The soft leather seat is warm against my chilled skin as I sink into it, my hands clutched around the apron in my lap. The radio is playing but I can’t hear the low hum of it over the beating of my heart. Calm down, everything is fine. I jump when an arm reaches past me, brushing across my chest. Despite the casual touch I feel my gut quiver and my nipples harden with the contact. My breath bounces off his cheek, blowing warmth back onto my own lips as he leans over me. It takes me a second to realize he grabbed my seat belt, blinking when he pulls back and clicks it in place.
“Safety first, Ember.” He’s laughing at me, but it doesn’t feel unkind, and the soft chuckling encourages me to let a small laugh slip from my chest. “Where am I going?”
“Uh, East Terrace. I live in a duplex over there.” I’m almost embarrassed to say it, my chest growing heavy with what he might be thinking. Everyone knows that the East is the cheap side of the city.
I watch as he taps something on the screen in his dash, pulling up a GPS system. “What’s the address?”
His eyes stay on the screen as I mumble it out, nodding when he’s done, and the automated voice chimes out an estimated arrival time. Looking away when he shifts into drive, I reach out and run my fingers along the smooth wood polished that’s inlaid into the door and over the dashboard in front of me. “Your car is really nice.”
I just barely catch the small smile he gives me, his eyes bouncing from my wandering hands to the road. “It’s a Bugatti La Voiture Noire.”
I hum, nodding. “Yea, I’ve never heard of it.” He laughs with my small giggle. “But it sounds really expensive.”
Coming to a stop light he glances over at me. “It is.” He doesn’t say it like he’s trying to prove something, but stating it as the fact that it is. It still makes me somewhat uncomfortable though. I know that if I hadn’t somehow landed in this situation I would have gone my entire life without the knowledge that a car like this even existed. I clearly live a very, very different life.
What will he think when he sees my duplex?
I’ve never lived in the nice neighborhoods. I always had to work to help support my mother’s meager income during school. It wasn’t her fault, she worked hard for the little we had, but she still needed help to keep food on the table. When I graduated, I moved across the country with a one year scholarship to the University of Chicago with the hope to turn my life for the better—and it was amazing for the first year. It wasn’t until my scholarship ran out and my financial aid fell through due to a technicality that things took a turn for the worst and I was forced to drop out. I was hired at Debbie’s Diner shortly after, and thanks to the small savings I’d been able to keep while attending school, I was able to secure my current duplex. I could probably have packed my things and trucked it back to my mom’s, but that felt a lot like giving up, and that’s not something I was willing to do.
“This it?”
I’m shaken from my thoughts by the question, looking out of the windows and out at the dark buildings surrounding us. My duplex is one of many stacked side by side on the block. You can’t tell because it’s dark out still, but each building is an alternating white or brown brick, dark water and smoke stains tainting the dirty bricks making them look even more worn down and old. The winter has stripped the few trees around the place leaving them bare and straggly. The few patches of grass that survived winter are sparse between the linking sidewalks, muddy dirt spots riddled throughout. I can only imagine what this man’s house must look like. I will probably never even step foot in something like that.
“Yea, it is.” I blow out a low breath as we come to a stop, my hand moving to unbuckle my seatbelt before the car is even shifted to park. Moving to open the door, I stop, looking over at the man already staring at me “Thank you.”
He smiles, opening his door with me. “I’ll walk you to your door.”
I nod, grabbing my apron with one hand as I exit the car. The cold night breeze slaps me in the face as soon as I’m out of the car making me shiver. At least my heat is on right now. Stopping on the top step, I turn, nearly colliding with the man following on my heels. I smile at the surprised look on his face, a small laugh blowing a visual puff of air that floats between us. “Sorry. I just remembered you were going to tell me your name.”
He tucks his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket, the smokey gray in his eyes shining in the low porch light as he looks past me and up at my dingy building. “Rafe. Rafe Commargo.” His eyes drop to mine, and I have a feeling he was expecting me to recognize his name, but I don’t.
“I like that name, it fits you.” Copying what he said to me earlier, I smile into my hands, biting my bottom lip when his low chuckle hits my cheeks.
When I look back up, Rafe has moved a step closer, his warmth invading my space. “You should go inside, it’s cold.”
“Right. Thank you again—” My small flip phone falls from the pocket in my apron, wringing it in my hands having made it fall, and I pause watching Rafe lean down to grab it from by his foot, giving it back to me. “—for the ride and now this.”
He chuckles, his breath collecting in the space between us when he straightens. “You don’t need to thank me. I’m sure you’ll make up for it.” Before I can question what he meant, he’s asking me another question. “You usually work the night shift?”
I nod, my fingers squeezing around my phone. “Uh, yea. It’s pretty much all I work.” Probably shouldn’t tell a stranger that, Ember. But I guess he’s not a complete stranger. And he already knows where I live so it’s not like he couldn’t already get to me if he wanted.
“Good to know.” Rafe backs off the steps, smirking up at me as he backs toward his car. “Maybe I’ll see you later.”
“Uh, yea maybe.” His lips grow into a full smile, teeth glistening as he opens his car door. He winks before dropping into the seat and I raise my hand in a small wave, internally cringing the second I do.
I wait until his car pulls away before I slip my spare key out from under a broken lip in my door frame, stepping into my duplex and shutting it behind me. Pressing my back to the door I smile to myself. My mom always told me I trusted too easily and loved too fast. And maybe she’s right, maybe I do. I just prefer to see the good in everybody and give them the benefit of the doubt. When I love, I love hard. But that also means that when I break, I break even harder. Part of me doubts Rafe really wants to see me again, but another part of me hopes he does. He seems kind and nice and genuine. For the first time in a while, I feel like someone might actually see more than just a poor girl from the bad side of the neighborhood.
I feel like he might actually see me.