The Vessel - Jenika Snow Page 0,6

where they were at.

“It’s me, Aunt Frannie. How are you?”

“Elise, sweetheart, I’m good. You hanging in there?” She asked me this every time I called.

Am I hanging in there?

Meaning, had the city swallowed me whole yet?

“I’m good. Things are going well.” I listened to my aunt start going on about her friends who’d come over so they could all play poker—something my mother was extremely good at for some reason. She told me how my mom had taken all their “cash.” And by cash, she meant the Monopoly money they used.

I chuckled in between listening to her story and drinking my coffee. I stared out the window, my view the brick apartment building next door. If I pressed my cheek to the glass and craned my neck to the left, I could just barely make out the strip of the main intersecting street in front of my place.

“All right, Beanie. Calm down,” my aunt hollered to my mother.

She’d nicknamed my mom Beanie when they were just kids, and to this day I have no idea why. All I knew was it had stuck, and the only time my aunt called her by her real name—Charlene—was when she was angry.

“Your mother is hounding me about giving her the phone. Talk to you later, honey. I love you.”

“Love you too,” I said between a chuckle.

There was some static on the other end as the phone was being passed off, and then I heard Mom grumble to my aunt under her breath.

“Hi, Mom.” I balanced my coffee cup on the armrest of the loveseat and shifted on the cushion.

“I was just thinking about you right before you called.”

I smiled even though she couldn’t see me. My mom seemed to always be thinking about me right before I called. It was really endearing.

We talked for the next twenty minutes about everything and nothing in general before I had to get off and start getting ready for work. But she made sure to slip in about me finding a “nice boy” and “settling down.” Nothing like your mom guilt-tripping you into getting hitched and popping out babies, despite the fact that I was barely twenty-four.

After I disconnected the call and promised I’d come by tomorrow to have lunch with her and my aunt, I sat there and just stared at the ceiling. I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about Lucius and our encounter yesterday. It had been so random and different, not like any of the other instances where we passed each other.

Despite my raging hormones, I’d been able to tell something was off about him, something different in the way he held himself. He’d been guzzling down the beer, and who knows how many swigs he’d taken from the scotch bottle before I walked in. But none of that was my business, and I sure as hell didn’t need the complication of wanting my boss. He was out of my league as well as out of my reach.

Not like he’d want me anyway. I’m a nobody who scrubs his toilets. I snorted.

He probably had a whole slew of svelte supermodels lined up to drop their panties and grab their ankles for him.

I wrinkled my nose the image that thought conjured up. I also didn’t want to think too hard on how this spark of jealousy slammed into me at the thought of him with one of those no doubt gorgeous women who hung around in his circle.

And here I was, thick around the edges, curvy in all the spots I didn’t even know if they were supposed to be curvy, but still loving my life and who I was. I never pretended I was perfect, because being human meant we were all perfectly imperfect. But I loved myself, had the love of a wonderful mother and aunt, and one day I’d find a man who loved me as well.

But the very thought of Lucius being that man did send a flight of butterflies through my belly.

“You are living in a damn fantasy world, girl,” I muttered before I got up and started getting ready for work.

And as I finished and was heading out the door to take the subway, followed by a cab to Mr. Blacksmith’s place, it wasn’t lost on me that I might have dolled myself up just a bit more than usual. After all, maybe we’d have another run-in.

Or maybe I was truly thinking I could be Cinderella and snag myself a prince.

5

Lucius

It was the pounding in my head that