Page 12 of The Art of Loving Ellie
“Oh, I beg to differ. I have a feeling I’m going to be getting into a lot where you’re concerned.” His innuendo makes my palms begin to sweat inside the pockets of my thin coat, and I desperately try to hide my reaction. A lady’s man like Tyler probably gets off on making girls like me nervous, and I’m too stubborn to hand my vulnerability over to him on a silver platter.
“How about the meaning of life?” He continues his questions, leaving my pulse pounding in my ears at my flighty thoughts.
“The meaning of life?” I parrot, and mull over my response for a moment. This isn’t something I’ve given a lot of thought to, but the answer is fairly simple to me, even though I sometimes have a hard time following it myself.
“I think the meaning is what you make it. If you wake up every day, hating your job and hating where you live, and you do nothing to change it—then you only have yourself to blame for the negativity you draw from it. I think it’s our duty in life to sort out all the bad stuff so that we can enjoy the good.”
I flick my gaze up to find him looking at me, puzzled. He stops walking, bending down to bow slightly. “The great Gandhi lives.”
I gently bump him with my hip, and I’m happy to see him ease back into playfulness. I don’t know how I feel about him trying to figure me out, but I do know that I’m helpless to stop it.
He reaches out his hand, and I take it—but instead of guiding me back to the path we were on, he pulls me in close to his body. So close, that I can barely squeak out, “What are you doing?”
His eyes are practically daring me to kiss him, but I won’t. Being with him is easy and fun, and I’m grateful for the break from the madness in my head, but I’m scared of what kissing him could do to me. I have enough distractions to deal with.
“Do you want my coat? Yours is barely keeping you alive.” His voice is soft, and I can feel his heart pumping quickly against my chest. I realize that I must be affecting him exactly as he's affecting me. The warmth of his body is seeping into mine and I’m trying, and almost failing, to bite back a moan.
“No, no. I’m fine really.” I try to deny him, but he takes it off and gives it to me anyway. I breathe in deep—imaging taking his coat home, and curling up with it to sleep.
As we continue our walk, I begin to warm up quickly, and I have to say, I’m loving the view. Just as I thought, we make our way into the entrance of Central Park, and for a while, we don’t speak—which I find oddly soothing. The fact that I can still enjoy his company and not have to speak with empty, meaningless words, relieves some of the pressure I constantly put on myself to seem so well put together.
The lights of the usually busy city are dancing across the water under the Gapstow Bridge as we stroll by. It’s enchanting to see all of the big, beautiful buildings colored with bright lights towering over the park. The leafless trees allow for a better look at the cityscape, and I’m a moth being helplessly drawn to a bright flame.
“I guess I’ve never really taken the time to see the beauty of the city,” I say, breaking our silence.
He walks close to me, his arm gently rubbing against mine. I notice that he isn’t afraid of simple human contact—where I mostly shy away from it, even though I crave it more than anything.
“My parents used to take me here every weekend when I was a kid. I remember thinking the buildings were monsters that could swallow me whole.” We share a laugh at his younger self, and I can’t help but pry.
My head tilts back to look at a starless sky. “So, you and your parents are close then?”
“Yeah, we are.” He smiles, and I feel my heart sink a little. “My whole family is kind of one unit honestly. When I was younger, Mom and Dad practically smothered me with their over protectiveness. But now, I see that a lot of that just came from them wanting to see me succeed, and I can actually appreciate all the things they’ve done for me.” Looking off into the distance, he appears to be thinking to himself before he asks me innocently, “What about you and your parents?”
I bark out a sarcastic laugh as we pause our stroll. “Oh trust me, that is a box Pandora herself wouldn’t even open.”
Shaking his head at me, he tsks, “Ellie, Ellie, Ellie. You can’t come to show and tell empty handed.” He’s smirking at me and I feel a smile stretch across my lips.
“Oh, is that what this is? I asked you, so now I have to answer.” He responds by raising a single brow, challenging me with a flirty smirk.
I lean back against the handrail beside us and ponder how much information I really want to give him. My childhood isn’t exactly a pretty story. “My mom came from an abusive home, so I guess that’s where she picked up her alcohol dependency. For as long as I can remember, she never really cared for me much. Robert, my father, met her in a bar when they were young, and knocked her up pretty quick.
“He was too young to know better I guess. His father had given him and my aunt, Jane, a hefty allowance to get out on their own and figure out who they were meant to be in this crazy life. Unfortunately for him, until he met my mom, that wasn’t much more than buying beer and buying women. I don’t understand why they ever got married to begin with. Nothing could fix their broken relationship… not even me.”
He leans back against the handrail, copying my stance with his elbows resting on the cold metal, and his boots crossed at his ankles. “Why do you refer to him as Robert?” he asks, genuinely curious. I’m sure that calling his dad by his given name is completely foreign to him seeing how close he said they were.
This is all so personal, but Tyler has a way of making my tongue loose. He’s easy to talk to, and I sigh, turning my gaze to meet his. The tall sidewalk lamp behind us contours the planes of his handsome face and I think to myself how nice it is to be able to talk to someone.
“Calling him ‘Dad’ is too great of an honor.” My honesty is raw, and his dark brows draw together slightly at my callousness. Looking down toward my feet, I kick at a few stray pebbles around. “The only thing he excels at is neglect.”
He mulls over the information I’ve given him as his face becomes marred with several different emotions. He looks upset by my story, and he reaches out adjusting the front of my coat absently, like he couldn’t help but find a way to care for me.
“I’m sorry that your parents were anything other than loving toward you,” he says finally as he takes my hand in his, leading me around a few more dark bends.
Tyler takes us down some neighboring streets a little further away from where we started, and I’m beginning to get uncomfortable. He stops in front of an older looking townhouse, and my eyes dart around as I look at him nervously. “Is this where you take me to murder me and chop my body into tiny pieces?”
He steps in close, tucking the strands of hair that came loose from my ponytail behind my ear. “I did promise you a night of adventure, but I’m sorry to disappoint you, Princess—murder doesn’t do it for me.” The suggestive way he delivers that sentence makes me a little weak-kneed.
“Come on,” he says, “I have a feeling you’re going to love this.”
