The Wright Brother (26 page)

Soon she’d be graduating, which meant she’d need to start a job search. There were a number of prestigious libraries she could apply to, but none of them were even remotely close to campus.

The closest one was in New York City, which was still several hours’ drive away. She’d do it, though, just to make sure she could at least see him, but there was no way she could put all her eggs in just one basket either.

Julian came up behind her as she sat at the breakfast table and massaged her shoulders.

Huffing, she gave him a weak smile. “Trying to decide where to send applications.”

Taking a seat beside her, he grabbed one of the apple slices off her plate and took a bite. “All of them.”

She loved how he looked when he first woke up in the morning. Sleep tousled, his hair feathering out every which way, and his yummy abs completely on display for her.

Shoving her laptop aside, she lifted one of her legs on her chair and shook her head. “They’re far, Jules. All of them. So far.”

The smile he wore slowly dissipated as he sat the apple slice down. A faint wash of morning sun hung over his head like a golden halo. In the year in a half she and Jules had been together, they’d gotten in their fair share of arguments. He was stubborn, and sometimes left messes around the apartment for her to clean up.

He was prone to getting quickly irritated and annoyed by things he couldn’t quite understand, but he was also one of the sweetest, most selfless guys she knew. Especially when it came to her.

Drumming his fingers on the tabletop, he gave her a pointed look and then said, “What do you want to do?”

She frowned. “I want to stay with you.”

“I want that too,” he said slowly, but they both knew she couldn’t.

The campus already had too many on staff as it was, and he knew very well, because of how often she’d talked of it, that her dream was to work at a prestigious library. Someplace in Italy or England or Rome… Basically any place in Europe would do.

But how could she leave him?

Shutting her laptop, she frowned at it, feeling torn by her desires to both stay and go.

From the corner of her eye she saw his fingers move.

“What?” she asked.

“Let’s go out tonight. Finals are over, let’s just get out of the house and relax. What do you think? I can invite my brothers and you can invite Chas and Luke.”

She smiled, but her heart wasn’t really in it.

Noticing, he got up from his chair and came around to her side of the table, holding out his hand to her.

Taking it, he lifted her from her seat and pulled her tight into his body, rocking her gently back and forth.

Feeling the brick in her gut ease just a little, she tapped words onto his lower back. “Where do you want to go?”

He shrugged, but then said. “Luke is going to be playing at the Blue Moon next week.”

She knew what the Blue Moon was, it was the only blues club for several miles in any direction. Elisa’s brows lowered.

“Music? You’ll be bored.”

Tipping her chin up, he gave her a tender kiss before saying, “I can hear more than you think.”

Laughing, she shrugged. “Okay then, I’ll call and see what they say.”

Chastity and Luke were excited to go. Roman and Christian, however, couldn’t make it. The guys had opted to hit up a gentleman’s club instead. Considering all three of them had just turned twenty-one, Elisa wasn’t terribly surprised by their decision.

Because Chastity had told Elisa that the place was a kind of throwback to the smoky elegance of a fifties club, she’d decided to go shopping. She’d gone to the mall with the hopes of finding a sequined flapper-style dress, because it just seemed like the right sort of dress to wear to a place like that, but the moment her eyes had landed on the floor-length, spaghetti-strap, form-fitting dark red gown, she’d known she had to grab it.

It wasn’t often that Elisa got to dress up; she and Julian were well beyond proms at this point. Chastity had promised that everyone went in their best duds to this place, so she’d bought Julian a few items she’d found on clearance.

Julian wasn’t a suit kind of man. He probably never would be. So she’d gone with black slacks, a steel-gray short sleeve, button-up shirt, a pair of suspenders, and a funky striped tie that she thought would look fun on him.

Running the flat iron through her hair one final time, she applied a thick coat of nude lip gloss and then walked out of the bathroom only to come up short when she saw him.

Julian hadn’t styled his hair, but he looked almost like a different man. The black tattoos trailing down his arms and up his neck made her heart thump violently against her ribcage.

He rubbed his own chest before slowly offering her his arm.

Remembering the last time she’d dared to wear heels, Elisa had decided on a pair of buff-colored chunky-heel pumps that she had to strap on. Last thing she wanted was to fall and break her foot this time.

“You look beautiful,” he said and then trailed his knuckles down her cheek.

“You too, Jules. How did I get to be so lucky?”

“Beauty and the beast,” he said with a snort.

Kissing his cheek, she shook her head. “I love the way you look. Now,” she said, grabbing her purse, “let’s go before we’re late.”

The club was packed by the time Julian and Elisa made it there, but thankfully Chas and Luke had gotten there an hour ago, and, because Luke was friends with the owner, had managed to snag a choice booth by the stage.

Elisa smiled as she slipped into the booth, taking a seat beside Luke, who leaned over and kissed her cheek before shaking Julian’s hands.

She was so glad she’d dressed up the way she had, because Chastity hadn’t been lying. The people inside ranged from her age to over the hill, but all of them were dressed to the nines.

The dress she thought might make her stand out like a sore thumb seemed sedate compared to some of the gaudy dresses parading around. Men were either in suits or at least dressed semi-formally.

Chas herself was dressed in an eye-catching sequined mid-thigh gown. Half black and half white, it had a sweetheart neckline that showed off the ladies very nicely. Luke wore an all white zoot suit with a black tie and even had the hat on his head.

Her friend’s eyes bugged. “Holy crap, you look so much like JLaw now—doesn’t she look like JLaw?” Chastity smacked Luke’s shoulder, and he just gave her an indulgent smile before nodding.

Chastity was currently into all things Jennifer Lawrence, not that Elisa minded one bit being compared to her.

“You’re so crazy, Chas, and you look gorgeous too,” she said as Julian slipped in beside her, placing an arm across her shoulder.

“You found it okay, I see,” Luke said a moment later and spread his arm wide. “What do you think?”

The smoky ambience of the place was what got Elisa, especially considering she didn’t actually see anyone smoking. The room was low lit, the tables covered in white table cloths, the booths so high as to give it a private feel even though the place was crowded, and the house band had her tapping her feet already.

“It’s awesome,” Julian signed quickly, which made Luke beam.

A waitress came by a moment later for their drink order, wearing a Playboy bunny-style outfit, complete with the black bow tie; the only things missing were the bunny ears and tail.

Elisa smiled, already enjoying herself. She’d so needed this night and she was grateful now that Julian had suggested it.

“So what are your plans for graduation?” Luke asked, signing it at the same time.

Unlike her and Chas, he’d graduated the year before, but had managed to find an accounting job within twenty miles of the campus, making it possible for he and Chas to continue living in the same apartment.

Chastity’s lips thinned as she patted Luke’s chest, as if to say,
Don’t ask that
. His eyes widened and he glanced between her and Julian with a wide-eyed “sorry” look.

Shrugging, Elisa leaned into Julian’s side. “It’s okay. It’s obviously the elephant in the room.”

Julian kissed her cheek, running his fingers lightly up and down her goose-pimpled bicep. Not talking, just touching.

The band switched to a more up-tempo song, one with a strong back beat to it. Couples started getting up and going to the center of the floor to sway to the music.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” she said a second later. “There aren’t many options for my career field around here. A few places in Massachusetts and New York, but yeah.” She ended on a sad little sigh.

The drinks arrived a moment later and the conversation soon turned to other more neutral topics. But now Elisa couldn’t stop thinking about her and Julian and what they would do when the time came.

“Hey, I want to dance.” Chastity grinned and, sliding out, held out her hand for Luke. Giving them a wink, she turned and sauntered off with Luke into the crowd.

“I think she did that to give us some privacy,” Julian said a minute later.

“I think they did too,” she agreed, giving him a sad little smile.

“Smile Girl.” His beautiful sea-green eyes gazed at her tenderly. “Don’t think about this.”

“Jules.” She scooted deeper into him. “It’s all I can think about lately. I try so hard to remember that we still have several more months before this becomes an issue, but it feels like time is just—”

Grabbing her hands, he kissed her fingertips. It was what he did when she refused to switch the subject. Shoulders slumping, she leaned deeper into his touch.

“Close your eyes and listen to the music with me,” he said, smiling deep into her eyes.

“How do you do it? I see you all the time with the headphones, how do you hear it, Jules? Show me.”

Sliding his hand over her throat, he placed his other palm flat on the table. The song playing now was slow with a smooth, and easy back beat. He didn’t move a muscle, as if waiting for something.

Elisa sat perfectly still beneath him, her excitement growing as she waited to hear the world as he did. Then the song switched over, and the drumbeat was a forceful cadence.

His finger moved on her throat, mimicking the beat just a half a second later on her skin. Her eyes widened as tears burned the back of her throat.

She didn’t move, and barely took a breath as she lost herself not to the sound of the song, but to the rhythm of it playing along the column of her throat.

Julian had closed his eyes, his whole body one of intense concentration as he focused. When the song finally ended, he looked up at her, and she framed his face with her suddenly cold hands.

“You’re amazing, Julian Wright,” she said, his eyes immediately moving to her lips. “So amazing. How can I ever leave you?”

When he kissed her, a quiet tear slipped out the corner of her eye.

Julian walked into the Adrians’ kitchen, sitting down beside her as he took a sip from their shared coffee mug.

Elisa had graduated and since she’d no longer be back at campus, she and Julian had moved out of their apartment and back home for summer vacation.

The job search had become less a source of sadness and more a source of frustration as the weeks rolled by and one library after another wrote back with the dreaded “Thank you for considering blah, blah, blah, but we regret to inform you that…” nonsense.

She had, however, been invited to two libraries for interviews. One in Massachusetts, and one in Dublin—it’d been a cluster flying to Dublin just for the weekend to do that interview. The jet lag had been horrific, but Julian had been with her and his presence had settled her nerves enough to give a professional sounding interview, she hoped.

The moment she’d stepped foot into the Trinity College library she’d just about had a heart attack. The place had been a nerd’s paradise, polished marble floors, bookshelves that seemed to run on for miles, and the book of Kells prominently displayed behind a glass case. Her fingers had gone cold, almost numb with a desire to hold it. To read it.

The Boston Public Library had been nothing to sneeze at either, but if she had her choice, Dublin won her heart. Problem was, while she loved the idea of working in Dublin, she did not enjoy the idea of being so far away from Jules.

“What’s the plan for today?” Julian signed. “Want to catch a movie, or—”

Her cell phone rang. The song wasn’t one she was familiar with. She programmed different songs for different people, and this was her “stranger” ringtone. Eyes shooting immediately up to Julian, she froze.

Frowning, he clipped his head, staring at the screen.

“It’s Ireland.”

She nodded. “I know.”

Each ring pierced her heart, made her feel like she wanted to puke.

“Pick it up,” he said and then scooped it into his hands, answering the call before shoving it into her face.

“Hel…hello?” she mumbled.

“Yes, hello,” a pleasant female voice that didn’t sound at all like the one who’d interviewed her said. “May I speak with Elisa Adrian, please?”

Shaking the cobwebs free, Elisa nodded her head. “That’s me. Yes, hi.”

“Hi.” She could hear the smile on the other end. “We’ve had an opportunity to look over your packet, and we’re all in agreement that should you still desire to work here, the job is yours. We would also be very glad to assist you with finding an affordable flat in the city center.”

Heart racing out of control, she gave a silent nod. She’d not yet heard back from Boston—what if they said yes?

She already knew from her inquiries that Dublin wouldn’t pay half of what Boston would. Though she had no doubt she could find a roommate if she needed to help float the cost. But by no means would she be rich. All this she told herself, even as her internal little girl bounced up and down in exhilaration that she’d gotten the offer from the one she’d wanted most.

“Can I have time to think about it?”

“Oh yes, absolutely. Though we will need a firm answer by week’s end, I’m afraid.”

Holding on to her chest, she nodded forcefully. “Yes, I understand, thank you.”

When she hung up, Julian’s smile was broad, but it didn’t touch his eyes. “They offered you the job.”