3 Buried Leads (4 page)

I noticed that everyone at the table had went unusually silent. No one wanted to help.

“Do you have to work tomorrow?” My mom asked.

“No,” I hedged. “But I rode with Eliot and he’s got to work tomorrow and he’s my ride home.” She couldn’t possibly argue with that.

“I don’t have to work tomorrow,” Eliot answered.

“You don’t want to drive back out here tomorrow, though, do you?” I was giving him an out. Why wasn’t he taking it?

“I can just get a hotel room here.” His eyes were twinkling. He was doing this on purpose.

“Or you could just stay in the apartment upstairs?” Sally offered warmly.

“That sounds great,” Eliot enthused. “I would be happy to help.”

He wasn’t so cute anymore.

“Avery can come and stay at the house with me,” my mom interjected.

Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. “I don’t want to leave Eliot alone in a strange environment. I better stay upstairs with him.”

Eliot looked intrigued by the prospect. I was suddenly nervous again.

My mom opened her mouth to argue but Marnie stepped in instead. “Oh, give it up, she’s an adult. If she wants to have sex she’s going to have sex. You’re not going to stop her.”

I could feel my cheeks starting to burn with embarrassment. Everyone at the table was now staring at Eliot and me.

“I bet you wished you were a lesbian about now?”

I slammed my foot down on Derrick’s, which was resting next to mine underneath the table. “Shut up.”

“What? I was just saying what everyone at this table was thinking.”

He wasn’t wrong.

Throughout the rest of dinner, I felt decidedly uncomfortable. If Eliot was feeling the same thing, he hid it well. I had spent the night with Eliot before, and nothing had happened. Of course, I had hit him with a car one of those times – and forced him to sleep on the couch the other. I knew he would be a gentleman if I wanted him to be – but I wasn’t sure I wanted him to be one this time.

I couldn’t really give too much thought to my predicament. My mom was giving me dirty looks from down the table, and they were starting to get to me. After dinner –which I stretched out by having a hot fudge sundae – my family began to disperse and leave the restaurant.

Sally lingered, saying she would be back early the next morning because she wanted to paint the apartment before we started moving stuff up. “I figured I would come over here and paint first and you guys could go help load the truck while I’m doing that.”

I couldn’t help but wonder if this whole “painting” thing wasn’t an elaborate ruse to get out of the heavy lifting associated with moving – but I didn’t say that out loud. I had other things on my mind, at this point anyway. Tomorrow might be a different story.

After a few minutes, only Eliot and my mom were left. She was still giving me “the look.” You know the one. The one that says “I’m really disappointed in you and I know what you’re going to do tonight.” I ignored it.

I said goodbye to my mom and led Eliot through the back of the restaurant. I didn’t turn around to see if she was still watching us.

There are two ways to get into the apartment above the restaurant. One is a stairwell off of the kitchen. The other is a wood walkway outside that leads up to the sliding glass doors in the kitchen. No one ever uses the wooden staircase – mostly because there’s a question about whether or not you’ll plunge to your death if you do.

When we got upstairs, Eliot looked around in surprise. “This is actually pretty nice,” he said.

“It is,” I agreed.

The apartment had two bedrooms – one at each end of the apartment. There was one bathroom at the far end, near the smaller of the two bedrooms, and a wide and expansive living room. The kitchen was adjacent to the living room; you just had to take a step up. It was kind of like the letter “L.”

“Have you ever lived here?” Eliot asked.

“Yeah, twice. Once when I was a kid and my parents were waiting for our house to be ready. That was only for a couple of weeks. Then I lived here with Derrick for the summer before we went to college. Neither one of us wanted to live at home and this was our next best option.”

“Why didn’t you want to live at home?”

“You’ve met my mom. Imagine what she was like when she still thought she had an inkling of control over me. It was ugly.”

“Yeah,” Eliot chuckled. “She’s a little intense. Is she like this with everyone – or do I just rub her the wrong way?”

“Don’t take it personally,” I admonished him, climbing up into the kitchen and sitting at the small rectangular table. It was the only furniture currently in the apartment. “She can’t help herself. She doesn’t see herself as being oppressive.”

“Oppressive?” Eliot raised his eyebrows as he regarded me. “That’s an odd word to describe your mom.”

I shrugged noncommittally. “She’s just a control freak. She doesn’t see it. There’s no way to change it.”

“So how do you handle it?”

“I purposely try to make her head implode,” I replied simply.

“That doesn’t seem like it is much of an endeavor.”

“Most of the time, it’s not.”

Eliot eyed me speculatively for a few minutes and then turned back to the empty apartment. “Where are we going to sleep?”

“I think there are some sleeping bags in the closet,” I offered.

Eliot wandered over to the small closet beside the bathroom and opened the door. I could hear him chuckling to himself. I remained sitting until he walked back into the living room and held up two sleeping bags. One of them was
Star Wars
and the other was
G.I. Joe
. “I’m guessing the
Star Wars
one belonged to you, but who was the
G.I. Joe
fanatic?”

“Derrick,” I said simply. “Our interests as kids were somewhat limited. We spent a lot of time in the woods with paintball guns – and our imaginations.”

“You two were close?”

“Yeah, we’re only nine months apart in age.”

“Are you still close?”

I shrugged. “As close as we can be. I can’t imagine it’s easy to have me as a cousin – especially when you work for the police.”

“I guess,” Eliot said. “I think you two are kind of funny. You act more like brother and sister than anything else.”

“We were essentially raised together,” I said.

“Is he close with Lexie?”

“No,” I shook my head. “If I’m embarrassing,
Lexie is mortifying.”

“I see that,” Eliot said.

He started spreading the sleeping bags out on the floor, tossing two pillows he found in the closet on the floor next to them. He plopped down on the
G.I. Joe
one, pulling his boots off and placing them against the wall as he did.

I watched him curiously. “Why did you volunteer us to stay here?” I finally asked.

“Why not?”

“It just seems odd,” I admitted.
“Like you’re trying too hard for them to like you.”

“You think this was about them liking me?” Eliot looked surprised.

“It wasn’t?”

“It was about irritating you – and maybe getting you alone.” The look Eliot slid towards me was predatory – and sexy.

“You knew that we’d end up alone up here?” Somehow, I doubted that.

“No,” Eliot admitted. “I thought we’d end up in a hotel – but this is just as good.”

“Yeah, childhood sleeping bags and a hard floor are definitely sexy,” I teased.

“Sexy is a state of mind, not your surroundings,” Eliot leaned back against the wall. There was
a about twenty feet between us – but it felt like I could feel his warmth emanating from here.

“You seem pretty sure that you’re going to get lucky,” I said, licking my lips nervously.

“I wouldn’t want to disappoint your mom,” he laughed.

That was only a plus from my perspective. I slowly got up and moved towards him. What the hell, right?



I woke up in a tangle of arms, legs and
Star Wars
fabric. I could feel Eliot curled up behind me, with his right arm wrapped around me tightly. He felt me stir and snuggled in closer to me, mumbling into my tangled blonde hair as he did. “Good morning.”

“Morning,” I murmured back, relaxing back into his strong arms for a few minutes. I looked up at the sliding glass doors in the kitchen and saw that the light was starting to filter in. It was almost dawn. Sally would be here soon. And, as comfortable and relaxed as I felt, I knew that if Eliot and I were found naked and wrapped in my childhood sleeping bag – things would get unpleasant, to say the least.

“We have to get up,” I said reluctantly.

“I know,” Eliot said. He kissed my temple quickly and then climbed up. I took a second to appreciate his naked rear end before I started getting dressed, too. I only had the same clothes I had worn the day before, so it didn’t take very long. I excused myself to go into the bathroom and ran my fingers through my hair. It was a losing battle.

I asked Eliot to bring my purse into the bathroom for me. Luckily, I had an extra hairbrush inside of it. I wet it under the faucet and ran it through my hair. It wasn’t a vast improvement, but it was better than it had been. I threw all of my hair into a pony tail and then splashed some water on my face.

When I came back out into the living room, Eliot had folded up the sleeping bags and stashed them back into the linen closet. Despite the fact that we’d had a, um, rigorous evening, Eliot’s hair barely looked out of place. I handed him the hairbrush anyway and watched as he disappeared into the bathroom.

When he was done, Eliot came back out into the living room and shrugged into his flannel shirt. He then turned to me expectantly. A memory of last night rushed into my head and I could feel my face flush.

Eliot smirked when he saw the reddening of my cheeks. “Are you regretting it now?”

“No,” I admitted. “I just know my mom is going to take one look at me and know the dirty, dirty things we did last night.”

“Do you think she’ll really care?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s going to totally piss her off,” I responded.

“Is that a bad thing or a good thing?”

“It’s a good thing,” I said. “It’s definitely a good thing.”

Eliot held his hand out to me and I took it, letting him pull me towards him and brush a soft kiss across my lips. Inviting him to dinner really was one of my better ideas – and that’s saying something, because I’m something of a genius (especially in my own mind).

Eliot and I heard someone outside of the apartment door and I inadvertently took a step back. I wasn’t surprised to see Sally standing there. She was laden down with painting supplies.

“Oh, good, you’re up,” she said. She was eying us both speculatively for a minute. I could tell she wanted to find out if anything happened – but she currently had other things on her mind. That would have to wait.

“We’re going to go down to the restaurant and have breakfast and then we’ll go help pack your stuff,” I said.

“Good,” she said. “By the time you get back here I should be done painting.”

I led Eliot back downstairs. My cousin Mario was cooking this morning and he looked surprised when he saw Eliot and I descend from the upstairs apartment. “Looks like someone got lucky last night,” he teased.

Mario was seven years younger than me and fresh out of high school. He was working at the restaurant while he put himself through college. He was one of my funnier cousins – but I wasn’t especially in the mood for his brand of humor this morning.

“Are you jealous?”

“Hell yes,” Mario answered amiably. “He’s very pretty. His hair looks like it feels like spun satin.”

Mario has a weird sense of humor.

Eliot and I went back out to the dining room and slid into the family booth. Derrick was already eating his breakfast. I was surprised to see him. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going back to the city?”

“I was,” Derrick grumbled.

“Did they nag you until you agreed to come back?”

“No,” Derrick said. “My mom nagged me so I spent the night at her house. On the couch.”

My family is a little co-dependent.

I ordered eggs, hash browns, ham, wheat toast and tomato juice – my favorite breakfast. Eliot ordered pancakes. When the waitress left, I turned back to Derrick. “How long do you think this is going to take?”

“Knowing Sally?
All day. It’s not exactly how I wanted to spend my Saturday,” he grumbled. “I wanted to spend the afternoon with Devon.”

Ah, Devon, his Channel 4 sweetie. Good. I didn’t like her anyway.

“She’s hot,” Eliot said to Derrick as a means of conversation.

I glared at Eliot disdainfully. “You’re much hotter, baby,” he absentmindedly patted my hand as he sipped from his cup of coffee.

Derrick snickered and sipped from his own cup of coffee. He was now looking at me curiously. “Your mom is going to know you got laid last night,” he said finally.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lied, staring down at my silverware.

Derrick smirked. “You kind of have a glow.” He turned to Eliot. “Good job. Maybe she’ll be more interested in you than fucking up my job for awhile.”

“I don’t fuck up your job,” I argued.

“You don’t make it any easier,” he countered.

Thankfully, my breakfast had arrived so I had something else to focus on besides popping Derrick’s head like a really big zit. I found that I was suddenly ravenous. Derrick watched me dunk my toast in my egg yolks and started laughing. “He took a lot of out you, huh? You need some nourishment?”

I glanced over at Eliot, but he apparently wasn’t going to ride to my rescue. “Do you want to chime in here?”

“Nope.”
Eliot took a big bite of his pancakes and smirked at me.

So much for my white knight.