You couldn’t have one without the other.
Shit. Wait just a second. Love? I barely even knew her. I mean, I had been thinking lately of settling down. It was one of the reasons I’d pursued Taylor so hard, why I’d started making plans for the future, even without getting to know her. I was thirty-one years old. I’d always known I wanted to settle down, get married, maybe start a family. And this seemed like the perfect time. The dating scene had been getting old for a while now. A lot of my friends were getting married, having babies. It all looked really appealing to me.
But tonight had made me a little wary. I didn’t want to put all my eggs in the wrong basket. Taylor had been a mistake, and I didn’t really want to do that again. Especially not with Larkin. She seemed brittle, like one hard tap would shatter her. It wouldn’t be me who did it, if I could possibly help it.
I’d have to go slow with her, get to know her first. It was clear that Larkin could really use a friend. I’d start there and see where it went.
“Graham?” My sister’s sweet, musical voice brought me back to my phone call. “You want to tell me what you were doing out here tonight?”
But instead of answering her, I asked her about something that had been in the back of my mind all night.
“Hey, what causes purple eyes?”
Most people would be offended by the abrupt change of subject, but my sister was used to it. Our conversations were always scattered, because we both tended to think ten steps ahead of where we were.
And I knew she could never resist a medical puzzle. My sister – excuse me, Dr. Eloise Morris – was a biomedical engineer. She designed future-tech prosthetics that were so sophisticated, even I didn’t fully understand them. And not to toot my own horn, but I’d gotten my undergrad degree from Cal Poly. I was a pretty smart guy, but Ellie easily lapped me.
On the other end of the line, she hummed thoughtfully, and I could tell she was moving to a quieter location. The thumping house music faded by the second.
“Well, there’s a lot of debate about that,” she finally answered once the background noise had disappeared.
“How so?” I asked as I pulled into my driveway, stopping under the portico and turning the car off.
“Well, the most famous person to supposedly have violet eyes was Elizabeth Taylor, right?”
I hummed in agreement, though I was really thinking about another young woman with dark hair, pale skin, and bewitching eyes. Larkin looked a lot like the famous actress, now that I thought about it.
“But a lot of people think her eyes were actually blue,” Ellie continued, oblivious to my thoughts. “Her eye color looked different from movie to movie, depending on her makeup, costumes, and the cinematography. So different, in fact, that most people thought the violet hue was just an illusion, a trick of the light.”
I nodded. “Makes sense.” Look at that thing going around the internet recently, some photo of a dress. The colors looked different to different people, proving that the eye is easily tricked.
“And of course it’s difficult in this day and age, with computers and Photoshop, to really know what anyone’s eye color is unless you’ve actually seen them face-to-face,” she added. “And even then, it’s tough to say for sure without further study. You’d need several controlled environments, preferably with different types of lighting, and...”
I tuned her out for a moment, thinking. While it was certainly true that colors looked different under different lighting, I was sure that wasn’t the case here.
“But what if you have seen someone face-to-face,” I said, once she’d paused, “and there’s no mistaking what your own eyes are telling you?”
Ellie tsked. “Well, it’s really what your occipital lobe is telling you, big brother. The eyes don’t actually see, the brain does.”
I chuckled. “Forgive me my ignorance. You know I’m just a lowly computer nerd.”
The company I worked for made microchips, and they were the best in the biz. I’d been hired right out of college, and my bosses were constantly praising my innovative work. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I had no insecurities whatsoever about my intelligence.
Unless I was talking to my baby sister. I might be a little biased, but I was convinced that if you looked up the word ‘genius’ in the dictionary, you’d see Ellie’s picture there.
“Well, the true violet eye is not entirely unheard of, but it is rare. It’s estimated that there are only about six hundred people with that eye color.”
“In the US?” I asked. That certainly was rare.
“In the world,” Ellie clarified.
Wow. I quickly did the math – that was roughly one in every twelve-and-two-thirds million people, going by the current estimated world population.
But she still hadn’t answered my question.
“Okay, so what really causes it, then?” I repeated.
She hummed for a moment, like she was thinking about how to word it. “A lot of scientists believe the violet eye color is a genetic mutation, or that it can only happen due to albinism. The lack of pigmentation in the iris causes the red of the blood vessels beneath to mix with blue or gray, causing violet.”
I thought again of Larkin. Once she’d tamed it, her long hair was gorgeous, tumbling over her shoulders in soft curls. But it was most definitely black, as were her eyebrows and her long, thick lashes. And she’d insisted that all of that was natural.
“And that’s it?” I asked. “There’s no other explanation?”
Ellie was quiet for a moment, and I knew she was thinking about it again. Finally, she laughed.
“Well, there’s a whole bunch of nonsense about a myth called Alexandria’s Genesis, but I don’t buy into that.”
“Of course you don’t.” I smiled. My sister was a bigger cheerleader for science than even Neil DeGrasse Tyson. She didn’t believe in myths, legends, religions, or much of anything beyond what she could prove using the scientific method.
Except love. Weirdly, my uber-logical sister was a diehard romantic.
“I guess the bottom line is, if you think you’ve seen someone with violet eyes, I’d like to meet them.” Her tone was eager, and I could just imagine her bouncing on the balls of her feet excitedly. I was sure she would want to pull Larkin into her office, probably run a million invasive tests.
I frowned. “I don’t need you treating her like a lab rat,” I warned.
“Oh, so it’s a her, huh?” she asked slyly. “Is that why you came all the way out to South Bay on a Friday night? For a date?”
My frown deepened. Busted. Now I’d ne
ver get my sister off my case. She’d want to know everything there was to know about Larkin, and once she did, she’d start planning the rest of my and her future sister-in-law’s lives together. I could tell her Larkin was not my date, spill the whole sordid tale of tonight. But it wouldn’t matter. Ellie was like a hound dog who’d just gotten her first whiff of fox.
I might really want to find a partner to go through life with, but for Ellie, it was an obsession. It was her dearest wish to see me happily married off with eight or so kids and a soft midsection. She lamented every time she came to visit me that I was wasting the huge old Victorian I’d bought a few months ago, rattling around in the house all by myself.
Sure enough, she immediately started in with the interrogations. “What’s her name? When can I meet her? What does she do for a living?”
I chuckled at my sister’s enthusiasm, but I really wasn’t up to an inquisition tonight. After a long day at work and the date from hell, I was exhausted, and it was finally catching up with me. I let out a lusty yawn.
“I’ve gotta go, Ellie Belly, I’m home now.” I stepped out of the car, walking over to the side door quickly. It was still windy as hell, and the cold gusts of air were lashing at my face.
“You are so weird. Why do you only call me from the car?”
I chuckled. “You called me, sis.”
“Blah blah semantics blah blah. My question still has merit.”
I shook my head. “I call you from the car because otherwise I will just sit in traffic, hating my life,” I told her as I unlocked the door and disabled the alarm.
“If you moved to Manhattan to be closer to me,” she nagged, sounding eerily like our mom, “you could sit on the subway and hate your life.”
I laughed. “Not a chance, kid. I like it here in the ‘burbs.” And I loved living in the same town we’d grown up in. Amityville was home to me. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date.”
“Another date? After you just got home from one?” she teased.
“With my pillow,” I clarified. She groaned, and I chuckled again. “We’re totally gonna snuggle.”