Red in the Blue

Chapter 34

With the number of us spread across my relatively few belongings, we were done getting everything inside in time for a late lunch. I picked up pizza and beer and we ate strewn across the living room floor, everyone cheerful and sweaty. When I overheard Bowen telling my parents that the enforcers had something of a dorm building a couple blocks away, I ducked closer to Elias' side and asked if that had anything to do with Cade's choice of location for me. He shrugged with intentional disinterest, picked an olive off his pizza.

"We've got our own gym in the building," Bowen spoke up to me. "You could probably come work out if you wanted, right, Elias?"

My father snorted. "Lenore isn't really the active type," he said.

"Oh," Bowen answered, "I thought you were getting into running." And when my parents registered shock that I was working out, I quickly changed the subject.

Not all enforcers lived in the pack house, but Elias, James, Bowen, Dev, and Josh all did, and they offered to walk me over, give me a tour. I convinced them, with very little effort, to let me shower first, and Dev and Josh walked back on their own. James was also gone when I came out, though I didn't know where she had gone. My parents left to return the moving truck and head to their hotel, sharing a car with Liz, who promised to come around for dinner that night.

So, with wet hair braided down my back, wearing running shorts and a thin tank top, I left a houseful of unpacked boxes and walked with Bowen and Elias over to the packhouse. From the exterior, I would have probably assumed it was just a hotel or apartment building. They had a code for the gate and keycards for the doors. Someone sat in an open office just inside the front door. There was indeed a large and well-equipped gym on the first floor, past the lobby, with treadmills and ellipticals, free weights, all kinds of machines I couldn't have named, walls of mirrors. Past it, a small lap pool.

Half of the second floor was a cafeteria, mostly empty at that time, red walls behind stations for pizza, sandwiches, rotating daily entrees, an ice cream machine. It was like the dining hall I'd eaten at in college, if not a little more dated.

We paid $2 for swirl ice cream cones on our way through and climbed the stairs to Bowen's floor, a couple young enforcers sitting in the floor lobby with the TV on, looking startled when we walked through, their conversation dying. Elias winked at me, nodded to the boys.

"Was that because of me or you?" I asked as we rounded the corner into Bowen's hallway.

"Definitely you," Elias scoffed.

Bowen shared a living room and kitchen and bathroom with another enforcer, had his own small room with a twin bed and a little dresser and a desk with a massive TV perched on it too close to the too-small bed.

Like a trigger built into my body, I felt the pull of the sun as it swept very slowly through the sky, approaching the horizon. Liz and I would go to dinner, we would watch movies at my new place, we would unpack books and art prints. She wouldn't want to leave until late. I would fall into bed and pass out from such a full day.

We were shooting hoops on the back of Bowen's bedroom door, taking turns with the nerf basketball, when Liz called. She was exhausted—could we raincheck tonight? She'd be over tomorrow, of course. She was here for whatever I needed. I could have told her no. I could have been honest. I could have stepped out of earshot of Bowen and Elias and said no. No, you can't raincheck. No, you can't leave me tonight. I simply can't be alone. I can't stand it. I need you. All you have to do is lie there on my couch, a familiar body in the room.

But I couldn't bring myself to do it. It would have taken so little work, really. I could have said, "Liz, I need you." And she would have come over and let me explain why in person. She probably would have come over and not made me explain. But I just couldn't. She had come all this way. She had helped me move most of the day already. So, I said, "yes, of course, no problem, see you tomorrow." And everything in me crumpled.