I jotted down the number for the house landline just in case, though I knew my phone wouldn’t exactly call it. I’d find a pay phone. I’d seen one of those on our way back from the halfway house.
I tapped on the door of the spare room as quietly as I good. It was unlikely she’d hear me anyway.
“Hey,” I whispered, cracking the door. “You awake?”
There was a beat, and for a short moment, I was convinced I was talking to myself.
“Yes.” Aurora whispered back.
She was staring out the window, still draped in my pajamas. She didn’t turn to look at me, and I wanted to ask what she was looking at, but I thought better of it. I knew what she was looking at—home. This place that she’d known so well long ago was now so very different.
“Why don’t we get something to eat?” I asked, hoping to keep the mood light. “I can answer any questions you have. We don’t have anywhere to be today.”
She let out a sigh and turned around. Her eyes were sad, but she offered a smile and nodded.
Henry was waiting outside when we stepped out. I’d sent him a quick text when I’d woken up, hoping just maybe he would actually do what I wanted as well as Nash. I was surprised to find him waiting.
“Even, Rory.” He smiled, nodding to us both. The guy didn’t forget names, that was for sure.
Aurora tensed up next to me. I wasn’t so sure she liked the nickname I’d given her. She mumbled a good morning to him as he held the door open for us, anyway. I had a feeling it wasn’t him she was annoyed with.
“Why did you tell them my name was Rory?” she asked while Henry was heading around the car.
“Because Aurora isn’t exactly a common name these days.” I shrugged. “I was trying to help you blend in.”
“Am I meant to blend in?”
Henry was in the car by now.
“I think that’s impossible for you, but you can try.”
“What do you mean?” She smiled.
“Some people are born to stand out.” I shrugged, lowering my voice. “If you don’t like it, I can tell them to call you Aurora instead.”
“No, it’s alright. I… I like it.”
“Yeah?”
She nodded. “Rory it is.”
Her eyes lit up as Henry started the car and pulled out. We passed by other cars and buildings at a relatively slow speed, but to her, we must have been flying. I had a feeling that horse-drawn carriages didn’t get 35 mph.
“Where to, Even?” Henry asked from the front seat.
“Let’s start with breakfast,” I replied, “And maybe shoes.”
Rory let out a soft laugh, looking down at her leather-clad feet. “Yeah, maybe shoes.”
We started with breakfast of crepes and the strongest coffee I’d ever tasted at a tiny café near a shopping center. Rory’s eyes were on everything, darting from one sound to the next, taking it all in. It was different in the daytime. I thought she might have sensory overload before we even finished our food. But the moment we’d finished and offered a quick goodbye to the café owners, she was practically dancing to the shopping mall.
It took nearly two hours for her to choose a pair of shoes safe for walking in, and I ended up buying her three. Actually, Nash ended up buying her three, but that wasn’t the point. For some reason, watching her try on every pair of shoes in the store was more fun than I’d had all year.
By some miracle, Nash didn’t mind that I was out exploring Lyon. So long as I stuck with my driver, who apparently doubled as a body guard. I was free to enjoy my Saturday. He’d somehow heard good things from my boss. I couldn’t imagine how that was possible.
I took Rory everywhere I could possibly search for on the Internet. We visited the Museum of Cenema Miniature, which had teeny tiny versions of the coolest things. It also gave me the perfect opportunity to catch her up on world history, not that I was an expert. Still, she seemed to cling to every word I spoke, along with my hand as we walked through.
We went to the aquarium, which she found fascinating, La Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière, and the Museum of Fine Arts, where she nearly got us arrested trying to touch one of the sculptures. That’s the last thing I needed when Nash was so reluctantly trusting me with a day of freedom.
“Family heirloom.” I shrugged to the member of security, pulling Rory away as quickly as possible as I tried to explain that we most definitely couldn’t touch things even if she was 100 percent certain her father had personally commissioned it.
By the time we’d left the museum, it was inching toward evening, and we were both exhausted. She kicked off her shoes in the car and curled up next to me in the back seat. I let out a laugh. Had she chosen the best shoes for walking all day? No. Would I have convinced her to change them? Also no.
Rory drifted off to sleep as we rounded the block, her head resting on my shoulder. When I felt a buzz in my pocket, I had to carefully shift myself to get it out without waking her. I was grateful to Henry for his gentle driving as I read the message from Nash.
Headed to dinner with Autumn. Don’t wait up.
I grinned. Autumn, again. And it was the weekend. No meetings. This had to be personal. I knew she’d been slowly falling in love with him for the better part of the last two years since I’d met her. She went above and beyond, and even I knew it wasn’t because the pay was that awesome.
“Hey, Henry?” I said quietly, trying not to wake Rory.
“Yes, Mis—I mean, Even?” He said, eyeing me in the rearview only for a moment.
“Think we could stop and grab something to eat? Looks like Nash is headed out, and I don’t feel like cooking.”
Henry nodded, taking the next right.
Reluctantly, I woke her as we pulled up to the house.
“Hey,” I whispered, “We’re home. Are you hungry?”
She took a deep breath of air, blinking and nodded, making an agreeable ‘mhmm’ sound. I laughed.
“Come on.” I smiled, taking her hand as I helped her stumble out of the car.
Henry trailed behind, having managed to grab the bags of things we’d bought while we were out.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Henry as he shut the door behind us.
I started toward the spare room with the bags of things I’d bought for Rory while she took a seat on the couch and stared at a specific spot on the wall until I got back.
“Hey, you awake?” I laughed, still holding onto the bag of food Henry had grabbed us.
She jumped, but nodded as she turned to me.
“Let’s go eat.”
Rory was quiet as we sat down. She barely got out a thank you as I put a plate in front of her. I didn’t hold it against her, though. It had been a pretty long day. Who knew you could see an entire city in one day?
I’d never been so content in silence. Normally, it was painful. I could hear everything in the nothing that other people could ignore. Something about silence with Rory was different.
She poked at her food for a while before she finally couldn’t stop yawning long enough to chew, and I knew it was just time for bed. So, I put the food back in the containers it had come in, and set them in the fridge. Maybe we could snack on it the next day.
I walked her back to the spare room again in silence, bumping shoulders. When we reached the doorway, she paused there, looking up at me. She was smiling and blushing, and without saying a word she was saying so many things. I thought for one brief second she might kiss me before she turned and went to bed.
I let out a sigh and leaned against the wall. How was I in this deep so fast? And why was I just letting it happen when I knew it would only end in disaster?
Chapter 12
I woke to a gentle tap on the door. It wasn’t Rory’s knock, though.
“Hey, Ev,” Nash called through the door. “I have some things I want to show you today. Wear something nice but comfortable.”
Nice but comfortable. What did that even mean?
I rolled over and g
lanced at the alarm clock on the nightstand. At least he’d let me sleep in until 8. I sighed, rubbing my face before rolling out of bed and checking the closet I’d finally organized.
Business clothes, business clothes, too small clothes, and more business clothes. What was that he said I should wear? I let out a laugh before I put on a tight t-shirt and jeans. They didn’t have holes in them, so that was nice, right?
When I stepped into the hallway, I could hear Nash’s voice carrying in from the kitchen. I found him and Autumn sitting with coffee mugs in their hands chatting it up.
“Morning.” I nodded, heading straight for the coffee pot.
I was glad Autumn was here because Nash absolutely could not make coffee.
“Did you have fun yesterday?” Nash asked as I poured sugar and creamer into my coffee. “Henry said you went to just about every tourist attraction on the map.”
“Yeah.” I nodded, taking a sip and letting out a sigh. “I really liked the art museum. You just don’t see art like that anymore.”
“Henry said you’re getting close with… Rory? Is it?” Autumn asked. It was a loaded question. The most loaded of questions. A cannon, if you will.
“Yeah, she’s really helping me with French, and…work stuff.”
“Right.” Autumn nodded, taking a long sip of her coffee. “Because she’s an intern.”
“Mhm.” My throat was going dry despite holding a warm beverage in my hands. They might as well have put me in a dark room with a bright light shining on me. This felt like an interrogation.
“Did she stay over again last night?” Nash asked, but his tone wasn’t the same as Autumn’s. He was just asking. Nothing behind it.
“Yeah, we got in pretty late, so it didn’t make sense not to. I didn’t know we had plans today. Otherwise—”
“It’s alright.” Nash shrugged. “She can come along. I’m sure she’ll find it interesting. Go see if she wants some coffee. I’d love to talk to her anyway.”
Autumn and I locked eyes for a moment before I slipped out of the kitchen. When I turned back to look at her just before heading into the hall, she was still eyeing me. She knew. Shit, she knew.
Nash said we’d be exploring the city in a very different light. Along with Autumn, Nash felt I needed to see more of what the company does, why it’s important, why I should care. One day it might matter to me.
One day, soon.
I didn’t like the sound of that, but I went anyway, Rory in tow.
As Rory and I climbed out of the car to meet Nash and Autumn at one of the sites for the company, the realization that I knew little about McCoy Enterprises hit me. I knew we sold routers and stuff. We did IT. We did something with cybersecurity, but I didn’t know much about that either.
But we weren’t at McCoy Enterprises. Instead, we pulled up to a building much smaller than McCoy Enterprises that held multiple companies. I noticed on the elevator that each floor contained something different.
The four of us rode up to the fifth floor, which I was surprised to find was full of employees on a Sunday. They were all wearing McCoy badges, our logo in bold blue.
They were installing some wires, some hardware here and there, and a couple others were at the back talking with someone from the company based on the floor.
“So, they’re just getting set up today.” Nash beamed. “They’re setting up an entirely new IT setup, using all McCoy products, so it will be built completely from the ground up.”
I nodded, looking around at what looked like a mess, but everyone seemed to know what to do with it. I was not meant to install wiring apparently. I could barely keep my headphones from getting tangled. All that wire would have been in shambles on my watch.
Nash was still going on about the security we’d be installing later that day, and how our networking system would change the face of this startup in a day.
Rory was fascinated where I was bored, and Autumn, I think, only had eyes for Nash.
Maybe true love was real after all, and apparently it was unrequited.
“The great thing is that all of this hardware is recyclable!” Nash stated as he pointed toward some of the boxes they were wiring up. “Even the wire can be reused later on. And we’ve been working with hemp plastics lately as well.”
Oh, yeah, because that’s not hypocritical at all.
“Which is good because of the number of systems we install each year,” Nash continued. “Approximately 60 percent of our overall revenue comes from system installations and upkeep. We would be nowhere without our IT department.”
He had lost me. Once statistics came into play, I lost interest.
What did hold my interest was Rory, who seemed to hang on every word, and consider every number, as if she could do all the math in her head. The idea of energy was incredible to her. Computers were still this shiny new toy. How computers were entwined in our life was amazing to her. Seeing that light in her eyes was incredible to me.
We continued to meander around the floor, eyeing the work of the IT department as Nash kept up with the number talk. Then we went to another site, where the department was working on another system for a different type of company. Because of course we needed to see the different types of setups.
It was mid-afternoon before Nash decided to call it a day. We’d grabbed the briefest lunch possible between sites, and all of us were getting hungry again. Even Nash seemed to be hungry, and he forgot to eat half the time.
Neither Rory nor I felt up to a dinner out. Especially if it meant I had to dress up. But Nash wanted something specific, and Autumn was happy to go with him. I knew even before they were climbing into the car together and waving goodbye that something was up with them.
I just couldn’t decide if I cared that much.
Rory and I decided to just go home and cook something. So far, Nash had kept the fridge pretty well stocked. I wasn’t sure who was doing the shopping, though, as it clearly wasn’t either of us. And I had only seen Autumn at the house once.
I had learned he’d found a housekeeper in France, as well. Never one to do his own laundry, I guess. A fact I’d learned only because while in France, I’d yet to do laundry, and somehow, it was always clean. I knew Rory hadn’t learned how to use a washer and dryer yet.
When we walked in the door, Rory was still happy-go-lucky about the day we’d had with Nash, which was baffling to me. But listening to her talk about it made me smile as we checked the fridge for what we might be able to cook.
By the time we’d finished with dinner, I was tired, and while she didn’t want to admit it, she was too. I cleaned up while she started eyeing the art hanging on the walls, and the book shelf in the living room.
“Even the piano has changed so much.” Rory sighed, as I set the dishes aside to dry.
I’d been avoiding this piano. It was so nice in that vintage way that made every fiber of my classical-loving side want to play it.
“Well, people still play music from your time.” I shrugged, not thinking as I spoke. “I had to study it when I was first learning to play.”
“You play? Can you play something for me?”
I swallowed hard. “No, I don’t really—”
“Please?” She had my hand in hers, which had my stomach in knots already, and I hadn’t even sat down at the piano yet.
“It’s been a long time,” I breathed. I wasn’t ready to talk about why I no longer play.
“Something simple, then.”
“Rory…” I sighed.
“Please?” she asked again. It was her eyes looking into mine that did it.
“Okay, sure.”
I’d been asked several times since losing my parents to play the piano. From parties to school functions by literally anyone knew who I’d played. The truth was that I’d tried, and when my fingers touched the keys, all I could think about was that night. That last hug from my dad. I knew they would have wanted me to keep playing, but I just couldn’t.
Something about Ro
ry made me want to be better, braver, stronger. I probably would have done anything she asked so long as she was saying ‘please’ while looking at me with those eyes.
I started off playing a song from Yiruma. It wasn’t hard, and I knew Rory wouldn’t know it, but she was in awe watching my fingers move across the keys. I was surprised at how much I remembered, not only of the song, but of the piano in general. Muscle memory was an amazing thing.
“That was beautiful.” She smiled as I finished.
“Want to learn something?” I grinned, and she nodded.
It took me only five minutes to get her to memorize the simple half of the Heart and Soul Duet. It wasn’t exactly hard, and she seemed to learn everything so easily.
“What’s that one called?” she asked, grinning like she’d just won a first prize or something.
“It’s called the Heart and Soul Duet.”
She was so close to me, her hands having already brushed mine while playing. The way she was looking at me, her eyes were pulling me in, and it wasn’t like I had to go far. Our faces were only inches apart.
“Should I play something else?” I whispered, just looking into her eyes.
She shook her head softly, her eyes not leaving mine.
I swallowed hard and leaned toward her. Our noses had only brushed when the front door opened, and I pulled away.
“Even, you’re playing the piano?” Nash asked. He might not have even seen what almost happened from his tone.
“I asked her to.” Rory smiled.
“And she agreed?”
I felt myself stiffen.
“She taught me something.” Rory nodded.
“Did she now?” Now Nash was really interested.
“The Heart and Soul Duet,” I said numbly.
“Oh, you used to love that one. Let’s see it, then.”
“I’m actually really tired,” I said flatly and stood up.
Nash opened his mouth to speak, but I grabbed Rory’s arm and dragged her to my room before he could say anything.
Maybe I should have taken it easy on Nash. It’s not like him asking me to play the piano when I was already playing it was wrong. I just hated that it was expected. He didn’t ask, not really. And it was like he’d been putting me in front of all these pianos, trying to force me back into it. Why didn’t he get that I just couldn’t love piano like I had before?
Waking Rory Page 8