Page 73 of Reckless
We moved through town in a pack.
Shops.Lunch.Roxanne buying things for no discernible reason other than joy.Parvis somehow turning a stop in a local bookstore into a conversation about intuition and markets with the owner.The whole thing should have been exhausting.
And everywhere we went, people did the same small social math they’d done at the compound.Doors and pathways.Kelly and Xerses.Together.
In the afternoon when I stepped into a little gourmet shop to get out of the sun.
“That hot sauce has a warning label,” Xerses said behind me.
I shook my head.“You followed me into a condiment aisle.”
He shrugged.“I followed you into a shop.The condiment aisle was your doing.”
“You say that like you didn’t want to be here.”
“I didn’t say that.”
I looked at him.He looked back.Something warm moved between us that had no business existing near artisanal mustard.
I reached automatically for the thing I knew Xerses would mock, but I realized I did it because I would be closer to him.I slowed and he smiled.
What I was seeing now was more charged than that.I grabbed the mustard and wobbled backward.
He looked at me like I was alive in ways he hadn’t planned for as I paid for my choice.
When we got back to the compound before dusk, everyone split off toward rooms and showers and preparing for the next required appearance.
I set my bag down in the guest room and stood in the middle of it.
“You are not falling for him,” I told the curtains.
The curtains were silk.They did not care.
“You are temporarily insane from proximity and good coffee and a man who remembered your sunglasses.”
I sat on the bed.
“Sunglasses,” I repeated.“He remembered your sunglasses.That is not romance.That is observation.”
But it felt like romance.
My own pulse was still not fully normal when I realized I was in trouble.
When I’d walked next to him or with him, all I’d wanted to do was stay.
Eight
Kelly’s Home
Xerses
By the time we got back to the compound, Kelly had started avoiding looking directly at me.
The way she slowed half a step in the foyer or the way she touched her hair absently, or how she sat beside me, and fit into the space with me and my family like she belonged.
The way her shoulders loosened and then tightened again when she said, “I need to run home for a minute.”
That one stopped me.Fast.Clearly she needed out and I understood the impulse.
