EMILY

When the last participant finally left, Elliot turned to me. “I’m starving! Would you be interested in an early dinner with me? Or maybe I should say a late lunch? It’s a little after four now.”

My stomach answered with a loud growl. Guiding me, with a hand on the small of my back, making my entire body tingle from his touch, we made our way to the front of the restaurant. He led me to a table set up in the corner with a window looking out toward the cove in the distance.

A candle flickered in the center, giving it a glow of intimacy even in late afternoon. He pulled out my chair to seat me and took the chair to my right instead of across the table.

“I want to be able to touch you without reaching across the table to do so. If you don’t mind, that is,” he explained.

I simply nodded and smiled at him. I could get used to this.

The waitress handed both of us small hand-printed menus folded like an invitation and Elliot proceeded to order a bottle of white wine, the house Pinot Grigio. I was flattered he remembered the wine I preferred. A basket of bread and dipping plates appeared next.

Tearing a piece of bread, he handed it to me. He then took one of the bottles of olive oil and poured it onto a plate, following it with a fragrant balsamic. I dipped my bread, taking a bite. My eyes closed as I savored the taste of the fresh bread and the oil mixed with a spicy herb. When I opened my eyes, he was staring at me, his eyes dark, intense, and so serious.

“We need to talk about us.”

“Yes,” I managed to reply.

He turned his chair a bit to face me more easily and took a sip of his wine.

“Are you ready for this?” he asked me.

Again, I nodded. I seemed to be doing that a lot with him. Not saying anything, just nodding my head in agreement. Words kept escaping me.

“I screwed up seven years ago when I left. I think I’ve already mentioned that. There hasn’t been a day that’s passed where you were not in my thoughts in some way. I have gone over every single thing a million times and I wish I knew why I did what I did, I really do.”

I held up my hand to stop him from saying more. I needed to tell him, tell him that it was my fault, all of it, or most of it. He kept taking the blame for my actions and it wasn’t right.

“Elliot, it wasn’t you, it was me. Back then I was so angry, angry at life and everything in it.”

He started to protest, but I put my finger on his lips.

“Let me finish, I need to say this. I’ve always felt like I drove you away. I sabotaged everything. I wasn’t in a good place back then, not for me or for you. I had no confidence in myself. Before you came into my life, everyone left. It’s what I knew, what I grew up believing. So I pulled back, I picked fights. I acted like I didn’t really care. I was so rotten at times. When I think back to that time in my life, I hated myself so much. I was so full of anger. My biggest fear was that you would leave me. I believed it was inevitable, so I made it happen. I never really felt that I deserved you, that I was good enough. When you finally did leave, I blamed you for everything wrong in my life. I’m so sorry and I wish—”

He took my hand and gently kissed it. His eyes gave me a smile. “I think I knew, deep down, what you were doing. I always wish I’d been more patient and a lot more understanding. You were so young. You weren’t ready yet and you had been through so much.”

I started to protest because I didn’t remember opening up and telling him about my past, but he held up his hand.

Elliot continued, “I’m an author, Emily. Do you think I never did a little research on you? I wanted to understand. I wanted to know what you wouldn’t tell me. You didn’t even really know what you wanted out of life, and I felt like I pushed you and pulled you to me. Maybe … seven years ago, we were both just two fucked up people.”

“I was so messed up,” I admitted. “It took me a long time to get it together. I made so many mistakes along the way. Things I wish I could take back, stupid decisions. It’s only in the last year or so that I’ve started to realize that.”

“What changed? What made you quit being so angry?”

“I just really hated my life. I didn’t like the person I had become or where my life was heading.” I thought about his question for a minute, looking back at myself the last few years. I swallowed hard and decided to be as honest as I could.

“I have this amazing group of friends, girlfriends. We were all feeling the same way, but in different ways. We were all running from something in our past rather than facing it head on. It needed to change … we had to make changes. All of us had so many fears and insecurities buried inside that we seemed paralyzed at times, so we decided to take a break. We all quit dating or even thinking about getting into a relationship of any kind until we could fix what was broken inside of us.”

I looked closely at him, trying to gauge his reaction to what I was telling him. He just sat back, listening. I continued.

“Andrea, the woman I’m here with, was in a horribly abusive situation that almost killed her. Maggie, a friend of mine since grade school in Minnesota, moved down here after we split up. Chris, her boyfriend, had died tragically in an accident. Then there’s me. You know my history. I’ve been on a self-destructive path for a long time. We all were broken in so many ways, and together, we decided to heal. Of course, the fact that Andrea is a psychologist helped. We were brutally honest and open with each other, and accountable for our own shit. I know this sounds nuts but it’s working. For the first time in a long time, I know I’m okay, I’m happy with me. I have dreams again and I have a desire for something more in my life. I’m still a work in progress but what we’re doing is working.”

Elliot just kept looking at me. He took my hand in his and held it. I saw him open his mouth several time as if to speak, only to close it again.

“Emily, no matter what you may have done over the years, I don’t care about your mistakes or any of that. I look at you and I still see the most beautiful woman I have ever known. That has never changed. Don’t take all the blame for what happened between us. It was both you and me. We both messed it up. Do you know how many times I’ve dreamed of the chance to see you again, to sit down with you and just talk? To be able to hold you against me and tangle my fingers in your hair? God! Do you get it at all?” He seemed frustrated with me all of a sudden.

He pulled back and took a sip of wine, a long sip, when I blurted out:

“I think about you every fucking day, Elliot.”

He started to choke on his wine, coughing it back up to the point that others looked toward us in concern. He grabbed for a napkin and put it up to his mouth, trying to wipe up the liquid that now dripped from his chin. I reached over and wiped a drop from the corner of his lip and then put my finger in my mouth to suck it off, watching him watch me all the while.

I wasn’t sure what came over me. I just blurted out the honest-to-God truth.

I didn’t want to play games anymore—with anyone—but especially not with Elliot. How he chose to deal with it was on him.

Before Elliot could respond, the waitress was back to see if we were ready yet. I started to open it when he put his hand on top of the menu. Turning to the waitress, he ordered for both of us.

“I need two orders of lasagna and the house salad.” Turning back to me, he said, “They have the best lasagna I have ever tasted. I hope you don’t mind.”

I didn’t mind at all.

We continued our conversation as we waited for the food to arrive.

I led the discussion back to a safer topic, like writing and travels. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk about the “we” factor. I just didn’t want things to move too quickly, and I already blurted out a little more than I intended. Hopefully Elliot understood that. Sitting next to him talking, drinking wine, hearing about how his life had been was a wonderful dream come true for me.

And … I wanted nothing more than to crawl into his lap and lick every inch of him. I wanted to taste his mouth filled with wine, I wanted to drink him up completely, but not yet. I needed to know the feelings rushing through me, the desire, the headiness, were real, and that we both felt the same way.

I shook off my rambling thoughts and worked on learning more about Elliot.

“Now,” I said. “Tell me how you come up with such gruesome murders in your stories. You make them so real and so vivid. They give me nightmares.”

“They are real. I may combine a few killings to make it more horrific, but every murder I write about in my books has happened somewhere in the world.”

My face must have dropped because he reached out and took my hand.

“The world is full of evil, Emily. It’s all around us. Most people close their eyes to it, but it’s still there, whether we choose to see it or not.”

I cringed, but it wasn’t what he told me that made me react. It was the thought of Steve’s brutal slaying that rushed back into my thoughts when Elliot mentioned murder. Yes, evil was all around us, me especially, and it needed to be taken care of soon.

But not today, I didn’t want to think about any of it today. I wanted to believe I had finally been given a little taste of heaven right here in La Jolla.