by Dawn Lanuza
“Did you hate Riot!?”
“No,” he said quickly, “that’s not it at all. A couple of dudes hit on me, and I thought that was pretty good for my ego since my date couldn’t look me in the eye.”
Caty looked away and bit her lip in dismay. “It’s not a date.”
“You know what I mean,” he sighed. His fingers tipped her chin up. “Hey, Caty. It’s just me.”
She moved away. “Let’s just go.”
ten
Caty came into the hotel when he checked in and walked up to the room with him. She knew she should have offered her apartment, but it was a small space for three people, and it certainly wasn’t big enough to house the tension between them now.
Truthfully, she didn’t want him to invade all of her space. She wanted to have something of New York to herself so when he left, she wouldn’t associate it with him.
Plus, it might imply things, and she didn’t want that either. She wanted to see how this day played out—without preconceived notions, if that was possible. But it was proving to be hard.
They hadn’t spoken since leaving Riot! It wasn’t a good silence. It was like that time he drove her to the hotel before she flew back to Toronto, only the tables had turned. She was the one who wasn’t talking to him.
When he opened the door, she looked around and was relieved that it wasn’t just a room with a bed. It was spacious enough to have a small receiving area with a desk, a couch, and a huge window that overlooked the city.
Elan went straight to the middle of the room while she stayed by the door, still not sure if she should stay or go. They stared at each other, waiting for the other to talk first.
“Are you gonna talk to me now?”
“I don’t know,” Caty shrugged. “When were you planning to tell me that you’re leaving earlier?”
He nodded, as if he knew this was coming. As if he actually had an answer before she asked the question. “If it was possible, never.”
Her eyes widened. He actually said that? That wasn’t the answer she wanted.
“So you were just gonna leave without telling me? You were gonna disappear and then call me later and say, ‘Oops, sorry, I flew back when you went home to shower,’ or something?”
Elan sighed. “I don’t know. I meant to tell you, but I couldn’t.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“I know. I’m sorry. Again.”
Caty walked over to the couch and slumped herself into it. She rubbed her cheeks with her palms before saying, “This sucks, Elan. I’ve been stressing about this the whole time.”
He walked over to her carefully, then he took the other end of the couch. “I didn’t want that to happen.”
“It’s just that you’re here.”
Elan tried to understand what she meant, but she wasn’t explaining it very well. Explaining it would mean unloading the thoughts about the visit that littered up her mind. It was unfiltered and messy.
“This is weird,” she admitted.
“Did it feel weird the entire time?”
“It didn’t for you?” Caty looked at him, wide-eyed.
His jaw tightened as he looked away.
“I’m just not used to you being in my space,” Caty explained, hoping it would soften the blow. She realized that sounded harsh and knew she wouldn’t want to hear it if she was in his position. “For the entire time we’ve known each other, I’ve been the one invading yours.”
He nodded, still quiet.
“Something’s changed,” she added, her voice almost a whisper.
Elan looked back, and she felt embarrassed. Her eyes focused on the carpet below her.
“What?” he asked.
Caty took a deep breath. “We’ve never had so much time together.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him smile, but it still didn’t feel safe to look at him.
“Well, we were pretty preoccupied the other times too,” Elan commented.
She smiled weakly for only a moment before she remembered that she felt awful, as if there was something in the pit of her stomach—an impending doom, disappointment.
He raised his brows, a nudge to keep her talking. She responded, “I just feel weird about it, that’s all.”
“Why do you feel weird around me now? We never had that problem before.”
Caty exhaled. “I don’t know. You don’t feel weird around me?”
“No.”
She squinted. “Really?”
He seemed so cool about it. “Really.”
She got it now. She was the only one feeling weird about this because she was the only one whose feelings had changed. Sure, Elan might have disliked her the first time they met, but everyone did. She was used to that. She either grew on people and got close to them or she shut them out for good. Caty was fine with that.
But she’d started to think about Elan while reading love poems, woke up to dreams of him, kept him in her head on her way home from work. He was with her all the time, but that was nothing like having him here in the flesh, warm and gentle and tangible. Solid. A real presence. What she had settled for in the past few months was not even close to this.
He was here, close to her, fingers at the edge of the couch, just an inch away from her shoulders. She stood. “We’re not strangers anymore.”
It was true. Caty could honestly say that Elan knew about real pieces of her now—the things she revealed during their daily conversations. Even the petty things weren’t so petty after all because they were pieces of her, still, no matter how small. Pieces she never so casually gave away.
“Shouldn’t that be better?” Elan looked up at her.
Caty shrugged. “I don’t know.”
He paused and gave her a puzzled look. “You’d rather have me as a stranger? The guy who only meets you for a couple of hours?”
“Well, clearly, this is exactly like that.”
Elan argued, “We’ve had a day. We still have hours. Let’s not—”
Caty interrupted, “And I like you.”
She’d said this before, hadn’t she? It was still true six months later.
“Everything you’re saying should make this a good thing, but you’re making it sound as if it’s not.”
She looked him in the eyes, pressing her lips together. He didn’t say anything; just leaned back on the couch with a baffled look.
Caty realized he hadn’t said how he felt about her when she had done just that. “Here’s a question,” she asked. “How were you expecting this night to end?”
His brows raised. “Honest?”
She nodded to encourage him.
Elan cleared his throat as he straightened his back and leaned forward. He stared away from her for a moment, then admitted, “Well, for one thing, you wouldn’t be standing at the other end of the room.”
Caty smiled, acknowledging that she had managed to put a space between them.
“And you wouldn’t tell me you liked me as an excuse to avoid me.”
She took a step closer to him as he continued.
“We’d sit on this couch and talk.” He raised his hand and offered it to her. She took it, tentatively. “We always talk before one of us falls asleep. Shouldn’t be any different now.”
Caty put her foot up on the couch as she faced him, making herself a little more comfortable. “You never say good night.”
“I don’t?”
“Yeah, you just stop answering my messages.”
Elan laughed. “That can’t be true. I probably said it at least—”
“Nope,” she shook her head. “It’s okay. You just eventually reply to whatever I said last as if eight hours hadn’t passed. No biggie.”
“Now, you’re lying,” he argued, “I never get eight hours of sleep.”
“I actually didn’t count—I just assumed.”
“Mmm,” Elan nodded, “is this a passive-aggressive way of telling me that you don’t like it when I don’t say good night?”
“No, I’m just saying, you never do it.”
“In the future, I’ll say good night when I absolutely cannot open my eyes or move my thumbs anymore.”
“You don’t have to do it; your night is my day anyway.”
“But you like it.”
She looked down because she was embarrassed. “I do.”
“Okay, then I’ll start saying good night.”
“What happens next? After the talk on the couch?”
She wanted to know if he had a plan, or at least an idea about how tonight would go.
“We go to bed,” Elan shrugged, like she knew he would. “And maybe this time we don’t sleep.”
She took the throw pillow from behind her back and threw it at him. “Oh, what a line.”
He caught the pillow before it hit his arm. “Well, it sounded different in my head.”
Caty watched Elan laugh at himself. He was so open and inviting, unlike the first time they met.
“I don’t know how to make it better,” Elan admitted. “I like you. I wanted to see you. I came to New York for you. Was I hoping that something would happen? Sure.”
Could she blame him? It’s not like she hadn’t thought about it too. The whole exchange over the past six months probably supported the assumption. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t flirted with him. She had. She liked him, plain and simple. She enjoyed his company, no matter how far or near he was.
Then again, he was leaving in a couple of hours. She didn’t know how much time she had left now. She’d been counting wrong the whole time.
“I’m not saying that something should,” Elan said quickly, raising his hands as if to surrender. “I’m not expecting anything. Seriously. I’m just happy to see you.”
“I’m not being difficult,” she whined a little.
“And I wasn’t implying that you were easy,” he answered.
Caty took a deep breath. A nagging thought in her head kept reminding her that she only had hours, and then all of this wouldn’t matter, didn’t mean anything in the long run. She pictured this night differently. She wanted to see him and have a good time, and then thought that they would part ways like they always had. Easy. Simple.
But maybe keeping in touch with him muddled their dynamic. She’d underestimated the situation; she can’t possibly keep talking to someone through a gadget without getting tired of it.
And this really was long distance. They were half a day apart. And now that he was here, he was only gonna be for a day? She should just stick to her plan. “I’m seeing someone.”
Elan straightened, as if something snapped. “You are?”
“Yeah, it’s new. It’s not like we’re official yet, but you know. There’s that.”
He nodded, taking in this new information.
She did see a couple of men. She was new in New York. She was meeting new people every day. At the coffee shop, on her way to work, at her apartment building, at Riot! . . .
There’s always someone.
“And before there wasn’t anyone?” he asked.
“No one that mattered anyway.”
Elan sighed. “So this one is special? That’s what I’m hearing.”
Caty answered, “I don’t want to jinx it.”
She didn’t want to jinx anything. Hey, if she did meet a guy tomorrow after Elan left, she didn’t want to risk it.
Elan raised his hands. “I didn’t mean to.”
“So yeah,” she nodded. “It’s not the main reason why we’re not . . . you know. But I think we make good friends. I like talking to you. When I first met you, I thought you were kind of a bore, and you were off about me, I could tell.” She unfolded her hands and shifted closer to Elan.
“I just wasn’t used to you yet.”
“Exactly. Now, you feel so familiar. In a weird way.” She faced him and closed the distance they’d created. “I don’t know. I’m only babbling because my thoughts are exactly like that. I have no idea what’s going on. I thought seeing you would clarify things, but now I’m more confused.”
“If you didn’t want to see me, you could have just said so.”
“But I do want to see you,” she insisted. “I’ve been talking to you through a gadget for a good while, and sometimes it felt as if you weren’t real. Sometimes I was convinced that I was talking to someone else. I can’t seem to connect you from that night to the person I’m talking to now. You’re hella entertaining.”
“But not in person?”
“You are,” she was quick to say. “Just, you know. I feel like I’m getting to know you in that space, and not in this one, the here and now.” She gestured at him. “You just showed up looking like this, dropping details that I’ve mentioned, stuff I can’t even remember . . .”
His hand reached out to her, and she grabbed it halfway. “Do you get what I’m saying? ’Cause I’m not sure I do.”
“I think,” Elan squinted, “you might just be overwhelmed?”
“How come you’re not?”
“I am, are you kidding?” his eyes widened. “I’m in New York! For a day. Lucian is really good-looking. Ridiculously. And you live with him. How do you not fall in love with him?”
“Oh, I do! Every day.” They laughed together, and he sort of sighed as he looked at their linked hands.
Elan dropped her hand and stood up. He walked to the window and stared at the lights of the city.
“I am happy to see you here.” She rested her chin on the couch. “Even if I keep saying that it’s weird.”
“Thanks.” Elan glanced back. “I am always happy to see you. Wherever. Whenever.”
Then he walked over, took off his watch, and put it on the bedside table.
“Okay.” He sat on the bed leaning on the headboard, both feet up. “So we won’t do anything tonight.”
“Okay?” Caty yawned. “I could leave and come back when it’s time for you to go. Can we still grab breakfast before you fly out? This place has a really cool rooftop that we could check out. Do you have time for that?”
He tapped the space next to him. She gave him a look, but he insisted, “What? It’d be just like our first night.”
“Well, we did something.”
“No offense, but isn’t it always something when it comes to us?” Elan pointed out.
No truer words had been said.
He looked so relaxed with his arm stretched out on the space he’d saved for her.
Elan scooted over as she rose from the couch, stopping at the edge of the bed.
“Did you ever do this with her?” Caty didn’t know why she asked that, but it was a question she always had in mind.
“No,” he answered right away, just when she thought she should probably be clear about whom she meant.
His hands reached up to hers, and their fingertips touched, ever so carefully.
“Are you still in love with her?”
“No.”
Caty took her hand back and watched his fall back onto the bed.
His brows furrowed.
“That’s the first time you actually answered that question.”
“I always answered the question.”
“Yeah, but it always seemed as if you weren’t really sure,” she shrugged, imitating him.
“I don’t shrug like that.” He rose and knelt on the bed right in front of her.
She kept doing it, though, teasing him. So he wrapped his arms around her to stop her.
She wriggled out of his hold. “All right, I’ll stop, I’ll stop.”
He leaned back, pulling her in, her knees touching the bed. Elan grinned like an idiot,
and she suspected she looked the same too. Her eyes dropped to his chest as her hand touched him there. “What made you decide?”
“What? Knowing that I wasn’t in love with her after all?”
She nodded, holding her breath. The entire time she had known Elan, she had believed he was devoted to Juliana, even though she was with someone else. He had been holding out for her, made a special trip to San Juan when she needed him.
“I think of myself as a patient man,” he told her. Elan fell back on the bed, and she collapsed down with him, his arm finding its way around her waist. “I knew Jules had her issues. She was a mystery, so my way of letting her know I was there for her was to let her be, to make her feel in control. To make her feel safe.”
Caty nodded, thinking how nice it would be to have someone who was patient and understanding. She wasn’t the easiest person to love. She snapped a lot—liked to throw people off—and she could be loud and obnoxious at times. It was a defense mechanism, Otto once pointed out to her. She wanted to get rid of people before they could get rid of her.
He told her that was the reason they didn’t work together. He told her she was acting like a child, and he was done with the games. She was too much.
“Then I remembered how it felt to want something so much I could barely contain it.” His hand slid to her inner forearm, his fingers brushing her skin.
Caty gulped. His thumb started to stroke the skin just above her elbow. “And then?”
“I guess I’m more patient than I give myself credit for.” He stopped stroking her to look her in the eyes. “I did just hear you talk about seeing somebody else after all.”
Her breath caught in her throat, and her chest felt like a cage as her heart tried to leap out. Elan smiled at her, but it was full of a pain she wanted to wipe away.
He blinked and said, “But I had fun today. I like your routine.”
He was changing the subject? After that, he was going to change the subject?
“I loved meeting your friends at Riot! Wish Jimmy was there, though.”
She took a moment before making a sensible reply. “When I met Lucian, I was totally in love with him.”
“How did you meet him anyway?”
“We liked the same boy. But I knew I’d lose out when I saw him.”