Page 16 of Except Emerson (Detroit ABCs #7)

“I guess so.” I looked through the back window at their former home. “I can search around more and try to find out where they went.”

“Or maybe, you should just leave it alone. Who cares?”

I did. I was curious. “Maybe they wanted something bigger, or with more property,” I suggested. “Lance used to talk about living on a lake.”

“I wouldn’t mind that. I think the units on the other side of my building can see the river.”

“How is your new place?” I asked. He had never said too much about it and of course I’d never been there. Our activities together were all relegated to the outdoors or to the few times that we’d shared food products at public locations.

“It’s fine,” he answered briefly, but then he added, “No terrace, no lake, but it’s far and away the nicest place I’ve ever lived.” He pushed a few buttons on the radio to find a new station.

“And your job is still going well?” Honestly, I had a hard time understanding how he was able to fill the hours of a workweek with what he’d said he was doing. How much advertising could his friend’s businesses have needed?

But Levi answered in the same way. “It’s fine.”

He hadn’t agreed to let me look at his finances, so I had no idea what was happening there, either.

In terms of a reciprocal relationship, I couldn’t see that he was getting much out of this.

I, on the other hand, was being driven around, taking walks with companionship, and using my vocal cords more than I had since the accident.

I realized that it wasn’t very fair to him and as we drove, I thought about how to rectify that.

Nothing was happening at the next house, where Grant’s parents lived.

There were no major changes, either; the same flag hung next to the door, supporting a football team that I did not, and the lawn was still as carefully edged and weeded as it had been every other time I’d visited.

It hadn’t been that many times, though, because Grant had mostly come over by himself.

“Nothing here,” Levi commented, and headed toward our next destination. As we went, I tried to make up for some of the deficiencies I’d just been thinking about, namely, my lack of contributions to this relationship.

“Are you paying taxes on your earnings?” I asked him.

It turned out that they were being deducted normally, which was a good sign that he really was working at something legit.

But I continued pressing with more questions, since the whole thing didn’t make too much sense to me.

What were his hours, or was he paid by the project?

What projects was he actually doing? Who was his supervisor?

Who had been in the role before he took it? Things like that.

As we approached Grant’s new house, Levi put a stop to my investigation.

“You’re still trying to figure out if I’m doing anything illegal, and I’m not,” he told me.

“Is this the place?” He slowed to a crawl and I looked at the house that my ex-boyfriend had rented after he’d moved out of our former residence, the one we’d shared.

This was smaller and the street wasn’t as nice as where we’d lived together, but it was a big step up from my current apartment building.

It was somewhere that I would have been happy to live myself, even if the front yard was mostly dirt and there were no trees lining the sidewalk and no lake within ten miles.

“Emerson?”

“Looks good,” I said, and had to clear my throat. “Looks normal, I mean. He’s probably at work—”

But as I spoke, the front door of the little house swung open.

“Grant!” I yelped. I immediately tried to duck down and hide, but the seatbelt locked and I was trapped upright. “Go! Go!”

Levi hit the gas as I managed to unbuckle myself and huddle on the floor.

“Did he see?” I asked.

“He saw the car, but there’s no way he saw you.

This takes me right back to when my sister Liv used to make me go with her to watch her old boyfriend Patrick.

Man, that guy was an ass. We never caught him at anything except being stupid.

” He glanced down at me. “We went around the corner. You’re safe. ”

I got back into the seat, wincing a lot as I stretched out of my crouch.

“Thanks.” Hiding like that wasn’t my finest moment, but I would have died of shame if Grant had spotted me.

I peered behind us a little fearfully, but we really had left him behind.

“He looked good. Didn’t he? I thought so. ”

“I’m not the right person to ask for an opinion on male beauty and anyway, I was mostly focused on you throwing yourself on the floor. Does your hip hurt?”

I tried to shift so that it didn’t. “It’s ok.”

“That’s not a bad house. Nice neighborhood,” he commented.

I understood what he meant, that it was much nicer than mine.

“He doesn’t have medical bills, which I do.

He didn’t lose two-thirds of his business because it made him dizzy and sick when he looked at his laptop screen, like what happened to me.

He didn’t forfeit the security deposit on our last house, because I had paid that.

He didn’t have to buy a new bed and a new plate and bowl, because he took all our stuff, including the toilet paper in the bathroom. ”

“I take it back.”

I looked over at Levi. “What do you take back?”

“I do have an opinion to share about your ex-boyfriend, and it’s that he’s a dick. He fucking sucks, Emerson! What was he like when you two were together?”

I sighed and closed my eyes. “He was normal,” I answered.

He’d left the seat up but he shoveled the front walk sometimes, when I told him that he had to.

He usually forgot to get me flowers on Valentine’s Day, but we went to a good restaurant for dinner on my birthday.

I thought of the last year we’d been together, when he’d gone to a ball game on that day instead.

“He liked to go out and have fun,” I said. I hadn’t as much, because I had worried about our budget and he had called me boring. I was trying to save for the future since I’d had the idea that we’d buy a house of our own, but now that money was all gone.

“I think he sucks.”

“No, I wouldn’t have stayed with him for five years if he was really so bad. Five years,” I repeated. “Five years of my life.”

“Mary Evelyn and I were together for a while, too,” he said. “Ava keeps telling me to look at it as a learning experience, like we both figured out what we didn’t want in a partner. She figured out that she didn’t want a loser, and I figured out…”

“What?” I asked, when he didn’t continue.

“I figured out that I shouldn’t keep talking about my former relationship.”

“You said before that you didn’t want the same things as she did, that you didn’t want what your sisters have. Stability and all that.”

“No,” he corrected, “that wasn’t what I said. I knew that she…why in the hell am I still talking about her?”

“Where are we going?” I asked as we got on I-75.

“Since you believe that I’m a criminal—”

“Not totally,” I interrupted. “I don’t think you’re the kingpin, only some kind of bagman.”

“Whatever that means. I’m going to prove to you that I lead a regular, normal life by taking you to my apartment and displaying my work product.” He glanced over at me. “Are you all right?”

“I don’t like being in the left lane,” I said. My eyes were glued to the concrete barrier as it flashed past the driver’s side window.

“Damn, I’m sorry. I’ll move over to the right.

” He did, and he slowed down. Then, at the next exit, he signaled and took the ramp off the freeway.

“Ok, now you’re not holding your breath,” he pointed out.

“You know, you can tell me if I’m doing something that you don’t like.

You’ve never had a problem with saying things. ”

“I’m trying not to feel that way anymore,” I explained.

“I’m trying not to be fearful. I’m trying not to be the kind of woman who other people want to get away from, too.

” Like, people might have avoided me for months and when they did see me, it would only be to say that I should disappear into the woods where I’d come from.

“Give me your hand.”

“What?” I asked.

“Your hand,” he repeated, and held his out, palm up so I could see all the calluses. “Put ‘er there.”

Carefully and uncomprehending, I placed my palm over his, and he closed his fingers.

“Feel that?”

“Yes. How could I miss it?” I asked.

“It means something. I’m here, right? I’m not telling you to go away.”

That was true. Despite the fact that he didn’t seem to be getting anything from me, he was still present.

“It also means that I’m not going to try to run away from you,” Levi told me.

“Well…”

“Well?” he prompted.

“That’s good,” I said, and he laughed. It was very good.