"If you promise to let me pay for myself."
"I'm not going to make you a promise I don't intend to keep."
"Look, Eli, you seem like a really great guy. But I'm not really ready to date anyone right now."
"Oh, you thought this was a date? Psh. No. It's work, remember?" He smiled and opened up the door for me.
I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. I'm sure my face was bright red. Had I really just assumed this was a date and it wasn't? What was wrong with me? I didn't say a word as I walked into the diner.
"Table for two?" the hostess said.
I just nodded my head.
"Right this way."
I followed her without looking back at Eli. Now I had embarrassed myself twice in front of him. I didn't usually lose my cool in front of good looking guys. Or maybe it was just that good looking guys had never even bothered talking to me before. Either way, apparently Sadie Davis was the freaking worst.
I slid into the booth and immediately lifted up the menu. I wanted to go back to being invisible again. The diner was busy and I was glad the noise helped drown out the thoughts in my head.
"Your waiter will be right with you," the hostess said and left us alone.
I stared at the menu without really seeing it. Now that he had turned me down, why did I suddenly wish he did like me? Yup, Sadie Davis was definitely the freaking worst.
Eli put his hand on top of my menu and lowered it down until I could see his face.
"Sadie Davis, I find you incredibly endearing. Even more so when you blush. But if you'd like to talk about our project, let's talk about our project."
I could feel my cheeks flushing even more. Every nerve in my body was telling me to flirt back. My brain was a different story altogether, though. I knew I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't sure if I'd ever be ready. "Do you have any ideas for it?"
He looked disappointed. "Yeah." He let go of my menu. "What if we just do it on that vigilante everyone's talking about?"
"What vigilante?"
"You haven't heard? This guy stopped a bank robbery the other day. Well, partially. Technically one of the robbers got away."
I laughed. "Oh, you're serious? You want a project that's worth half our grade to be about a vigilante who's not even that good?"
"He is good. He saved someone's life instead of running after the guy with the bag of money. Here, let me find the video." He typed something into his phone and held it out to me. There was a poor quality video playing. It appeared to be footage from someone's phone that was at the bank.
"What bank is this?"
"North Union."
My new bank. I was lucky I hadn't checked my account balance yesterday or I may have been there during the robbery.
Two men with black masks appeared on the screen waving guns in the air. One of them grabbed a bank teller and pressed the gun against the side of her head. Something flashed across the screen and whoever had been taping the scene dropped their phone. A second later the phone was being lifted back up. All I saw was the back of someone's hoodie. The robber who had been holding a gun to the woman's head was lying face down on the ground. The man with the hoodie touched the woman's shoulder who he had just saved, and then he ran away, seconds before the police showed up. Then the screen was blank.
"A few hours after this happened, the guy who got away turned up on the steps of the precinct with his hands and feet bound," Eli said. "The money was gone, though. He probably hid it somewhere. Street cameras verified that the vigilante dropped the guy off. He finished the job when the police couldn't."
"Maybe he should have just given the police more time. They probably could have found the criminal and the money." I wasn't sure that was true though. The cops had never helped me. And it wasn't like I didn't try. Especially at first. No one even gave me the time of day. I swallowed hard.
"Either way, he'd be fun to analyze," Eli said. "Clearly he's crazy." Eli took his phone out of my hand and slid it back into his pocket. "So now a few million dollars is missing. But what does it really matter? Both robbers are in jail and he saved that woman's life. He's a hero."
"Yeah. Maybe he's not so bad after all." Actually, I admired him. No one shoul
d be able to put a value on someone's life. So what if there was a few million dollars missing? That woman was alive because of him. Two criminals were in jail too.
Eli smiled. "Sounds like we got the topic for our project."