Page 71 of Play With Me

She’s taller than average height, with light-colored hair in pin curl waves. Her face looks familiar to me, like I know her. Which sometimes, I feel like I do, with how much I’ve thought of her over the past couple of years. But I’ve never seen her looking like this. She’s not looking directly into the camera. Instead, she’s standing next to a stone building with flowers growing by the front door. George stands several feet away. He’s got his hands on his hips, and his expression is one of indifference.

“The self-importance of this man,” I say.

“Don’t look at him,” Jude says.

I look up to Jude, confused.

His eyes meet mine. “Nora, you don’t see it?”

“What?”

I search the photo desperately, especially at her throat, looking for the clover necklace JEQ said he’d given her.

He leans in, pointing his finger to the glass of the cottage’s front window. There’s a reflection there I didn’t notice before. A person, standing in front of a car.

It’s better than a necklace.

“JEQ!” I whisper.

“And look at her eyes,” Jude says.

I thought she wasn’t looking at the camera, and I was right. But I see now why. She’s looking at JEQ.

A tingle goes over my spine. “They met.”

“They more than met. Look,” he says.

I lean in, following his finger once more. There, on her wrist, there’s a glint of sunlight hitting metal. It’s the clover necklace, wrapped around her wrist. My chest clenches. “Jude,” I whisper. “You know what this means?”

“That he told her how he felt,” Jude says.

Jude’s eyes meet mine. For a moment, my stupid heart pounds. Is he going to say something? To me? About me? Does he feel the raw electricity I do?

He opens his mouth as if to say something, and I feel my breath catch in my throat.

Then there’s a bang outside, and cursing in German, and we jump away from each other. The moment is gone as quickly as it came.

After we’re sure we’ve found everything we need, filing everything back where we found it, we leave the town hall, promising the woman at the desk we’ll email her if and when we get to the bottom of our story.

But neither of us says anything about what we found. It’s like we both want to keep it private, for now. Between us.

We get back into the Range Rover in silence.

I’m thinking about what we found. But I’m also mostly thinking about that moment between Jude and me.

He told her how he felt.

We’re pulling into the parking lot now, and Jude kills the engine.

For a moment, there’s only the sound of the engine ticking. Jude clears his throat, and my stomach spasms with adrenaline.

“That was a good first day, huh?” Jude says.

I look at him. “Yes. Very good.”

My mind swims with all the things we need to say. But for some reason my mind skips past that moment to the one before, when he brushed his hand along my back. Why did he touch me today but not yesterday? Why was he so careful to not come close to me, while still he was clearly interested in what was happening? I saw the bulge at his crotch.

No. I can’t think about Jude’s penis while we sit here awkwardly.

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