Maid for Each Other(43)
When I walked into the kitchen, she was sitting at the island, writing in her notebook. Now that I knew she was a fiction writer, I was even more intrigued to know what she was writing. What ideas were alive in her mind, vivid enough for her to be inspired to put them down on paper?
And Edward had done a hell of a job, because somehow she looked like her future. Abi looked like an English professor. She was wearing jeans and a navy blazer, with a white T-shirt underneath and a pair of tortoise-shell glasses （that had slid almost all the way down on her nose as she wrote）。 Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail with a navy clip holding it together.
I was taken aback by how natural she looked that way. If I didn’t know better, I would assume this was the everyday version of Abi Mariano.
“What are you working on, professor?” I asked, and my heart kind of stuttered when she looked up at me and smiled.
Because she was so fucking pretty.
But it didn’t escape my notice that she quickly closed the notebook and a guarded look crossed her face.
“Just random thoughts that will probably equate to nothing,” she said, shrugging and waving a hand to brush it off. “I do this all the time, constantly jotting things down so I don’t lose the information even though I know I’ll probably never use it.”
“Makes sense,” I said, even more curious to know what she’d been working on. “Is this for class this week?”
A crinkle formed in between her eyebrows and I could tell she’d temporarily forgotten that she shared a little bit of her actual life with me last night.
And for some reason, I didn’t like the idea of her regretting it. I liked that she’d felt like sharing, even though I knew it essentially didn’t matter since we’d be going our separate ways soon.
“Not specifically,” she said. “It’s the beginning of the semester, so I’m prepping, trying to figure out which story ideas will go into my capstone project. I’ll have to meet with my advisor soon for approval, so I need to get it all mapped out.”
“I see,” I said, disappointed that I’d never know more than that. There was something about the idea of her brain running wild on paper, creating stories, that I found mildly intoxicating. Made me want to sit at her feet and listen to her talk for hours.
Shit—what the hell is wrong with me?
Obviously it’d been a long weekend and I was losing perspective when thoughts like that popped into my head. It was good that we were wrapping up, and that in a few hours I’d be on my way to New York.
The sooner this weekend of pretend was over, the better for my brain.
“Are you almost ready to go?” I asked. “You look nice, by the way.”
“Thank you,” she said, standing and looking down at herself. “I’ve never really been a blazer sort of person, but I feel like Edward is good at knowing what sort of person I should be.”
“He’s the best,” I agreed. “But I wouldn’t second-guess the fact that you know better than anyone who you are.”
Her eyebrows crinkled together even harder at that, like she didn’t understand my words, which was fair because I didn’t, either. It hadn’t even been forty-eight hours since we’d met, and now I was trying to convince her of her style or outlook on life.
I wasn’t sure what was going on with me.
Maybe I was coming down with something.
“I’m ready,” she said. “Let me just put this notebook in the bedroom.”
She walked into the other room, gesturing to my bag as she passed, saying, “Don’t you have a suitcase?”
It was strange to see her go into my bedroom like she belonged there. “No,” I said. “I live in New York, too, so I have everything I need in my apartment.”
“I can’t believe you have a place in New York,” she said—squealed, actually—as she came back in the room, a look of childlike wonder on her face. “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
Something about the excitement in her voice made me feel…guilty again. Or just hyperaware of how lucky I was. Because to me it was no big deal. It was just an apartment, and New York was just another busy city.
But to her, it was somewhere she’d always wanted to go but had never been.
Abi hadn’t been able to afford a weeklong stay at a hotel for a simple apartment building issue, yet I had multiple residences.
So, yes—here she is again, reminding me of my privilege.
“Do we have time to get coffee on the way?” she asked, grabbing her purse off the counter. “I know we’re going to a brunch where they’ll likely have some, but I am a person who thoroughly enjoys a Frappuccino for breakfast on the weekends every once in a while.”
“Only every once in a while?” I picked up my keys, not unaware of the way they’d been sitting beside her bag like we were an actual couple who lived there together. “You mean you’re not someone who gets it every weekend?”
“Are you kidding me?” she said, looking at me like I’d lost my mind. “It’s like seven bucks a drink. I am not on a Frapp-every-weekend budget, but thank you for thinking that I might be.”
She laughed and patted me on the shoulder as she walked past me, leaving a waft of something floral but vanilla that I was worried would be my new favorite scent.