“I love you now, Cel. You know that.”
“You know the kind of love I’m talking about.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll wait so you can figure everything out, but you have to promise me something.”
“Anything.”
“You have to be honest, and if in…say a year, you don’t think you feel anything for me beyond friendship, you gotta tell me. Because it’s not fair to me to not let me find love if it turns out not to be you.”
It felt like someone was standing on my chest.
“Yes?” Cel prompted.
“You want me to agree to step back and say we’re just friends if how I feel doesn’t develop into anything else within a year?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds bad.”
“It’s not bad,” he scolded me. “Eli, if your very logical mind decides that I’m the one for you, I’ll be the luckiest man in the world because you would have made that decision based on a want, not a need. You wanting me would be amazing.”
“I want you now.”
“Yes, as a friend, but that’s not what I’m talking about.”
I knew it wasn’t.
“We’ll date, and we’ll see,” Cel said, smiling at me.
It was all I could ask for.
10
CELSO
In the morning, Eli was gone. There was a lovely note next to my bed, reminding me that we were dating—as if I could forget—and a text message from Luna saying she wanted to see me. So I got up, showered and changed, and found my new fob on the kitchen counter with another note that said he’d hung my mother’s wind chimes. I could see them out on the balcony. The surge of emotion was nearly overwhelming. I loved Eli deliriously.
When I could breathe again, I called Luna and went to meet her for breakfast like nothing at all was wrong. Only once I got there did I remember I wasn’t supposed to be outside. In my defense, I hadn’t had coffee yet, and honestly, the whole you’re-not-in-danger part had sunk down deep in my brain.
“Where are you going?” Luna asked when I was leaving and she was coming into her favorite breakfast place that served alcohol at seven in the morning. It was like we were in Vegas instead of downtown Chicago, in a strange dive bar haunt that made omelets and pancakes.
“I’m supposed to be in hiding.” It was more of a statement than an explanation, so I understood the look of confusion on her face.
“Why?”
“Because I could be in danger.”
She squinted at me. “That makes no sense. If you were in danger, why wouldn’t the hit man—”
“We say contract killer,” I corrected her knowingly.
“Why?”
“I have no idea,” I replied honestly, studying her outfit. “What are you wearing?”
“Obviously I put a huge sweatshirt on over my sleep T-shirt, and these are clearly my Scooby-Doo pajama bottoms,” she told me.