Page 14 of The Heiress
Pulling in two extra chairs meant we were squeezed around the desks, Max to my right, Millie to my left, and Elisha directly across from me. I kept my eyes peeled in every direction except hers. Weston had taken leadership of the group, dispensing orders with ease. He suggested Taylor and Millie could look through the boxes for photos, Elisha and I could color the background of the poster, and he and Max would do something else—I don’t know what, I’d stopped listening. I was too busy processing that I was going to be working with Elisha. It was both excitement and anxiety rolled into one.
Yeah, my heart rate was already elevated, but it was the lack of change in her expression, her blank gaze that caused me concern. Like I was the one person she’d prefernotto work with.
The group discussed ideas, themes, colors but my contribution was zero. Hers was too, until Millie asked what color the background should be.
“Maybe something vibrant?” she clipped, her words matching her reputation as being stony and abrupt, but I wondered if that was her true self. I’d seen the hint of anguish in her eyes as she sat alone with her breakfast this morning...she’d looked lost and lonely.
“Sure, action equals color,” Weston said, unfazed by her tone. “Vibrant, bright, that’s good.”
Leaving the color decision to Elisha and me, everyone stood except me. Mrs. Jabeur was pointing out that time was of the essence. Taylor passed me by, tapping my shoulder and giving me a reassuring smile as if she was—well, to be honest, I wasn’t sure why. I frowned, but the beat of my heart inexplicably sped up to a ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom as Elisha arrived back with a large piece of cardboard and a box of crayons. She set the cardboard in the center of the table and pushed the crayons closer to me.
“Any ideas?” It was a blunt question, two words that indicated she was annoyed with the world, the project, the crayons, me...
Afraid I was going to be on the receiving end of theWrath of Elisha, I could only stutter, “Uh...um, no, nah..not really.” I rested my elbow on the desk and fiddled with the earring in my left ear, spinning it round and round. But it wasn’t just the small diamond stud spinning, it was my stomach, my brain, that tightness in my chest again.
I needed air. Lungfuls of the stuff.
I shifted back in my chair. I wasn’t intending to get up or to go anywhere, but I felt the need for space, to retreat from her nearness, the sweet scent that surrounded her and seemed to put me on edge.
“Are you okay?” The change in tone was so marked that I looked directly across to her, checking that she had, in fact, been the one to utter those words. I was rewarded with a glimpse into her dark brown eyes, no longer sharp and glaring, but soft and misty. Not the look of a girl with ice in her veins. Her voice dropped to a rushed whisper. “I’m sorry about earlier, in the cafeteria...I hope you weren’t hurt.”
The apology was unexpected, but the moment was short-lived. I didn’t get a chance to answer, to offer my own apology that Taylor might have been a bit overbearing because the briskness returned when she held up a yellow crayon and asked, “What about this?”
Baffled by her turnaround, I reacted with an open-mouthed nod. The girl had reverted back to her reputation as the ice queen, just as everyone had warned. But she scrunched up her cute nose and passed me a crayon, sending a shiver up my spine. Unsure of why my body responded like that, I worked in silence. And though there was nothing coming from my mouth, my brain was computing at a million miles an hour, a conversation happening inside my head. It was ridiculous how every time I was in her presence I had to rehearse my lines before speaking out loud:Should we draw a border? Have you finished your project? What’s that perfume you’re wearing?
Except, I said nothing. I continued coloring, each passing second becoming more awkward than the one before it. For me, at least. Elisha seemed to have nothing more on her mind than creating perfect strokes on the card.
“Hey, that’s looking good,” Millie said, sidling up to the table with a bunch of pictures. “Have you thought of putting a border around it?”
“I was wondering that,” Elisha said in a perfectly friendly voice, proving she could be civil, at least to Millie. “Do you think a contrasting color? Or a darker shade?”
“Uh, what do you think?” Millie asked back with a giggle. “I’m not exactly a color expert.”
“Me neither,” Elisha said, offering a smile. “But I’d probably go for a contrast. Maybe this?” Her delicate fingers flicked through the crayons and she held up a purple one.
“I like it,” Millie said.
“Uh...” Elisha hesitated, and though I was still rolling my crayon, I anticipated my name on her lips. “Phoenix? What do you think?”
It sent a pulse deep down in my belly, a flurry of butterflies unleashed by the mere sound of my name. “Yeah, I like it,” I said, barely looking up, and it wasn’t the crayon I was referring to. Another look into Elisha’s velvety eyes, the smattering of freckles across her cheeks and the luscious shape of her mouth, and I might be in danger of heart palpitations. It took all of my mental fortitude to keep my eyes on the poster.
“Decision made,” Millie said chirpily, swishing away.
Seconds ticked, my hand nervously coloring over the same spot, aware of too many things: Elisha’s hand hovering nearby, her intoxicating fragrance, her presence triggering an intense and extraordinary change in my bodily functions—a swirling stomach, sweaty palms and a heart that had lost all its rhythm.
I had a fanciful moment of imagining that I might get the chance to tickGo to a school danceoff of my goals list after all, the Winter Wonderland always a major event on the Covington Prep calendar.
But it was shattered in an instant when the coldness returned like a blanket of ground frost. “Are you going to help with this?”
From softly whispering my name, her voice was now rough enough to snap icicles, and her eyes glared like they would be capable of melting the North and South Poles and instigating a climate catastrophe.
I quickly grabbed the crayon she’d placed next to me—and began coloring.
