“Hello,” I said quickly.
“You left.” The deep voice that came over the line made me feel warm. Deep down I’d wanted it to be him. I had just been too cautious to let myself admit it.
“Eli,” I said, realizing that I was smiling as I said his name.
There was a pause and I had a moment where I wondered if I had been wrong about the voice on the other line. Had I wanted it to be Eli so badly I had thought this was him?
“I went to see if you wanted to get lunch and Bliss said you’d left this morning.” It was Eli. Relief and excitement returned. It had been a long time since a man made me feel so giddy. My emotions were all over the place with this guy. Normally I ran from this or the idea of this but I craved everything to do with him. Yesterday I’d wanted to climb in his lap and kiss him until I was satisfied. I knew that was the wrong reaction to a guy who was outside a hospital dealing with grief over his gran’s illness. But my hormones had not seemed to care. They were lusting while he suffered.
The fact he had come to see me today made everything seem brighter. My chest was light and the melancholy mood gone. I didn’t even care that it was a guy making me feel this way. Although I knew that most men caused problems and when they had this kind of power over your emotions, they could break you, I embraced it anyway.
“I have work tomorrow,” I told him. We had sat outside yesterday for three hours talking. Until his mom had texted him that his grandmother was out of surgery and he was needed. I hadn’t gone inside with him. It wasn’t my place, but I hadn’t wanted to leave him either. My mood had gone south the moment I watched him walk inside the hospital.
Bliss had told me that evening that they’d found the cancer had spread and chemotherapy could give her time, but they weren’t even promising a year. I’d gone to bed with an ache in my chest for everyone in their family but the sorrow I felt for Eli had been deep. I knew words of comfort were just that . . . words. It didn’t help. Getting Eli’s number from Bliss so I could call him was pointless. He needed his family, not some woman he barely knew calling to tell him she was what . . . sorry . . . praying . . . Hell, I didn’t even pray. He had been dealing with inner turmoil yesterday and I’d been trying to make him smile and imagining crawling all over him. Women with that kind of selfish mindset didn’t pray. God wouldn’t listen to us anyway. He knew we were full of bullshit.
“I know. I just hoped I’d see you one more time before you had to go,” he replied. My chest did that fluttery thing that I’d experienced last when I’d had a crush on a guy in eleventh grade and he smiled at me. I was being that silly over Eli Hardy. I needed to be slapped.
I should mention his grandmother at this moment. Say something to him, condolences maybe . . . but I wasn’t good at this kind of thing. I never had understood why people said things at times like this that didn’t help. If they could do something, then do it. That I understood. It’s why I took the donuts to the hospital. That was an action, not a promise for “prayers” or “keeping you in my thoughts” because honestly who cared about being in someone’s thoughts. They didn’t need my prayers and what good were my thoughts to them. I decided to forgo mentioning it at all. I was sure he’d heard enough from everyone else.
“If I had known you wanted to have lunch I’d have stayed,” I decided honesty was also something I could do here. Might as well not be vague with a man who just found out his grandmother was going to die. He had called me, gone by to see me.
“I should have come over sooner,” he said then, and I heard the regret in his tone.
“You have a lot going on right now. Letting some female know you want to have lunch probably isn’t the first thing on your mind and I don’t blame you.” Which was also true. I added then because I had to say something. Even if words could give no comfort here. “I’m sorry, Eli.” That again was the truth. My telling him didn’t help, but I was sad for him and the rest of his family.
“What about dinner?” he asked then instead of replying to my “I’m sorry.”