When the light changed, I pulled away and took his hand again. "No self-respecting girl would allow a demon into her bed. But you, on the other hand," I flashed him a saucy wink. "You might be permitted."
I loved how his face was so expressive. I loved the way his fingers gripped mine. We walked so casually and perfectly together. I loved the feeling of falling in love.
When we got to my gray apartment building, I said, "I hope you're not expecting anything posh. It's just a crappy little student apartment."
Eric squeezed my hand. "Crappy? That's pretty extreme language coming from you."
"I guess I've been hanging out with a bad influence," I said. We went up to my sixth-floor apartment in an elevator that went at a normal, slow clunking speed.
As we walked down the hallway to my door, Eric looked around, seeming amused. "I feel like I've gone through a time portal to the eighties," he whispered.
Looking around to the faded patterned carpet, the weirdly dramatic wall sconce lighting, I nodded. "Maybe even the late seventies."
"It's kind of awesome, though," he said with a grin.
He wasn't being polite. He was genuinely appreciative of my lousy apartment building, which was reasonably clean, but definitely old and worn.
After digging in the bottom of my purse for the key, I let us in, and Eric immediately went to the center of the room, turning around slowly and staring.
"If you’re planning a photoshoot for one of those gorgeous home magazines, you can save your energy," I laughed.
"I'm taking you in," he said quite seriously. "I know that students make do with whatever furniture they can get their hands on. But you chose that purple star wall hanging. You chose those bright red coffee mugs. Surrounding yourself with things you like is an ingrained human trait."
"A builder and philosopher," I said, kicking off my shoes and dumping my purse on the chair by the front door. Walking past him to the couch, I sat on the side that creaked, since he was certainly heavier than I was.
Eric sat beside me, still analyzing everything while setting a hand on my knee. "A small TV and a giant bookshelf. That is always a good sign." Then he turned to me. "You're in university now. Do you have a part-time job as well?"
"Sort of. I work part-time for my mother, helping her with research and proofreading. In the summers and over breaks, I work for her company full-time. During the school year, I'm able to just update their website and do promotion and stuff from here."
"That's brilliant," he said. He squeezed my knee gently, giving me a strange smile. "I'm relieved that you're not one of those students who have to work eight part-time jobs, and never sleep, and could never afford to eat. I've seen what some people have to go through, and it's rough."
I was touched that he would even think of such things. "My mother always said that we are not well off, but we are well organized,” I smiled. "We did without certain things so that we were in a good place for our education. My older sister actually lived in this apartment when she was going to school, and passed it down to me to avoid the rent hike."
"Clever," Eric grinned.
"I don't know if it's impolite to ask, but were your parents wealthy?" I asked.
Eric gave my knee another squeeze. "I want you to feel free to ask me absolutely anything, at any time. Manners be damned. Okay?"
I nodded. "Okay."
"My parents were…" He made a strange expression, staring down at the chipped coffee table, shaking his head. "Very strange. They named my sister Angelica, hoping that it would bring her the luck of the Angels. And they named me after some weird demon thinking that it would toughen me up."
He raised an eyebrow. "I think it's pretty safe to say that they're a bit unusual."
"That sounds fair."
"They were sort of hippies," he said. "My mother's father was apparently loaded, and gave her an allowance for her entire life, so she never had to work. That gave my dad the opportunity to move us around all the time, chasing his get rich quick schemes."
"Did they ever work normal jobs?" I couldn't resist asking.
Eric rolled his eyes. "Of course not." He turned to me, taking my hands in his. "But there's something to be learned in every single situation we are thrown into. Angie and I learned how to work hard, and save every penny while hiding it from our parents. We learned to work as a team. We put each other through school, then started a company by researching brilliant people who had never been given enough opportunity."
"Are you close with your parents now?" I asked.
He shook his head. "My Dad stopped wanting to be monetarily rich as soon as he saw Angie and I become wealthy. We offered to buy them a house, but Dad shunned us. They moved to some monastery or ashram or something in India."
"Wow."