Page 87 of Love Among the Ruins
He didn’t finish the sentence. They looked at one another. He blinked. “You still haven’t told me why you walked in to my office that day.”
“I ...” It sounded too presumptuous, the real reason, but he was staring at her as if he wouldn’t let her move until she told him. “You looked upset and I thought ... foolishly... I mean, after we’d been talking the other day, in the car ...I ... I was worried and I wanted to see if you were okay.” She winced, because saying it out loud it sounded even more presumptuous than it did in her head.
“You were concerned about me?”
She blinked back at him.
“You were worried, Eleni?”
Her mouth turned desert dry, and her chest started to beat faster, abnormally faster, enough to make her fear for her health. Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing to have a hospital stay for a few days, get away from Dominic. “You’re always so angry and uptight, and ...”
Who did she think she was? The only woman who could calm him down?
“I’m sorry if I took it out on you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I’m sure I did, when I was doing up my shirt buttons. I’m sure I snapped at you.”
Shirt buttons. Did he have to go there now, in this moment?
“It doesn’t matter.”
He looked away. “No, I guess not.” He reached for her plate and cleared the table. She tried to stand up, feeling guilty that he was doing this alone, but she needed a moment to still her beating heart.
They’d spoken so much, but she was still left feeling that their conversation had been full of unsaid things.
She waited for him to return from the kitchen. “We could watch a movie,” she suggested, feeling perky. Watching something would ease the simmering tension that had suddenly crept in. Her heart was doing that strange, fluttering, fast-beating thing again. Maybe she had a condition her mother wasn’t aware of. Maybe it was something on her father’s side?
Dominic returned and reached for his jacket. “I’m going to see Helen. I might not be back until the early hours, so don’t wait up.”
In her euphoria, she’d forgotten all about the other woman. Her chest tightened, making it harder to breathe as she watched him leave. There was more to what he and Helen had. “Don’t rush back on account of me.”
“Goodnight, Eleni.” But he didn’t turn around to say it.
“Goodnight, Dominic,” she said to the back of his head, hating that he was going to his friends-with-benefits lawyer because it was so boring for him to stay here with her.
