Not in Love

RUE

It was the soft pitter-patter of the rain against the windows that woke me up, and the muted swish of a car riding past the house that finally convinced me to open my eyes. There was no disorientation. I immediately knew where I was, and that the digital clock blinking at me from the nightstand in lime green was Eli’s.

It was ten forty-five in the morning.

The curtains were still drawn. Eli was nowhere to be found. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept so deeply, so uninterruptedly, or so late. Maybe it was the bed—mortuary slab–solid, just the way I liked. The sex, perhaps. I had no clue, nor did I plan to investigate the matter further. As furtively as I was capable of, I gathered the breadcrumb trail of clothes we’d scattered around the bed, and slipped into the en suite.

It was the same gentle mix of cleanliness and chaos as Eli’s bedroom. I peed, rinsed my mouth with some pilfered Listerine, and snuck down the stairs, stopping when I heard noises coming from the kitchen.

Shit.

I’d promised Eli I’d tell him before leaving. Back when I thought leaving would happen in the middle of the night. I was going to have to walk-of-shame this. Embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as Eli knowing how bad I was at sixty-nining.

I headed for the kitchen, ready to keep my goodbyes quick and honest. Thank you for last night, Eli. I enjoyed it. I always enjoy it. It’s starting to feel cruel, the combination of who you are and what you can do to me. Let’s never meet again, okay? But when I took a deep breath and made myself step inside, Eli looked different.

Like a tinier, prettier version of himself. Ferocious brown curls falling onto slight shoulders, eerily light blue eyes, and that half-warm, half-cutthroat grin. A few inches shorter than me. A girl. Briefly slack-jawed, until her surprise morphed into a smile. “Well, well, well. Look who got laid last night.”

I lifted an eyebrow.

The girl instantly blushed. “Sorry! I didn’t mean you, I would never—I meant my brother! Hi, I’m Maya Killgore.”

The sister. Did she live here? “Rue. Siebert.”

“So lovely to meet you. I promise I don’t usually comment on random people’s recent sexual history, just…”

“Your brother’s?”

“Precisely.” She finger-gunned me. “He never tells me shit, so I have to resort to ruthless investigative methods. Is he trying to wife you?”

“To…what?” I needed caffeine.

“Are you guys dating, or are you just using his body?”

“Um. The latter.” A beat. “It’s more of a reciprocally beneficial agreement.”

“Nice. Good on you guys.” She seemed sincerely happy. “Where did you meet?”

“I work for a company here in Austin. Harkness recently attempted to acquire us.” And had not succeeded yet. It felt good to remind myself. Softened my guilt, too.

“Holy shit, you work for Kline? You know Florence?”

The shame at hearing Florence mentioned in Eli’s house was so intense, I had to take a breath before saying, “Yes.”

“What’s she like? I picture her as a giant tentacled monster.”

Why did she know about Florence? “She’s a five-three redhead. Untentacled. Not particularly monstrous looking.” To trim the conversation before it could grow its own appendages, I added, “She is a close friend of mine.”

Maya’s eyes went saucer wide, but a second later her pleasant smile was restored. “Would you like some coffee?”

“No, thank you. I was just going home. Is Eli…?”

“He’ll be back soon. I can text him, too.”

“No need.” I’d asked after him. I wasn’t sneaking out. I’d text him once I got back to my place and make up a nonexistent Saturday morning engagement. I man the arugula booth at the farmers’ market. I AquaGym. Did I mention I’m a mother of four? They’re waiting for breakfast. “Thank you, I’ll just—”

The front door—against which I’d nearly engaged in public sex the previous night—opened. The first to come in was the giant dog, who looked even larger and even happier in the daylight. He chose violence, and shook several gallons of rainwater all over the wooden floor, sparing no surface. The second, of course, was Eli. He pulled back the hood of a dark green windbreaker, and when his eyes found me, he said, “I was wondering if you’d still be here.” He was smiling. Half-pleased, half-challenging, half-all-knowing.

Something hot and cold ran through me. “I—”

“Rude,” Maya interrupted. “Are you trying to get rid of her?”

“If only you knew, Maya,” he drawled. He draped his jacket over a high-backed chair, gaze never leaving me.

“Knew what?” Maya petted Tiny, who this morning was supremely uninterested in me. Good boy.

“Rue was a figure skater with Alec,” Eli informed her instead of answering.

“For real? He’s the best.”

I nodded. “He is.”

“Do you still skate?”

“Not competitively.”

“What about for fun?”

“I do.”

“At Dave’s rink?”

“For the most part.”

“Wait.” Those Eli eyes of hers narrowed. “Rue Siebert. I know you! Didn’t you get a synchro scholarship for some place in Wisconsin?”

“Michigan. Adrian College.”

“Oh my god. I remember you! We only overlapped for a few months but you were so good.”

“I wasn’t that—”

“At mentoring, I mean. You taught me how to do a backward crossover, remember?” I didn’t, but she continued anyway, grinning. “I sucked. Four other people tried, and I could not figure it out. Come on, you have to remember—I’m the girl who burst out crying in the middle of the rink. You brought me to a bench, sat next to me, and neither of us said anything for, like, half an hour. Once I calmed down you asked me if I was ready to start again and then I got the crossover on the first try! It must have been in the spring of—”

A car honked right outside. I jolted, and Maya rolled her eyes. “That’ll be Jade.” She picked up her backpack and an oversized, over-stickered water bottle. “It was so nice to see you again, Rue! I’m going to spend the day at the library, so you two should feel free to have morning sex on the table.” She glanced at Eli from over her shoulder. “You know where the Clorox wipes are, right?” She was gone before he could reply, leaving us alone, looking at each other with something that felt a lot like understanding.

He knew that I was going to sneak out.

I knew that he knew.

And he knew that, too.

I lifted my chin with a hint of a challenge, and his lips widened into a grin, as though I was following a script he’d written in his head for me.

“Were you going to leave me a note?” he asked affably. “Or just text later?”

I kept my spine straight. “The latter.”

“Less time consuming.” He nodded, entertained, and opened a cupboard. Kibble tinkled into the dog’s metal bowl, and Tiny, who’d begun circling me looking for the kind of affection that other people seemed to give effortlessly to pets, instantly lost interest in me. On the table above him, I noticed a developed chess board.

“Is that your game?”

Eli nodded. “Against Maya.”

“You play a lot?”

“A fair bit. We’re not Nolan Sawyer level, or anything—”

“Mallory Greenleaf level, you mean?”

He just smiled. “Do you really not remember my sister?”

“I…” I did, actually, if only because of the way she’d sobbed silently next to me. It had felt heartbreaking and relatable, and I’d wished there was something I could say. But I was going through the exact same, and I knew that no words existed that would have helped. “Is it okay that she saw me?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Your sister.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“Maybe you don’t want to share your hookups with your younger sister, who might very well be a minor.” She didn’t look it, but the older I got, the more every age under twenty-five blended together.

“She’s almost twenty-two. Or thirteen, I’m never sure.”

“You’re the elder?”

He nodded. “Is Vincent older?”

“He’s three years younger. And it’s just us.”

“I figured, since the cabin’s split in two.”

“Yeah.” I didn’t want to talk about him. “Your sister seems…”

“Nice?”

Actually, what I’d been thinking was that Maya and Eli looked comfortable together, and I felt irrationally betrayed by that. When we first met, I’d gotten the impression that their relationship was as fraught as mine was with Vince. “Does she live here?”

“Yup.”

“Of her own free will? Or are you kidnapping her, too?”

“Believe it or not, she asked to move in.” He seemed incredulous, too. “I offered to pay for an apartment near campus, but she wanted to live with her closest surviving blood relative. To keep an eye on her set of spare kidneys, probably.”

I smiled, and so did he. Like amusing me was a rewarding micro-hobby of his.

“Is this the home where you grew up?”

“Nope. I grew up in South Austin. Riverside. The bank took that home about a decade ago, though. What about you?”

We never owned a home for the bank to take, my sleep-woolly brain almost responded. “I lived in Salado.”

His eyebrow rose. “And you commuted every day to Dave’s rink?”

“Yes.”

He cocked his head. “How did you end up skating, anyway?”

“Tisha’s mom used to be an ice dancer. She thought I looked promising, found Alec.” I didn’t elaborate on the rest. How liberating it had been, pushing through the cold of the ice, being away from my family. How grueling practice had become as the stakes had risen. How impossible it had been to consider quitting with the prospect of waived tuition fees dangling in front of my eyes. Instead, I changed the topic. “Do you bring home lots of women?”

“I believe you were a first.” He shrugged. “Although my ex-fiancée used to live here.”

“The chef.”

“Yup.”

I tilted my head and watched him lean against the counter, enjoying the way he filled a room. How concrete his presence felt. “How does that happen?”

“What?”

“How do you go from wanting to marry someone to…not?”

“Surprisingly quickly. With limited drama, too.” No cheating, then. What else, though? Had they fallen out of love? Had she moved away for her fancy chef job? Had she broken his heart? “Have you ever been in a relationship?” he asked.

“By relationship, you mean…?”

“A mutually agreed-upon, medium- or long-term romantic engagement. Dating, if you prefer.” He smiled the same grin I’d felt between my legs last night. What we’d done should have helped me metabolize him, but I was no closer to finding him uninteresting than I’d ever been. The opposite, if anything.

A silver coin refusing to oxidize, that’s what he was. A compulsive tingle hooked right in my belly.

“It’s none of my business,” he continued, “but I’d still love it if you told me.”

“No. You’re the first person I’ve been with more than once.”

His lip curled. “Sex is that good, huh?”

It’s because with you I never have to worry about being too odd, too unlikable, too out of tune. You never make me feel anything other than just right. But the sex was the best I’d ever had, so I simply said, “Yes.”

My soft honesty seemed to disarm him. His face fell, and his eyes darkened. “Come here,” he beckoned, just a flick of his fingers, and even though it meant betraying Florence, who’d given me the world, I did go. Let him pull me closer, into his chest.

“I believe,” he murmured against my ear, “I owe you something.”

“You can keep my underwear.”

“Not that.”

“What, then?”

“We said three times.”

A buzzing, warm static filled the air between us. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not…” It’s uncountable. You, and the things we do, the things you give me, the things you make me feel, they’re impossible to quantify. They are good in a way that goes beyond orgasms, and I can’t really keep track, or tick off checkboxes. It’s confusing. You are confusing. “It’s fine.”

“Is it?” He filled the space between us. His mouth tasted of toothpaste and rainy mornings, his kiss at once shallow and intense, eager yet lingering. Not a we’re about to fuck kiss. Not a we just fucked kiss. Those were the extent of my experiences so far, so I wasn’t certain how to categorize this one.

Goodbye. Maybe it was a goodbye kiss.

He slowly pulled back. “You can’t go out like this, Rue.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re filthy. You need a shower, don’t you?”

“I’ll have one later.”

“Later?” His nose curled in distaste, and I frowned.

“Is that a problem?”

“I was about to take one.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. How hygienic of you. My fondest congratulations. I hope it’s everything you wish for. “Okay. I’m going to—”Please check at N/ôvel(D)rama.Org.

“Join me.” His fingers braided with mine. “You have to shower at some point, don’t you? Might as well make it fun.” There was no way this was a good idea, and he must have seen it in my face, because he asked, “Why not?”

Because of Florence. Because you’re a bad person, doing bad things. Because you’re wrong, and against everything I stand for, and people could be hurt if they were to find out. Problem was, I didn’t want to say no. I also didn’t want to say yes, but it didn’t matter.

Judging by Eli’s smile, nodding seemed to suffice.