Page 16 of Ominous: Part 1
4
Eli
I slide off my tie,grazing the choker around my neck with my knuckles as I do. Sturdy leather, when I take it off at night—ifI take it off at night—my skin can breathe.
Slamming my locker shut, I shift my bag on my shoulder and head toward the commons, threading through students, ignoring the clap on my shoulder, head nods, someone from the team calling out my name.
I see Eden at the farthest bank of lockers, her dark hair again piled high in braids on her head, and even Dominic’s eyes cutting to mine in my periphery can’t stop me from getting to her. Friday, it’s been three days since he shoved me against the lockers.I hope he got the fucking point.
As usual, when Eden sees me, she pretends she doesn’t. But I can tell she’s a liar, in the way the slender column of her throat rolls, her lips press tight together, and she’s shaking those bracelets down her wrists so the rubber bands float just over the top of her hand.
School dismissed two minutes ago, and I walked out of Intro to Law early just to get here in time. My last class of the day is on the second floor of Castle Hall, and Eden’s history course is five feet from where we stand now, on the first floor.
She closes her locker door after tipping Chaucer back into her checkered backpack, then zips up the bag, threads her arms through the straps, tucks a few stray locks of hair behind both ears, showing off all of her piercings, before she finally turns and meets my gaze.
I like the fact she doesn’t feign surprise. Maybe it’s not even she pretends she doesn’t see me. Maybe she simply doesn’t feel like she’s got to acknowledge me.
I kinda like that. It’s a little bitchy. She’s been like this all week, no matter how many times I’ve approached her.
“I’ve gotta go.” Her voice always sounds slightly hoarse, like she needs to clear her throat. It does things to my dick.
Not giving a damn about my dick,or me,by the looks of it, she glances past me, tilting her body to the side a little as she does, trying to see something out the bay of windows behind me. She’s a lot shorter than I am so she doesn’t see much, I know that.
I like our height difference.
Her body is compact. Not tiny despite her height, she’s got thick thighs that touch in her school uniform, a fat ass, and a smaller upper body. Including her little fucking neck.
“Someone picking you up?” The sounds of lockers slamming, people whistling, a few guys laughing and a teacher telling someone to,“Watch it!”echo in the hall behind us as everyone gets ready to head out for the weekend. There’s a football game, and Dominic’s family has a vigil tomorrow night, so it doesn’t conflict. He’ll probably throw a fucking party afterward like he does every weekend. His question about the one next weekend—when his parents will be away—in front of Eden on Tuesday was a way to get under my skin. But his parties are frequent, not exactly special. You ask a dozen people here what their weekend plans are, you can find a dozen different answers. Heading to the coast to hop on a yacht, political networking, Ivy League campus tours, sports, drugs.
And Eden, who is…
“Yeah, I have to work.” Probably won’t hear that answer from anyone else here. The way she says it, as if daring me to ask why she needs a job, I know she’s very aware of the fact.
She brings her gaze back to me, and not for the first time, I can’t stop staring at her eyes. Shards of blue, green, and brown, they don’t meld together nicely. Jagged edges, I could extract each piece out and the other two colors I left would remain untouched.
“Work?” I repeat. “Until when?”
Her brows pull together, a shade darker than her hair which catches the light from a row of windows on the opposite wall. Chestnut and soot, it’s impossible to describe the shade exactly, particularly in those braids roped on her head. But I’ve seen her with it undone, and it hangs to just above her waist, curled at the ends.
When she wears the uniform white dress shirt, the buttons up to her throat but the fit showing the slight curve of her tits, her hair spilling over and past them, it’s really, really fucking hard to think about dead languages and verb conjugations in class.And she sitsbehindme. And never wears the plaid fucking skirt.
I grit my teeth to stop from groaning out loud, just imagining it in my head.
“Why do you need to know?” she asks in answer to my question about work.
I want to know so much more than that.
But she looks slightly annoyed, her cherry red lips tugging downward.
Her bottom lip is the plumpest, but she has this white scar above her top one, right beside her Cupid’s bow. It’s tiny, from far away, impossible to see. But this close to her, looking down at her, it’s in my line of sight, and I want to kiss her, just to scrape my teeth over it.
I pull my phone from my pocket, ignoring her question. I unlock the empty screen, open up a new contact, leave the name blank, and turn the phone around to her.
She looks down through heavy, dark lashes, the slightest crease in her forehead as she does. I take in the profile of her face from this angle. A strong nose, wide lips, lifted, round cheekbones. She’s almost a contradiction in some ways, prominent features with delicate touches. She’s small but not skinny. Wide eyes, thick brows, the slightest of curves to her ears.
A little strange to look at.
I think that’s why everyone can’t seem to stop.
