Loving A Moretti - THE OBSESSION

Chapter TEN

By the time we reached the corner, I had already decided I wasn’t ready to go home. The realization annoyed me enough that I almost kept it to myself.

Larkin stopped exactly where I had told him to, one of my grocery bags still hanging from his hand. He didn’t bargain for another block or glance farther down the street as though he might figure out which direction I would take once we separated. He simply handed the bag back and adjusted the folded newspaper beneath his arm.

“There. I followed instructions.”

“Barely.”

His eyebrows lifted. “I stopped at the corner.”

“Yes, but you look smug about it.”

“I don’t think I do.”

“You do.”

He seemed ready to argue, reconsidered, and settled for a quiet, “Okay.”

I should have said goodbye. Instead, I stood there shifting the bags between my hands while people passed around us. Half a block away was a bakery I had been to a few times, the kind with tiny tables packed too closely together and a front window that fogged whenever it rained. I didn’t need anything from it. I had groceries hanging from both arms, I wasn’t particularly thirsty, and buying a pastry immediately after grocery shopping was the kind of financial decision Jennie would use against me later.

I looked at Larkin anyway. “Do you have somewhere to be?”

The question caught him more effectively than most of my insults. He took a second before answering that he didn’t, not immediately, which sounded formal enough that I accused him of trying too hard to answer correctly. When he pointed out that there apparently wasn’t a correct way to answer most of my questions, I nodded toward the bakery.

“There’s a place around the corner.”

His gaze followed mine before returning to my face. He still didn’t move.

“I’m inviting you, Larkin.”

“Oh.”

His expression remained impressively composed for about a second. Then the newspaper slipped from beneath his arm, hit the sidewalk and unfolded itself halfway across his shoe with the business section facing up.

I stared down at it. “You know, for someone who works in finance, that feels symbolic.”

Larkin bent to retrieve it, folding the pages back together with considerably more dignity than the situation deserved. “I changed my mind. I do have somewhere to be.”

I laughed and started toward the bakery before he could actually leave. He followed.

The place was busier than I expected, but a couple near the back was putting on their coats when we came in. Larkin hovered several feet away until they had completely vacated the table, apparently concerned that standing too close might constitute theft. I put my groceries beneath my chair and ordered tea and a pastry I absolutely did not need. He ordered coffee.

As soon as the server walked away, I pointed at him. “Do not give that to me.”

Larkin’s eyes narrowed. “That happened once.”

“And yet I feel compelled to establish boundaries.”

“It was my coffee.”

“Exactly.”

He leaned back slightly, the beginnings of a smile appearing despite himself. “You’re going to tell that story forever.”

“I barely know you. There might not be a forever.” I said.

The words came out lighter than they sounded in my head.

Something shifted in his face, too quickly for me to name. I looked down at the sugar packets scattered between the napkin holder and the little glass jar of spoons, suddenly wishing I had phrased it differently. Larkin rescued me before I could decide whether the sentence needed rescuing.

“Then I suppose I should avoid creating better material.”

“That’s impossible. You’re naturally gifted.”

“Cruel.”

“Accurate.”

Our drinks arrived, and whatever awkwardness I had created dissolved into an argument over the bakery’s music. Larkin called it dated. I told him that was different from bad. Somehow that turned into whether raisins belonged in baked goods, which they didn’t, and then into how much money someone would have to offer before either of us agreed to participate in a reality show.

Larkin insisted there wasn’t enough money in the world. I told him everyone had a price.

“What’s yours?”

“Depends on the show. If it’s one of those survival ones, enough money to retire.”

He gave me a long look over his coffee. “You’d last two days.”

I set my cup down. “You have no idea what I can do.”

“Fine. Three.”

I kicked him lightly beneath the table.

His knee slammed into the underside hard enough to make both cups jump in their saucers. The woman beside us looked over, and I pressed my lips together while Larkin closed his eyes as though silently asking for patience.

“You kicked me,” he said.

“Lightly.”

“The table is too low.”

“The table didn’t do anything. You panicked.”

His eyes opened. “I did not panic.”

I lasted another two seconds before laughing into my hand. Even the woman at the next table smiled before returning to her book. “You are genuinely dangerous around furniture.”

“I was attacked first.”

“Do you want to call the police?”

The joke left my mouth before I thought about it, and the change was immediate. Not dramatic, just enough that the humor disappeared from his face.

I rubbed my thumb along the rim of my cup. “Sorry. That was stupid.”

“It’s fine.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Isabelle.” He waited until I looked at him. “It’s fine.”

There was no exaggerated reassurance in his voice, no careful tone people used when they wanted you to believe something hadn’t bothered them. He simply meant it, and somehow that made me feel worse for bringing the police into a conversation that had managed, for nearly half an hour, to have nothing to do with photographs or unknown numbers.

I tore off a piece of pastry. “You’re annoyingly reasonable sometimes.”

“Sometimes?”

“Don’t ruin it.”

He smiled, and I hated how quickly I noticed the difference between that smile and the reluctant ones I usually dragged out of him. His whole face changed when he forgot to hold it back. The severity I had noticed the first night in the bookstore softened, and he looked younger somehow, less like the stranger I had once caught staring at me and more like the man who had just lost a fight with a table.

I realized I was staring and dropped my attention to my plate.

Hypocrite.

“So,” I said, brushing crumbs from my fingertip, “you know what I do vaguely, and I know you work in finance vaguely. We’ve spent enough time together that this is becoming embarrassing.”

“You’re the one who keeps refusing to answer questions.”

“You barely ask any.”

“Because when I do, you look at me like I’ve requested your bank password.”

“That depends on the question.”

Larkin turned his coffee cup slowly between his hands. “What do you want to know?”

I had expected another joke, so the openness of the question took me a second. There were obvious things I could ask. Where he lived. Where he grew up. Whether he had siblings. Why we seemed to keep appearing in the same places. Last Tuesday was still sitting somewhere between us too, along with his admission that nobody could confirm where he had been.

Instead, I asked, “What book were you pretending to read the first time I saw you?”

Larkin nearly inhaled his coffee.

I sat back, delighted. “You remember.”

“You were staring at me over an upside-down book. What was it?” I asked.

His ears were already turning red. He rubbed a hand over his jaw and admitted that he hadn’t been paying attention to the title, which was possibly the least surprising answer he could have given me.

“Clearly.”

“You’re never letting that go either, are you?”

“Not a chance.”

He looked at me then, and the embarrassment remained, but something quieter settled underneath it. His fingers stopped moving around the cup.

“You really noticed me that night.”

I frowned. “Obviously.”

“No, I mean you remembered.”

For some reason, that landed harder than it should have. I could have told him that I remembered his face before I remembered anything else. Strong brows, dark hair, the severe expression that had made the upside-down book so much funnier. I remembered looking for him outside the restaurant later that night too.

I wasn’t giving him that much ammunition.

“You were holding a book upside down, Larkin. That’s memorable.”

His mouth curved slightly. “Right.”

I reached for my tea even though it had already gone lukewarm and discovered that I had been sitting there with him for almost an hour. The time itself wasn’t strange. What bothered me was how little I had noticed it passing.

“I should go soon,” I said.

Larkin glanced toward the window before nodding. “Okay.”

That was all.

No attempt to stretch another fifteen minutes out of me, no disappointed question about when he would see me again. We finished what was left of our drinks and gathered our things. Outside, the afternoon had turned colder, and I pulled my coat tighter while Larkin reached toward the grocery bags before stopping himself.

“Can I?”

I handed him the lighter one. “You’re learning.”

“I was always teachable.”

“That is not what your relationship with books suggests.” He made a quiet sound of resignation and fell into step beside me. This time, I didn’t tell him to walk near me. I didn’t make him stay a step away either. He simply walked beside me, carrying cereal and vegetables while I listened to him defend an upside-down book he still claimed not to remember.

At the same corner as before, I took the bag from him. “I actually have to go now.”

We looked at each other for a moment, and I knew exactly what was sitting underneath those words. Last Tuesday. The messages. His telling me not to trust him simply because he had been nice to me.

There were questions I could have asked. I let them stay where they were.

“Bye, Larkin.”

“Bye, Isabelle.”

I walked away without looking back. I wanted to, which was precisely why I refused.

By the time I reached my apartment, Jennie had already texted asking if I was alive. I replied unfortunately, earning a suspiciously cheerful how romantic that made me stop in the middle of putting groceries away.

I asked what she was talking about. She answered with nothing but a smiley face.

I opened the group chat with her and Dean and started typing that I had run into Larkin again. My thumb hovered over the screen while I imagined the inevitable interrogation. Jennie would ask how long we had been together. Dean would ask where. Jennie would call the bakery a date, I would insist it wasn’t, and Dean would eventually say something irritatingly reasonable that made my argument worse.

I deleted the message instead.

The apartment was quiet around me, nothing but the refrigerator humming and occasional footsteps from the hallway. I checked the lock and pulled the curtains closed before returning to the groceries, both habits now automatic enough that I barely noticed myself doing them.

My phone stayed quiet too. No unknown number, no new account, no photograph waiting for me.

I put the cereal away and realized I now knew Larkin worked in finance, hated raisins, refused to go on reality television and had very little faith in my ability to survive outdoors. I knew what his face looked like when he was trying not to laugh and how quickly his ears turned red when I reminded him about the bookstore.

I still didn’t know his last name.

The cereal box remained halfway onto the shelf while I stood there thinking about that.

For the first time, not knowing something about Larkin didn’t make me suspicious.

It made me want to ask.