Page 51 of Midnight Valentine
“What does that mean?”
“Congratulations. In Hebrew.”
“Are you Jewish?”
“No, just weird. Don’t worry, nobody else gets me either.”
The only one who ever did is dead.
* * *
Suzanne and I talk for a few more minutes while she devours her pastry. She eats the same way I do, with gusto, not caring that it looks like it’s the first food she’s had in a week. We go inside, and she gives me the contact information for the interior designers she’d mentioned a while back, then she leaves with a promise to bake me another key lime pie.
Then I’m left alone with a house full of men and an overwhelming ambivalence.
I want to talk to Theo and determine exactly why he was outside my house in the middle of the night, but I also don’t. Especially now that I’m feeling whatever it is I’m feeling toward him. This electrical awareness brought on by the simple touch of his fingers on my skin.
It’s not exactly attraction. It feels darker than that.
More dangerous. Like I’m standing barefoot in a shallow pool of water and he’s the live wire sparking mere inches away.
I don’t have enough experience with men to know if this is normal. Cass was the only man I was ever with. When you’ve loved the same person since you were six years old, you grow blinders to anyone else’s charms.
So I do what any rational adult would do when faced with an uncomfortable situation they don’t know how to handle: avoid it. I grab the contract and my coffee from the kitchen, then go upstairs and hide in my bedroom.
Five minutes later, my phone chimes with an incoming text.
In case you thought you were being stealthy,
I saw you sneaking off.
“Of course you did,” I mutter, reading Theo’s words. The man notices everything.
Just going over the contract.
After I hit Send, Theo immediately begins typing his response. When I see the three little dots on my phone indicating he’s composing his answer, I start to chew my thumbnail in anxiety. Somehow, I know whatever he’s going to say is going to make me feel worse.
That’s the first time you’ve lied to me, Megan.
My stomach in knots, I flop onto my back on the bed and stare up at the ceiling. I hear Theo’s guys walking around the house, their footsteps echoing hollowly, their voices muffled through the floor, and I wish I could hear his voice.
I wonder what it would sound like. Hard like his expression or soft like his eyes?
Aggravated with myself, I slap a hand over my eyes and sigh. I really need to get out more. Maybe I should go on a date with Craig. Have a little dinner, have a nice conversation, listen to him talk. And talk.
I don’t have to ask myself how much of that time would be spent thinking about Theo Valentine, because I already know the answer.
My phone chimes.
I was walking on the beach.
I saw all the lights go on in the house,
saw you running around,
saw the smoke when you opened the window.
My heart thudding, I sit up and read his text again. Then I compose my own.
