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“You have a library card.” She sounded bemused, and he clucked his tongue. “Here I am, trying to help you out in a difficult situation, and you repay me by being surprised that I can read.”
There was something astonishingly effortless about this woman. Like she had no interest in being anything but herself.
There was something jagged, sharp-edged about her personality, but her body was soft.
“Hyper-competent. Mysterious. ‘I scored better than you on the quiz, and I could kill you with a pencil’ energy.”
“Maybe some people are meant to be tragedies.”
“Don’t leave—let’s all have dinner together! It’s always the four of us. I’m bored to tears with these three.” Eli’s muttered “wow” came at the same time as Hark’s snorted “harsh” and Sul’s stoic “we’re married, but okay.”
He’d put her at the center of his universe, and feel on top of the world when she eventually returned the favor.
She was shy, he realized, but he wasn’t sure whether the others were able to recognize this in her. Perhaps Tiny did, because he put his chin on her knee and gazed up at her with an adoring expression that seemed like a parody of Eli’s.
When she lifted a hand, as though considering a tentative pat on Tiny’s head, Eli almost held his breath. She gave up after a few moments of nervous hovering, and Tiny looked absolutely crestfallen. Me, too, buddy, Eli thought. Me, too.
Food was collagen, the connective tissue of our society, and if I hadn’t grown up with enough of it, well. Clearly, it had to mean that I wasn’t tethered enough to anyone, and never could be.
“The glasses. You only wear them at work. Are you trying to come across less like a former hockey player and more like a nerd?” “I only wear them at work because, according to my ophthalmologist, I have the eyesight of a man in his eighth decade and need glasses for reading and staring at computer screens.”
“Out of all the people I’ve met, the things I’ve wanted, the places I’ve been, none has ever felt as necessary as you do. Because I love you. I love you in a way I didn’t think I was capable of. I love you because you showed me how to fall in love. And I don’t regret it, Rue. I wouldn’t want it any other way. Even if you can never say it back. Even if you never think about me again after today. Even if you were right after all, and you’re not capable of love.”
He knew that. He loved that. He wanted nothing more than to learn every inch of her, his complicated, mercurial dream girl.
