“You were never boring,” he says. “Never for a second have I found your company lacking. Not then and not now.”
“Yours either,” I admit. “I’d rather argue with you than do almost anything else.”
“Are you done interrupting my speech?” he asks.
“You interrupted yourself to claim you rehearsed,” I protest.
“I did rehearse,” he says, and looks down at me.
We lock eyes, and there’s that feeling again: that I’m not standing on the floor, that I’m somewhere above it. That I’m floating, drowning.
“I’ve been to a lot of places and there’s no one else like you,” he says, his voice suddenly low, serious. “You’re it, Violet. You’re all there is for me. It’s you or a life of austere hermitude. Let me be yours.”
I’m still looking into his eyes. I’m crying again, tears of relief and penance and sorrow. Tears of gratitude.
I try to say yes, but I can’t get my voice out, I can only make my lips form the words.
In the end, I nod. Eli crushes me against him and I bury my head in his chest, my whole body shuddering as I hold him close.
It feels good. It feels right. It feels like I’ve just healed something that was much, much older than this fight, like a splinter I didn’t realize I had until it was gone.
“I do have one question,” I finally say.
I pull back. I look up at him. He brushes a tear from my cheek.
“Kiss me first,” Eli says, and I do.
It’s sweet, gentle. An I missed you kiss. An I’m sorry kiss. A let’s never do that again kiss.
An I’m yours kiss.
It ends. He brushes his lips across my forehead.
“Okay, shoot,” he says.
“Did you really get Martin fired?”
He looks down at me. A smile spreads across his face until he’s grinning. I raise both my eyebrows, not entirely sure what to make of it.
“Hell yes I did,” he says. He takes my hand, links our fingers, kisses my knuckles. “And it’s a great story that I’ll tell you over dinner. You like sushi?”Chapter Forty-FiveEliI take Violet on our first date.
We’ve had sex in pretty much every position on pretty much every piece of furniture in her house, but this is the first we’ve gone on an honest-to-God date. We hold hands. We drink sake. She eats too much wasabi and turns bright pink.
I tell her about getting back the deleted security footage, and about Silas’s golf cart chase. She has a lot of questions about the night-vision goggles, and sadly, I can answer very few of them.
After dinner, we get ice cream and walk around downtown Sprucevale, holding hands. We sit on a bench overlooking the river and debate whether sprinkles are good or not; Violet is wrong, and they’re not.
Halfway through the argument, she kisses me and it tastes a little like chocolate.
We go back to her place without even discussing it. She apologizes for throwing away my toothbrush and gives me a new one.
That night, I just hold her. It feels important, somehow, just being there. Just being with her.
Just being hers.* * *When I wake up the next morning, Violet’s already gone and the shower is running. I roll over and look at the bedside clock.
It’s 10:30. Good Lord. I slept like the dead.
I roll back over and stay in bed, waiting for Violet to come back. Why get up when I’m fairly certain I’ll just be back in five minutes?
I’m just being energy-efficient.
Five minutes pass. She’s still showering. Then ten.
I should probably go make sure she hasn’t been sucked down the drain or something.
I knock on the door before I go in, then crack the door.
“You still alive in here?” I ask, the steam hitting me in the face.
“Eli?” she asks.
“Who else would it be?”
“No one, I hope,” she answers.
I step inside and close the door, watching her shadow behind the shower curtain. It’s a small shower in a small bathroom, not big enough for a tub, but it’s not tiny.
“You still in there?” I ask, locking my arms across my chest.
The shower curtain jerks back partway, and Violet peeks out.
“Do you have to leave?” she asks.
All I can see is her face, her side, one hip. The rest is in shadow behind the shower curtain but I swear to God she’s teasing me, water running down her body in rivulets I want to lick.
“No,” I say.
She steps back into the shower. The curtain stays partly open.
“I’ll be out in a sec,” she says.
I’m pulled forward. I know that by now I should be used to seeing her naked, that something I see nearly every day shouldn’t hold this magnetic draw for me, but it does.
I lean against the shower stall, push the curtain back further. Violet sees me, smiles, head back as she rinses her hair under the spray.
“I hate waiting,” I say, and reach out to slide my thumb across one stiff, pink nipple.