“Are you kidding me? I love it.”
I smile and the air around us seems a little lighter. I try to think of something to break the rest of the ice.
“More than the phone?” I tease, and it brings a smile to her face.
“A lot more than the phone,” she admits. Then she bites her lip and asks, “Can I come in?”
Shoot, I didn’t even think about that. We’re both standing at the door of my penthouse, and I haven’t officially invited her in.
“Of course, Elia.”
I need a fucking drink, which isn’t a problem seeing as I’m not going to be exercising right now. Being around her is making me restless, and I just want to touch her, kiss her, but I can’t come on too strong and push her away just when she’s come back to me.
“We need to talk,” she says as she follows me inside.
“Yes, but I need a drink first. What’s your poison?”
“What are you having?”
She’s trying to take in her surroundings, avoiding my gaze and checking out my sparse, ultra-modern apartment. And she’s looking for Rose.
“Beer. Ice-cold beer. And Rose is with my mother, visiting for a while. My mother is grateful to have a grandchild.” Though she wants me to get married. It occurs to me that I think my mother would really like Elia.
Elia smiles. “I’ll have the same.”
“So, you’re a beer drinker. I didn’t think you would be a beer drinker.”
She winks. “There’s a lot of things I’d do that would surprise you.”
“Like what?”
I raise an eyebrow as I pass her the bottle.
“I don’t know, maybe I’ll run the next marathon.”
I laugh as I watch her taking a swig of beer and decide what to do next. I walk up to the breakfast table, and she follows suit. I can tell that there’s something else on her mind. She didn’t come all this way to thank me or to have a bottle of beer.
“Why did you really come? You could’ve just sent me a text saying thank you.”
“But would you have answered it? Like last time, you never bothered to answer it, did you?”
She has me there. I don’t even have a good excuse for the way I behaved then. I think I freaked out at how fast things were moving...for me. I started to feel way too much for a girl that I knew I was going to disappoint, and I did disappoint her. That’s new to me since I usually fuck and forget. I can please a woman one night. It is the relationship part that had me acting like an ass because I didn’t know what to do.
“We’d just met. I was showering you with gifts, and I may end up being your boss. I’ll be almost as big an asshole as Ryan if I dated you, I thought. I don’t know, like I said, I haven’t really done relationships before.”
/>
She shakes her head. “In what way? I consented to what happened that night. What Ryan did, well let’s just say if you weren’t there then who knows…”
I lift up my beer, “Hey, let’s not spoil the taste of my beer by mentioning that pig anymore. Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot because there was a misunderstanding from the start. I’m trying to figure out this dating thing and the misunderstanding between us didn’t help”
She pulls her beer bottle back and asks, “What do you mean?”“Well, for one, I’m not looking to buy the bookstore and tear it down. I want to make it lively. God, since I’ve been going there, no one steps through the door.”
She points to me and says, “Maybe you’re coming in at the wrong time? Sometimes, it’s overcrowded with…”
“What, ghosts?”
She laughs, “How did you know that I was going to say that?”