Not in Love

ELI

At first he shut the sound out, wrapped his arms tighter around Rue, and went on kissing her.

He’d just had the most intense orgasm of his life, his body was still processing the past hours, and he was fully immersed in the out-of-body experience of Rue not running away from him after he’d fucked her. Or come as close to fucking her as he’d been able to get before losing it.

He was smitten, and not inclined to fight it.

But the doorbell rang again, and the shrill noise turned into a nagging feeling that sank into his pleasure-addled brain like a brick.

“Shit,” he muttered against her lips, then pulled her even closer. She was pliant and glowing and happy, and he’d had no intention of moving except to feed her or fuck her again. “Shit.”

“What?”

“My friends. They’re here. We had plans.”

She gave him a sleepy, wheel-spinning look. “Are you happy about that?”

“God, no.”

She smiled, and his heart leaped in his rib cage. He could do even better. He could make her fucking laugh, with some practice and lots of luck. “Could you pretend not to be home?”

“They have a set of keys.”

“I see.”

“And they’d have seen my car outside.”

“True.” She nuzzled under his chin, just as reluctant to move away. “Looks like you’re going to have to interact with them.”

He groaned in her hair, unable to let go of her, this woman who despised herself for wanting him. Had he ever felt this way before? He must have. Just couldn’t remember.

“Should I sneak out of the window?” He gave her a puzzled look, so she continued, “I have no issue with walk-of-shaming out, but maybe you do?”

“Please, don’t tie my sheets in a rope.” He extricated himself from her, and the skin of her shoulder immediately rose in tiny goose bumps. He traced them with his thumb and forced himself to say, “Just come down when you’re ready.”

“Okay.”

He got up and watched her close her eyes and stretch sinuously on the sheets, fisting his hands to his sides to prevent himself from getting back into bed. He washed up haphazardly, put on a worn flannel and a pair of jeans, and by the time he was downstairs, Minami and Sul were already on the couch, cuddling Tiny as though he were the baby they were not so secretly trying for and taking advantage of Eli’s HBO subscription.

He leaned against the doorjamb and tried for an irritated look, but Minami wouldn’t have it.

“Well, well, well. Look who’s finally up, bright eyed and bushy tailed. How was your napper, champ?” Minami grinned. Then frowned. “Since when do you nap?”

“Since never. I have someone over.”

Her eyebrow shot up. Even Sul, Mr. Mountain of Impassivity, stared wide-eyed. “In the middle of the afternoon? Or from last night?”

“What do you think?”

She pursed her lips, twice. No sound came out, twice. Sighed. “Sul, could you whistle suggestively for me? I’ve been practicing, but it’s so hard.”

Sul obeyed—quite skillfully—like the whipped lovesick idiot he was.

“Thank you, babe. So we interrupted you, Eli?”

“Yup.”

“Sad.” A pained nod. “But whose fault is it for not canceling today’s dinner in advance?”

He gave her the finger just as Hark let himself inside. “Hey.” His hair was coated in tiny droplets of rain. “Did your sister finally get a new car? High time.”

“Nope.”

“Then whose Kia is in your driveway?”

“Eli has someone over,” Minami singsonged. “He’d forgotten that he was supposed to make us risotto.”

Hark’s eyes were outraged as he held out two bottles. “Does this Verdicchio I extensively researched and bought to pair with it mean nothing to you?”

“Less than.”

“Fuck off,” he said mildly, glancing at Sul and Minami. “I’m going back to my place and ordering pizza.”

“Leave the Verdicchio,” Eli ordered.

“As I already mentioned, you can fuck right off.”

“It’s okay. I’m leaving.”

They all turned toward the new voice. Rue was coming down the stairs, one hand on the banister as she stood on the landing.

Eli’s heart thudded. His brain couldn’t compute.

After their shower, her dark hair had dried in wilder curls than he was used to. Barefoot, heavy-lidded, and with no makeup and a blue-tinted mark that Eli had definitely sucked on her throat while coming inside her, she was absolutely breathtaking. Lush and full and so deeply fucked and fuckable.

You’re not. You’re not leaving. You’re staying till I’ve had my fill, and a little past that.

But her eyes were guarded, and the silence tense. It occurred to Eli that he’d never told her that his friends would be from Harkness. And they had not expected the woman upstairs to be Rue.

Minami was the first to recover, shooting to her feet with a wide smile. “Rue! It’s lovely to meet again.”

Rue descended the stairs. “Nice to see you, too.”

Minami leaned forward to hug her—a bit of absurd comedy, considering that Rue was nearly a foot taller, and clearly unsure as to what was happening. He watched her stiffly reciprocate, debating between being amused and going to her rescue, but Minami kept the matter brief. “Don’t leave—let’s all have dinner together! It’s always the four of us. I’m bored to tears with these three.”

Eli’s muttered “wow” came at the same time as Hark’s snorted “harsh” and Sul’s stoic “we’re married, but okay.” Minami’s smile held a let’s be friends invite, but Rue seemed uneasy and replied, “I’m not sure it would be appropriate.”

The atmosphere thickened. Suddenly, the room wasn’t populated by Eli’s friends and the woman he was seeing, but by Florence’s protégé and those who sought to take over Kline. Rue against the world, out of place and alone and uncomfortable.

She often looked exactly like that, and as long as Eli had any say in it, she was never going to be made to feel that way on his watch. “If anyone’s leaving, it’s them,” he said firmly. His eyes held Rue’s, until Hark added gruffly, “Thank you, asshole. Rue, we should all have dinner together. It’s obvious that Eli wants you here. He’s the birthday boy, after all.”

“It’s your birthday?” Rue’s eyes widened. “It is your birthday,” she said, maybe recalling his driver’s license. “I…Happy birthday, Eli.”

His heart skipped a beat, then thumped loudly in his chest. If they’d been alone, maybe he’d have told her, Thank you, Rue. You gave me the best birthday I’ve had in a decade. Or maybe not.

“Eli doesn’t like people to acknowledge his birthday in any way,” Minami warned. “We may gather to celebrate it, but we may not admit to why we’re gathered.”

“And it doesn’t have to be weird,” Hark added gruffly. “Our counsel would advise us not to talk about anything Kline related, anyway.” Rue remained quiet, so he added, “Besides, I parked behind your Kia, and you’re going to need some crazy maneuvers to get out. Are you good at that stuff?”

She winced. “Absolutely not.”

“Then you really need to stay. You can’t make me move my car; it’s raining and Eli fixed the cracks in the driveway by himself. It’s quicksand out there.”

Minami laughed. Sul smiled, and so did Hark, this time sincerely. Rue just looked at Eli, as if asking for guidance. “Stay,” he said in a low but audible tone, and after a long pause she nodded.

“Okay. Thank you for having me.”

Relief rammed hard into him. “Let me go make this fucking risotto you dickheads ruined my Saturday for.”

“Gotta love a warm welcome,” Minami said, before chatting Rue up. Eli couldn’t hear what they were saying, but he trusted Minami to be decent. Unlike Hark, who followed him into the kitchen with a deep scowl.

“I’m assuming you’re here to put the Verdicchio in the fridge?”

“Wrong. Try again.” Hark set the bottles on the table. “What the fuck are you doing, Eli?”

He crossed his arms. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

“It looks like if you stared at that girl any longer you’d have jizz coming out of your eyeballs.”

“Woman. And: classy.”

“And it looks like you’re doing Florence Kline’s friend. And it looks like you brought her into the house you share with your very young sister.”

“Maya’s in her twenties. She has people spending the night all the time.” Hark’s scowl deepened. “Dude, what is your deal?”

“How long has it been with Rue?”

“On and off, a few weeks.”

“Jesus, Eli. Aren’t there other women?”

“Sure, but I don’t want them.”

“What about the racquetball girl?”

He frowned. “Who?”

“The one we met when—”

“Stop right there. I don’t want Racquetball Girl, or any other girl, because they’re not Rue.”

“Oh, come off it. What’s the real reason?”

“This is the real reason. I like her. She’s a wonderful lay and she smells amazing and I love having her around. Do you want to read my fucking diary?”

“No, I want you to remember that things are heating up, and we’re closer than ever. Have you considered the possibility that Florence might be using her to find out shit from us?”

Eli did, right then, for all of a second. “She isn’t.”

“How can you be so sure? Because you have discovered the heights and the depths of sweet star-crossed love with her?”

“Because she never brings up Kline. Because I have been pursuing her. And because she’s not the kind of person who’d do that.”

“And you know her so well. All of what, two hours?”

“I know her well enough.”

“Goddammit, Eli. How serious is—” He interrupted himself, and when Eli followed his gaze, he saw Rue in the doorway.

He wondered how much she’d overheard, but her face was inscrutable as she asked, “Do you need any help with the cooking, Eli?” She ignored Hark, who, to his credit, managed to look contrite. He brushed past Rue with a murmured “excuse me,” and Eli was just glad to be alone with her again.

It was fundamentally fucked up, this feeling that his friends of over a decade were intruding on his life with Rue—a woman who would pour a Class 8 chemical down his nostrils for Florence Kline. Or even just recreationally. And yet, here he was.

Smiling at her.

His heart skipped when she smiled back faintly.

“Are you trying to steal my secret recipe, or do you just feel weird being with Harkness people in the other room?” he asked.

“The latter. I…I’m not very good with people I don’t know.”

“Ah.” Eli readjusted his mental image of Rue. She’d always been self-assured with him, at ease ever since the first night. He’d noticed that she seemed to be more reserved with others, but he’d chalked it up to a slightly aloof personality, not social anxiety.

“Is this recipe secret, too?” she asked.

“It’s not.” His chest felt tight. “Come here, I’ll teach you.”

She padded to the stove but deviated when she noticed a bowl of fruit. She picked up an apple, holding it in a pensive way that pulled a fond smile from Eli. “Are you thinking about the microbial coating?”

She nodded. “I finished collecting data yesterday.”

She seemed excited, and he felt inexplicably pleased. Would congratulating her sound patronizing? “It’s a fantastic project.”

She smiled, and he felt like he’d won the lottery. “Thank you.”

“What will you do next?”

“I’m not sure yet. Once I have the patent, I’ll have to decide if I want to license it or market it myself.”

Something about the phrasing gave him pause. “Won’t Kline own the tech?”

“No. I will. Florence and I had an agreement from the start.”

Eli’s hand tightened around the handle of a knife. “Did she—are you—” Get a grip, asshole. Use your words. “Do you have a written contract for that?”

“Of course.” She gave him a puzzled look and put the apple back. “Why? Were you hoping to steal my intellectual property together with the rest of Kline?”

There was a bite in her words, but he was too swept by relief to mind. “Something like that.” He needed to change the topic. “Do you cook?”

“Not well, but I like to have proper meals. Food is what I splurge on.”

She said it like it was a luxury. “I’m glad you’re staying.”

“Why?”

“I like to feed you well.” There was a pang of regret in his chest. McKenzie had tried to teach him as much as she could, but Eli had been too busy building a business. What a waste. Rue could have marveled at his kitchen prowess for weeks on end. “You can grate the cheese. Try not to shave your fingers—Minami’s in one of her vegetarian phases.”

They worked as well in his kitchen as they had in her lab, except that this time Eli took the lead and was surprised by how studiously Rue applied herself, treating garlic and olive oil like they were highly volatile substances. Cooking with McKenzie had been a lot of fun—McKenzie, who was bright and sunny and made everything turn into banter and kisses flavored with whatever ingredients they’d been using. Rue was nothing like that. She was intense and focused. A real fortress. She spoke little, always relevant questions and the occasional deadpan joke that had Eli biting his cheek to avoid laughing. She rarely volunteered information, and never started sentences with I.

And yet. There were shy smiles, and the rapt way she stared at his hands, and when he stood behind her to stir, she leaned back against his chest, just a little, just enough to make his brain and his heart and his dick pound in ways he wasn’t ready to analyze.

What would it be like to be in a relationship with her? Long, comfortable silences. Incessant honesty. Peaks and valleys. So easy to imagine some poor, hapless guy hanging from her every word. Making a full-time job out of teasing her. He’d put her at the center of his universe, and feel on top of the world when she eventually returned the favor.

Just the thought made him feel jealous, and angry, and a little sad.

“Is it ready yet?” Minami asked, popping by the kitchen. “Sul’s starving. I saw him lustily eyeing Tiny and had to distract him with saltines.”

“In three minutes. Thanks for saving my dog.”

“I consider myself more Tiny’s friend. You’re incidental.”

“Of course.” He kissed Minami on the forehead on his way to the fridge, and she took the chance to whisper in his ear, “It’s called an undercut.”

He gave her a puzzled look.

“You’ve been staring at Rue’s hair like you wanted to know.”

Rue couldn’t possibly have heard, but when he was back at the stove, she eyed him strangely. “What?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

Rue liked the risotto, which had Eli trying to play it cool even as he was ready to take a victory lap around the block and invest in some fireworks. Dinner went without incident, and the conversation didn’t touch sensitive topics; it flowed mostly among Harkness people, but Minami, and even Hark, made an effort to include Rue. She was shy, he realized, but he wasn’t sure whether the others were able to recognize this in her. Perhaps Tiny did, because he put his chin on her knee and gazed up at her with an adoring expression that seemed like a parody of Eli’s.

He was absolutely charmed by her inability to interact with his dog. He pictured her waking up in the morning, making her way outside to walk Tiny, politely but assertively asking him not to eat other dogs’ shit. When she lifted a hand, as though considering a tentative pat on Tiny’s head, Eli almost held his breath. She gave up after a few moments of nervous hovering, and Tiny looked absolutely crestfallen.

Me, too, buddy, Eli thought. Me, too.

Maya returned while Hark was in the middle of a scathing recount of the art house movie he’d watched the night before. She first gasped, then smiled, then roasted them. “Oh my god—is this a party?”

“It’s a dinner,” Minami said while hugging Maya. “Which is what passes for a party among people in their thirties.”

“Must be hard, being so millennial.” The last word was clearly an insult. She hugged Sul, made heart eyes at Rue, but stopped short of Hark. “Hey, Conor,” she teased. Her cheekbones were flushed pink. From the night chill, Eli hoped.

Except it was June. In Texas.

“Hi, Maya.” Hark nodded, pointedly looking elsewhere. He was always nice enough to pretend not to notice Eli’s sister’s crush, but did a miserable job of it.

“There’s leftover risotto in the kitchen,” Eli said. When his sister left, Hark’s eyes followed her. Then he poured himself another glass of wine and downed it in a single gulp.

“You know there is this thing called sipping? It’s not tequila,” Minami pointed out. She and Sul hadn’t been drinking much.

“Isn’t it? Who’s to say?”

“Its molecular structure, for one.”

“Electron pairs are overrated,” Eli interjected.

“They are not. And that’s why I finished my PhD in chemical engineering and you two did not.”

Eli and Hark exchanged a look, mumbled “savage” and “low blow,” and then stopped in the middle of shaking their heads. Because Rue glanced between them, then focused on Eli and asked, “You were in a chemical engineering PhD?”

Fuck.

The table fell silent. Eli considered damage control possibilities, but Hark beat him to it. “We sure were.”

Rue turned to him. “Where?”

“Same as you.” He leaned back in his chair. “UT.”

“You both were in grad school. In the engineering department at UT Austin,” Rue repeated, confused.

“Correct.”

“When?”

“A few years before you, I’d guess. Your boyfriend came in the year after mine. Same mentor, though.”

“Hark,” Eli warned, but Rue talked over him.

“And why didn’t you finish?”

“What an interesting question.” The twist of Hark’s mouth was bitter. “We were asked to leave.”

“Hark.” This time, the warning came from Minami, who was usually better than Eli at getting him to behave. Problem was, she could not order Rue to stop asking questions.

“Why? What happened?”

“Oh, it was so long ago, I can barely remember. But maybe your friend—”

“Hark.” Eli rose to his feet, palms on the table. Rue looked puzzled and out of sorts, and he didn’t like it. She wasn’t going to be ambushed with a piece of knowledge that would hurt her—not on Eli’s fucking watch. “Enough.”

“My friend?” Rue asked, at a loss.

This time, Hark tipped his glass at her, drained what was left of his wine, and then lifted his hands in surrender. His smile was once again charming. Directed at Eli. “I know, I know—I’m an asshole. But what the fuck is left in life if I can’t be an asshole when I’m drunk?”

Eli rolled his eyes. “How about decency?”

“Eh. Overrated.”

Eli and Minami exchanged a long, conversation-containing look, punctuated by Minami clapping once and getting to her feet. “Since Rue might be too polite to ask Hark to go drown himself in a claw-foot bathtub, how about we just call it a night?”Còntens bel0ngs to Nô(v)elDr/a/ma.Org

“Sounds good even to me,” Hark muttered.

“Fantastic. You’re clearly not sober, so we’ll just drop you off on our way home. You can pick up your car tomorrow, when you slink back here to beg for Eli’s forgiveness for the way you acted in the presence of his friend.”

“I should leave, too,” Rue said. Eli hated how small her voice sounded, or the idea of her going anywhere. But her posture was tense, and it was obvious that she didn’t want him to protest.

He held out his hand. “Give me your keys.” He glared at Hark. “I’ll move your car out of whatever mess this jackass made.”

When Eli came back from the rain, Minami was talking with Rue in hushed tones. “…just drunk,” he heard her murmur. “He gets weird. Honestly, the Verdicchio should have been CBD infused. Hey, if you ever want to get coffee, my corporate email is just my first name. I check it, like, every twenty minutes. It’s a problem.” He sighed, went into the kitchen, and returned with a Tupperware of leftovers.

“For me?” Hark asked. His smile was sheepish, but Eli wasn’t going to let him off the hook just yet.

“Nope. You can eat shit.” He deposited the container in Rue’s hands, then murmured, only for her: “Drive carefully, okay?” He leaned in and pressed a kiss on her soft lips, one that she may not have expected, but still returned. “And if you want to…” He had no idea how to finish that sentence. Talk? Fuck? Play Uno? All of the above?

She nodded, but Eli wasn’t sure she understood what he meant, or how to explain it without sending her running.

“Okay, we’re going,” Minami said. “Byeee, thank you for dinner!”

Eli sighed and watched them trickle outside, desperate for one last glimpse of Rue’s face, but he caught none.