CHAPTER SIX
I heard Elodie in the lobby. She was talking to Mali, who was giving her a hard time for being late.
“I don’t know if you saw my text, but I took your client—he’s dressing now,” I told my friend. It didn’t hurt to let Mali know that everything was covered, no harm done. Elodie smiled at me and tilted her head to the side. She had this thing about her where she could get away with anything.
“I’m so sorry, Karina. Thank you.” She kissed both of my cheeks. That was something I got used to the first week she moved in. I wasn’t really fond of excess touching, but with her it was hard to recoil the way I normally would.
“I couldn’t fall asleep last night. The avocado started kicking.” Her smile grew wide, but I could tell by her eyes that she wasn’t rested. I could relate. Not to the pregnancy, of course, but to the feeling of living in a constant state of tired.
Mali put her hand on Elodie’s stomach and started talking to the baby. I half expected her to ask the bump,What’s wrong, why aren’t you smiling?but Mali was soft and kind around children, even the ones who hadn’t been born yet. It made me a little uncomfortable, the way she was touching Elodie like that, but the idea of the baby kicking was exciting, so I smiled. I really was happy for my friend. It worried me that she was here alone while her family and most of her friends were across the Atlantic Ocean. She was young. So young. I wondered if she’d had the chance to tell Phillip that she thought she felt the baby move yesterday, or if he would even get to check his email today. The time zones made it so hard for them to talk as often as Elodie or anyone with a soldier in their life would want, but she was handling it with grace, as she did everything. It scared the hell out of me, though—the fact that she was going to have a baby in a few months. Sometimes I treated her as if she was a child herself.
Elodie’s eyes snapped to the curtain behind me, and she lit up like a Christmas tree, pushing past me to the client. She said a name that I couldn’t hear completely, but it didn’t sound anything like Kael. She wrapped her small body around him and hugged him so tight that even a soldier would wince.
“You’re here! I can’t believe you’re here! How did you know where to find me?” She squealed and hugged him again. His expression remained blank even though she was clearly happy to see him. Something about his face bothered me to the core. Maybe it was the way it probably made his life easier to have a face that people couldn’t look away from, that people would gawk at. It made me uneasy to see Elodie clinging to him. Nothing good can come from a man with a face like that.
Mali nodded to my next client, who was walking through the front door. “Back to work for you,” she said, and I caught one more glimpse of Elodie’s friend before Mali shushed me away.