Stay For Me - Megan Smith Page 0,15
home if you’d like.”
She kicks at a pebble on the ground. “Nah, it’s okay. He’ll show up sooner or later.”
I take a few steps over to my car and lean up against it. It’s freezing out here and she’s wearing shorts and a thin jacket. I can’t leave her here.
“You want to wait inside?” I offer thinking it would be kind of odd asking her to sit in my car if it’s her boyfriend picking her up.
She shakes her head. “Oh no, I’m fine.” I can see her body trembling. “You can go ahead and go home. I’m good here.”
If she thinks I’m leaving her here by herself she’s out of her mind. “I’m not leaving you here.”
Her bag falls from her shoulder. She looks so exhausted. I step over and take it from her. “Let me just take you home.”
She looks around. A cop car passes, sirens are going off in the distance and a guy walking his dog walks by. “Alright.”
I open the passenger side door for her. “Thank you,” she whispers.
“Don’t worry about it.” I say after shutting the door. You shouldn’t be out here by yourself anyway.
I toss her bag in the back seat of my BMW when she asks shyly¸ “You familiar with Brick?”
“Brick, as in the Brick that’s twenty minutes from here?” I didn’t realize she lived that far. I mean it’s not that far but far enough that public transportation must be a bitch and takes forever.
She nods. “That’s the one.”
I turn the car on and crank the heat up. “Okay.”
The ride to her house is quiet and a little awkward. We’ve worked together a lot these last few weeks but I still don’t know her and that makes sparking a conversation hard so I go for neutral ground and start talking about work.
“How are you making out with work and school? It’s not too much with your class schedule, right?”
She yawns. “Oh no, things are fine. I get most of my school work done between classes.”
I nod.
“You’re going to make a right onto Hooper Avenue up here.” She points to the traffic light a little ways down. I make the right hand turn. “Now take this down and you’re going to make a left on Manor Drive.”
I drive for about another minute.
“Make this left and it’s the first house on the right.”
I pull up to her house. The area is a little sketchy but she seems in her element.
“Thank you so much for the ride, Eli.”
“No problem.”
She grabs her things and climbs from my car pausing briefly to look around. I wait until she’s behind the fence to drive off. I’m so fucking exhausted that if I sat for just a minute until she made it into the house I would have fallen asleep. I really need to talk to Cooper about hiring a manager who could help with things while he’s out on the road. This is starting to wear on me night after night with no breaks.
Friday evening just before dinner time I arrive at Fierce. I spent the late morning and afternoon with Erin and Sophia. I hadn’t seen them in months. Erin seemed good, not her normal self but at least she hadn’t sunk into depression like she had in the past with break ups. Our dad did a real number on her when we were growing up. All he ever cared about was his work, nothing in the world mattered but that. Sophia was dressed in her princess pajamas when I arrived and she was dancing around all over the house. After hanging with them for a few hours, I promised to take Sophia out shopping for her fourth birthday that was coming up. So before I left, we agreed on a weekend that we would meet at the mall and Sophia could pick out anything she wanted from the Disney store.
Arriving at Fierce, I went to my office and just sat at my desk and kicked my feet up to catch a little power nap when my phone rang. Cooper. Wonder why he’s calling now? I haven’t heard from him in almost two weeks. To be honest I’m a little pissed about it. I know he’s busy and stuff but still a two minute phone conversation wouldn’t hurt.
“What’s up, Cooper?”
“Just calling to check in, things have been busy, as you can imagine. I’m not getting as much time as I thought I would.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it.” I say fighting off a yawn. Ever since I