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Don’t be ridiculous,I tell myself. If they had followed us, they would have come to the house last night. Lots of people have a black car with tinted windows.
“You alright?” Marcus asks.
I nod, shifting my attention back to him.
“Yea, sorry,” I say. “So, what about you? Do you go to church?”
“I have, now and then,” he says with a small shrug. “My parents weren’t particularly religious. Though I have always liked the idea of having faith in something bigger than myself.”
I smile at him, completely mesmerised. I love the way he speaks. It’s like everything he says is poetic in some way.
And I’ve noticed his tone has softened around me. He seems more relaxed, more comfortable, more himself, without the authoritative voice he uses at work that sends a chill down my spine every freaking time. But here, with me, his voice is like warm caramel - it’s safe, it’s comfortable. It’s right.
“To be honest, the library was a sort of church for me, in a way. I basically grew up there. I would spend entire days reading everything I could when I was a kid.”
A slight giggle escapes me as I picture a child version of Marcus cooped up in the library all day. For some reason, I can’t picture him as anything other than what he looks like now – tall, strong, handsome. Perfect.
His mouth widens into that charming grin that makes my cheeks instantly flush red, blushing as though I’m just a schoolgirl with a silly crush.
“I bet that makes me sound so old, right? Reading in a library,” he jokes.
“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything,” I tease him as his laugh fills the air.
It seems hard to believe, but I don’t feel the age difference between us at all. I guess he must be in his forties, and yet when I’m with him, it feels like I’m with one of my closest friends.
But I also realise that my heart is completely jumping to conclusions and that this is the first chance we’ve had in all the time we’ve been together since the actual date at the restaurant to properly talk, and there is so much I want to know.
“What about you?” he asks, his voice bringing my focus back to the present.
“Me?”
“Yea. What did you like to do as a kid?”
“I don’t know,” I say, thinking out loud. “I guess, just normal, kid things. I had a lot of Barbies, and, oh, I did do a lot of drawing.”
“Yea?” His eyebrows raise up with curiosity.
“Not anything of any real talent,” I quickly clarify, “but yea, I like to draw.”
“I see.” He smiles, taking a sip of his coffee.
A silence falls between us for a moment as I will myself not to look out the window again.
“What about relationships?” he asks, and my eyes jump to his, wide with surprise.
Where is he going with this?
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I told you about mine the other night, it’s only fair you tell me about yours,” he says casually. “Any great love in your life?”
I briefly wonder if he actually wants to know, or if he’s just asking because I asked him first.
“No,” I say. “Not really.”
I don’t dare admit that I think the greatest love of my life is potentially sitting right across from me.
“What about…uh… what’s his name…?” he asks, his tone shifting.