"I like to cook." Her face falls as she passes me my coffee. "Why, does it bother you?"
"No. I mean… I don’t want you thinking you have to."
She smiles and serves up the pancakes.
"What?"
"It's so cute that you think I would do something I didn’t want to do."
I smirk, knowing that’s true.
April arranges the strawberries and bananas on my pancakes.
"Maple syrup?" she asks.
"Please."
She pours it on and passes it over, and then she sits beside me with her plate.
"No maple syrup for you?" I frown.
"No." She bites the food from her fork. "I'm sweet enough."
"Isn't that the truth?"
She puts her hand on my thigh and leans over to kiss me. She's right, though. She is sweet and gentle. Everything I'm not.
My heart constricts as I look at her.
She cups my face. "Last night was wonderful, Seb."
"It was."
We stare at each other for a moment, and an undercurrent of affection passes between us.
Don’t fuck this up.
I return to eating. "So, is this where I realize that you’ve robbed my house?" I bite the food from my fork.
"Aha." She giggles. " I cleaned the joint out last night. Man, you have a lot of shit. My back is sore from carrying it all out to your snooty car."
I smile.
"What are we going to do today?" she asks.
My gaze lifts to hers. There's a today?
"Umm." I pause because I don’t really know how to answer that. "What do you want to do?"
"Well, seeing as we can't leave the house due to the fact that we're undercover in a secret spy film like Mission Impossible."
I smirk at her analogy. "This is true."
"I thought you could give me a foot massage."
"I think I can manage that."
She leans over and kisses me again. Then, she rests her cheek against mine, and it's there again.
This tenderness.
It's so foreign to me, but so comforting and nice.
I pull away from her and return to eating. "What do I get after I massage your feet?"
"You get to cut my toenails."
I burst out laughing at her unexpected answer. "Is this some kind of perverted kink?"
She laughs. "Absolutely, Mr. Garcia. You are in for a treat."
"Can you call the car for me? I need to get home and organize my things for the week," April says.
After watching a movie on the couch together, I dozed off to sleep.
I sit up. "Of course." I walk out and text Kevin, asking him to take ‘Tara’ home. His response comes back quickly.
With her wanting to leave, I'm reminded what it's like when she's not here. A feeling of loss rolls around in my stomach.
"If I could take you home myself, I would," I say.
She smiles up at me from her place on the couch. "I know, baby." She holds her arms up for me. "Come and cuddle me before I go."
I lie down beside her, and she holds me tightly. I put my head against her shoulder.
I don’t want her to go.
She kisses my temple.
"What are you going to have for dinner?" she asks.
"Why don’t you stay tonight, too?"
She pulls back to look at me. "You can cook your own dinner, Sebastian."
"I didn’t mean that. I meant…" I stop myself.
"What?" She brushes my hair back from my forehead.
"We could get takeout so you didn’t have to cook.” I swallow the lump in my throat.
Her eyes search mine. "I haven’t got my clothes washed for work."
"I'll buy you new ones."
She smiles and kisses me. I know she thinks that I'm joking, I'm deadly serious.
I wrap my arms around her and hold her tight. So tight, I can feel myself squeezing too hard.
"Stay. I need you to stay, Cartier."
She pulls out of my grip and stands. "Don’t call me that. I told you last night. I don’t like it."
"It's just a nickname."
“One that brings back terrible memories for me."
I stand, annoyed that she pulled away from me. "How ridiculous. Why would it?"
She watches me. "It doesn’t bring back bad memories for you?"
"Nope." I walk out into the kitchen. "I happen to like those memories… a lot better than these ones."
She follows me. "What do you mean by that?"
"Nothing. Drop it."
She puts her hands on her hips. "What the hell? You like those memories better than now? What the fuck does that mean?"
I roll my eyes. "Cut the fucking dramatics. You know what I meant."
"No, I don’t. Explain it to me." Her eyes hold mine. "Why do you call me Cartier, Sebastian?"
"You know what? Just fucking go home, April. I'm not in the mood for this bullshit."
She watches me and I can see her brain working at a million miles per minute. "You liked it when I worked at the Escape Room, didn't you?"
"Shut up. Go home."
"Why would you like me better then…?" Her voice trails off and her face falls. "You’re compartmentalizing me?"
"Now you’re a fucking shrink. Go the fuck home." I march upstairs.
She storms after me. "You are, aren’t you?" She takes the stairs two at a time. "The way you're acting now is telling me that I'm right."
"Just go!” I don’t want her here, and I don’t want to talk about this.
"Sebastian!" she snaps. "Answer the question."
"What do you fucking know about compartmentalizing?"
"Everything." She throws up her hands. "I wrote the fucking book on it."
"Oh, so now everyone is fucked up like you, are they?"
"I'm not fucked up." She points to her chest. "And it took me about ten thousand dollars in shrink appointments to be able to admit that."
I walk into my bathroom and slam the door behind me.
She opens it. "Don’t slam the fucking door on me."
"Then stop following me!" I yell as I begin to lose my patience.
"Is that what you're doing?"
I stay silent.
"Sebastian?" she asks softly. "You're still thinking of me as your Escape Girl."
I begin to hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears as I stare at her.
She steps back, as if my lack of words physically hurt her.
"So…. I'm just some girl you pay to have sex with?" Her eyes well with tears.
I clench my jaw. "Don't you dare use tears as a weapon,” I sneer. "That’s not fucking fair."
Her face falls. “What was last night?"
I stare at her.
She puts her hand over her heart. "While I'm over here falling for you, you think of me as a whore."
I drop my gaze to the floor. I can't look her in the eye.
"Sebastian?"
I keep staring down.
"Look at me!" she cries. "Is that fucking true?"