by Jake Irons
Of course I’m gonna get all fucked up with Chelsea back at my house. She’s the first person other than me to set foot in that place since I moved in. She’s the first person I’ve had a conversation with in months. She’s hot, too—pretty, with big brown eyes under long lashes, pouty lips, and an ass that almost killed me on that four-wheeler.
Of course I want to fuck her. But it’s the other shit I’m feeling, beneath my horny haze, that’s got me fucked up. I don’t even know what it is. Like…a feeling of bittersweet without the sweet. Or like nostalgia for a daydream…
…I’m sure there’s a German word for it.
I start the four-wheeler, pull onto the road, burn it. I relish the cold whip of the snow against my cheeks and push Chelsea out of my mind. I’m supposed to be looking for Acer.
He always runs to these fields when it snows, to frolic. I don’t know how old he is, exactly. I got him from a shelter a few months after I moved up here. But if I had to guess, I’d say somewhere around eight. Like I told Chelsea, he’s probably fine. I was only looking for him before so I would have something to do. And I’m looking for him now because I was starting to act foolish.
I lied about the truck. It’s fine. I wasn’t working on it. I just…I just really want to fuck. God I wanna fuck. It’s been too long. Too fucking long.
My judgment is clearly suspect. I don’t know who this girl is. I don’t know what she’s after. I don’t even know her last name.
She could be exactly who she says she is, or she could be a crazy fangirl, or she could be crazy in some other way. For all I know, Michal sent her.
I try to laugh that last thought away, but…fuck, would Michal send a girl? He’s all about being man’s man, so no. Except he really wants me dead.
The real question is: could he have found me?
I consider it as I pull off the road.
Could Michal have found me? Anything’s possible. Could he have found me without me finding out that he found me? That seems even less likely, but still, possible.
I reach to my right ankle and pat the .38 strapped there. Satisfied, I stand, cup my mouth and yell, “Acer! Here boy! Here Acer!”
I’ve got to be cautious.
“Acer!”
When I get back home, I’ll tell Chelsea the truck’s working, and I’ll drive her to her hotel.
“Here boy! Here Acer!”
I am not going to fuck Chelsea.
“Aaaaaaaaaaacer!”
I am not.
“ACER!”
Going to fuck Chelsea.
Chapter 4
Eli is back. It took him nearly an hour.
No, I did not hear the four-wheeler when I hung up with Frankie. I heard my Jiminy Cricket, and I knew that if I listened to my friend any longer, I’d stop hearing it. I’m going to tell Eli who I am and why I’m here. It’s the right thing to do.
I did pass my time snooping through Eli’s house. Not the entire house. I have enough sense or paranoia to think that maybe Eli has hidden cameras, or maybe he comes back when I’m downstairs and I don’t hear him. But I did open all the drawers and cabinets on this floor.
No pictures. No diaries. An extensive DVD collection. Lots of books. A well-stocked fridge.
I was maybe five minutes from deciding to try one of the two doors on this level—to rooms behind and to the right of the staircase—when I heard the low rumble of Eli’s four-wheeler. I dashed to the couch, and arranged myself so I’d be facing the door when he came in.
Now I’m fidgeting. I sit up. I straighten my clothes. I adjust the ice pack on my leg. I use my camera on my phone to check my appearance.
I look like I twisted my ankle in a snowstorm. I try to tame my hair, but—oh shit!—I hear him outside the door. I stash my phone in my pocket and take a deep breath. I’m going to tell him. I have to. I’ll be charming and apologetic. He’ll be cool. He might even give me an interview.
I hold my breath as the door swings open. Eli pauses on the threshold, and fixes those electric blue eyes on me. His gaze pins me to the couch, and my pounding heartbeat is the only thing I hear.
Until a shaggy white dog practically jumps in my lap and I scream in terror.
“Acer, heel!”
Acer does not heel. I groan as he jostles my ankle.
“I’m sorry,” Eli apologizes, coming quickly to my side. “He doesn’t get many visitors. Down, you!” He grabs Acer, who looks kind of like a Husky in the body and kind of like a Labrador in the face, by the collar and jerks him to the floor.
“Sit.”
Acer sits and looks at me excitedly, panting and wagging his tail.
“It’s okay. I love dogs. I just—he scared me.”
I reach to rub Ace between the ears, and he licks my wrist. I don’t know why I immediately think of Acer as “Ace” instead of “Acer,” but he seems like an Ace to me.
“Who’s a good boy?” I coo. “I’m glad you found him.”
Eli shrugs. “How is your ankle?” He kneels beside his dog and lifts the bag of half-melted ice.
“It feels better.”
“Good. Would you like me to take this?”
I nod. “Thanks.”
He carries it into the kitchen, and Acer stays by my side. I listen as Eli empties the water and the ice into the sink. Then Acer whines, and I realize my fingers on his nape have gone still. What a ham.
I hear more cabinets and drawers open and close. I’m able to see the edge of the stainless fridge door, if I strain my neck, and Eli’s backside as he rummages in it.
I’m feeling restless, in part because I’m not the kind of girl that does well with sitting and waiting, and in part because I’m thinking about what happened earlier. On the four-wheeler. Was that brought on by the close proximity, or does he actually feel attracted to me?
I look around the comfortable-but-not-exactly-homey room and wonder what it would be like if I was here for fun. If Eli Murphy was making me dinner. I find I can’t imagine. Because really, I know next to nothing about him.
He loves his dog and can fix a broken truck. He’s a gentleman, and has rugged aesthetic sensibilities.
…But what else?
Why did he leave the city? If what the donut woman says is true, he gets out some, but if the dog’s reaction is any indication, maybe not much. Did the notoriety his book garnered make him go off-grid? I try to picture the man who carried me inside feeling overwhelmed to the point of retreating. And…I can’t.
“I’m going to whip up some dinner,” Eli announces from the kitchen. “How does steak and salad sound? I’ve got some venison that’s been marinating since this morning.”
“That sounds amazing!” My mouth is already watering. “But only if it’s no trouble for you.”
“It’s no trouble. I was going to cook it anyway.”
Hmmmm, one E-fact that failed to make the list: Eli cooks. But I guess he would have to cook, living up here. “So a good home-cooked meal. I should get run over more often,” I tease.
“I’m not making any promises,” he warns. “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten any reviews.”
Interesting.
“Except from Acer. And he eats socks.”
“Me too,” I joke.
“Really?”
“Yep. So the bar’s like, Nike running socks low.”
“That’s a relief.”
I smile in the direction of the kitchen. “How long is this dinner going to take?”
“Maybe half an hour,” he replies. “Feel free to watch whatever you want.”
“I’m more interested in conversation. Do you mind if I join you? In the kitchen?”
A slight hesitation, and then, “Nope. Let me help you—”
“I got it.” I stand as he comes into view, wave him back to the kitchen, and limp toward his kitchen table. “The twist must not be so bad. It hardly hurts.”
“You still want to keep it elevated.”
He grabs a pillow from the couch and places it
on one of the dark wood chairs. He places that in front of the chair I’ve chosen to sit in.
“Thanks,” I say as I ease myself into one. He lifts my left leg onto the pillow, then returns to the counter. Acer sits beside me, and I rub his head as I watch Eli rinse a big pile of greens. I kind of like this arrangement, because his back is to me most of the time, and he has a nice, broad back. And thick shoulders. His muscled arms are long, elegant. I’ve never thought of arms as elegant, but his are.
He said it’s been a while since anyone ate his cooking. And he said that Acer doesn’t usually have company. Which means Eli doesn’t usually have company.
“Tell me about yourself,” I say suddenly.
“What do you want to know?”
I shrug, but he can’t see me. “You said you were from the South. What state?”
“Georgia.”
“Why did you move to Colorado?”
“I wanted something different.” He pauses for a long moment, so that I’m opening my mouth to ask him another question when he says, “I wanted to get back to a simpler way of living.”
“Like, you were a surgeon and you got burned out, or you got sick of fast food and wanted to eat organic?”
I can hear the smile in his voice as he says, “The latter, mostly. Although I didn’t realize how much of a hippy I was until I planted my first kale garden.”
“Kale garden? So are you some kind of farmer?”
He snorts. “No. I have a green house where I grow a few rows of kale and some other veggies. That’s where I got all of this.” He gestures to the pile of what I guess is kale.
“What about the venison?”
“I shot it in November.”
“You hunt?”
“Bow hunt.”
“That’s cool.” And something else I didn’t know. “So is everything you eat something you grew or hunted?”
“Some of it. I buy bacon and chicken. And donuts.”
“Donuts?”
“Love ‘em.”
“Mmmm, me too.”
Eli turns off the sink and puts the last of the green stuff into a bowl. Then he steps left to the pantry, opens it, and removes a large box with the azure color I recognize from Dozer’s. He brings it to me and opens the lid. There are two glazed and a chocolate. I choose a glazed.
He closes the box and places it on the table, then returns to the counter, where he begins chopping an onion.
“Those are the best I’ve found around town,” he says. “They’re a few days old though.”
“Mmmmmm,” I say as I chew my bite. The truth is, I’m a sweets girl, but I can appreciate how much better this donut is than the donut from Belly’s. “This is good.”
“Glad you like it.”
I finish off the donut, and he opens one of the cabinets. I see wine glasses—he grabs two. “Would you like some wine?”
“Sure.”
He pours a red and I remind myself to sip. SIP. I’ve got a decent tolerance, but I need to stay sharp.
Eli hands me the glass, and I thank him.
“It’s a blend,” he says. “Should go well with our dinner.”
“And he knows wine too.”
He bows. I take a sip—mmmm, it’s gonna be hard to just sip. I watch him chop the onion into tiny pieces. I take another sip and swirl my glass. “So…you farm and hunt. You’re a great cook—”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
“And you know wine.”
“I know what my guy at the wine store tells me.”
“Add modest to the list.”
“I am the most modest person I know.”
I swallow a long sip. “What do you do when you’re not overwhelming your victims with your modesty?”
“Look for more victims.”
I laugh, and he laughs, and it’s a real laugh. A deep laugh. I take another sip. “I’m serious. What’s a girl got to do to afford this fabulous lifestyle?”
He hesitates for half a second. “Money management. Investment.” He grins over his shoulder. “Boring stuff like that.”
“Are you some kind of Wall Street guy?”
“Something like that.”
“Is that hard, from here?”
“Not really?”
“How early do you have to wake up?”
“How early?” He doesn’t get the question. Because he’s not some kind of Wall Street guy.
“The New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ open at 9:30 a.m. in New York, right? So you’d have to be ready at 7:30 every morning? Unless you do foreign markets, and then I don’t really have a clue.”
“I’ve got someone who wakes up for me.” His smile, when he turns to look at me, is thin. “You seem to know your stuff. Are you a Wall Street girl?”
Now why did I do that? It couldn’t have been more obvious I was trying to trap him. “I wish I had Wall Street girl money. But no, sadly. I only dated a Wall Street guy.”
“All the way in John’s Mill?”
“No. All the way in NYC.” I notice his hand pause, for just a second, in its motion. “Other than both being from south of the Mason-Dixon Line, we have something else in common: I lived in New York, too. Or, I live there. At least until the end of next month. And I dated a financial guy for a year and a half.”
So far so true. Cory was a junior analyst. A real workaholic.
“And what do you do when you’re not breaking the hearts of the one percent?”
I roll my eyes. “He wishes he was in the one percent.” I’m stalling, but not because I can’t lie. I’m a practiced liar. I just don’t want to. But… “I was a photographer.”
“Was?”
Technically, I did take photos for my stories. Like maybe three times. But… “I worked for a portrait studio. I say ‘worked’ because I’m getting laid off…” I check my imaginary watch, “oh about now.”
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know.” The despair in my voice is real. “I came out here—” Oh shit. “Ah, you know, I don’t even know. I guess I was hoping that maybe there would be, you know, a job for a jobless photographer.”
“You came all the way to Colorado to find a job? I thought it was for fun.”
I need to get my head in the game. “Well, I had a trip planned with my friends anyway, so I just thought I’d check. Do you know anyone who’s hiring?”
Eli shakes his head. He’s done with the onions now, and opening a jar of something red I can’t make out from here. “Sorry, no,” he says. He grabs a few dollops of whatever he’s got, and asks, “How did you end up doing photography?”
“It was something I always enjoyed as a kid,” I said. “I’m actually an English major, but I helped put myself through school by taking family portraits and stuff.”
“Spooky.”
“Spooky?”
“Yeah. I did the same thing.”
Shit. That must have been where I got the idea. “Really.”
He nods. “Yeah.”
“That is weird. Do you have a sister named Mckaleigh?”
“Only child,” he replies.
“Oh my God, me too.”
“Cue X-Files theme.”
I giggle. “I do have a sister actually.”
“Named Mckaleigh?”
I gasp. “How did you know?”
“Cue X-Files theme.”
I laugh. He laughs. I take a drink.
“What are you going to do if you can’t find a job?” Eli asks. “Is moving back home an option?”
“No,” I say. “Mckaleigh’s about to be a senior at Virginia Tech, and my parents…” I would never live with them in a thousand years. “They aren’t too keen to support their adult daughter.”
“We do have a lot in common.”
“You can’t go home,” I say.
“True dat.” He returns the onion and the jar of what I think are peppers to the fridge, then turns and lean
s his hip against the counter. “Do you have any other ambitions?”
I give Acer a final rub then put my hand in my lap. He looks up at me with puppy dog eyes.
“I don’t know what my ambitions are.” I sigh. “Does winning the lottery count?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then to win the lottery.”
“Me too.”
“I don’t believe you,” I say.
“Why not?”
He’s a multi-millionaire. Or he was three years ago. But “Chelsea” doesn’t know that. “As a money guy, you should know how bad the odds are.”
“Oh, I do. I only play when the pot gets big.”
“Me too. All of my friends make fun of me.”
Eli makes a dismissive noise. “It only takes a dollar to play.”
“Right.” I lean forward in my chair. “Just one dollar! Even if there’s virtually no chance you will win, what kind of person doesn’t throw down one dollar for a chance at 300 million?”
“The kind of person who doesn’t have any imagination,” he says definitively.
He’s right. My friend Melanie—she does book-keeping for The Watcher. I love her to death, she’s an amazing person. She is also practically aghast any time anyone mentions playing the lottery, and really, she couldn’t imagine a new flavor of ice cream. “I once wrote a paper about being a lotto winner for an English Comp class,” Eli says.
I snicker. “Did you really?”
He nods. “The assignment was something like ‘If you could be anything in the world, what would you be?’”
“And you chose lottery winner?”
“That was…sophomore year, maybe. College.”
“What was your imagined life like?”
“Not too different from my life now, honestly. Except on a beach. And with a few more hot girls.”
I snort, and—wait. He just called me hot, right? I try not to blush—which is a ridiculous reaction for an adult to have. He definitely just called me hot though. “Too bad you didn’t hit me with your car a few days ago,” I quip. “The whole gang would be up here.”