I wasn’t sure how we made it through that full day without giving in at least once.
Yeah, I know—we had that conversation, and we’d sworn not to do anything more than we’d already done. But it felt as though it came with an “if”—the unspoken knowledge that if we could get this thing under control, the situation would be different. We would be different. We never had a chance to get to know each other outside the fraught circumstances we found ourselves in now—and that was as good a reason as any to go for it and get this under control.
Ella had a playdate at a neighbor’s house that afternoon, and I offered to stay around to help figure things out. Once Jazz was back from dropping her off, we formed our plans, putting the pieces together so we could actually do something. I’d already called up Lucy, and she was back in her apartment, glad that the peeper had been dealt with—and impressed that a guy called Devil had left her apartment in such good shape. I was relieved that she was safe, even if it didn’t help us out too much.
“I’ll call Scott,” I suggested. “And get him to put me in touch with someone further up the ladder.”
“Good idea.” Jazz nodded. “And I’ll get to the neighbors and tell them about the thing I saw in their attic.”
As I pulled up Scott’s number, it crossed my mind that he had never referred to what he had seen in the attic as a person, but rather as an unspecified object. How scary must this guy be if even Jazz didn’t seem to want to confront him head-on? Jazz lingered, waiting for me to be finished so I could come with him. I guessed he knew it would look better if he had a non-threatening woman on his side when he turned up at his elderly neighbor’s house demanding access to the place. He pulled on his leather jacket and paced back and forth, and I found my gaze lingering on him as he passed in front of me. I couldn’t get the night before out of my head—I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to. I thought I would at least get some of my desire for him out of my system, but it seemed like, if anything, this had made it all that much worse.
“Hey?” Scott’s voiced pulled me out of my ogling and back to reality. I shook my head and ran my fingers through my hair before I could get a reply out.
“Uh, hey, Scott,” I began, and launched into a description of the night’s events. They came breathlessly tumbling from my mouth, as though telling them to someone else made them that much more real.
“So what do you want from me?” he asked, and I realized this must all just come across as ranting to him.
“Can you give me the number of someone else in forensics?” I asked.
“Oh, one forensic scientist not good enough for you?” he teased. I rolled my eyes; this was so typically him, making light of a bad situation. Before I had a chance to open my mouth to scold him for his facetiousness, he spoke again.
“I’m just looking up a number for you now.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Scott, I really do appreciate this.”
“Then you can get me a drink when this is all finished with, alright?” he suggested. “And if you need anything else from me, just let me know.”
“You’re a life-saver,” I replied, and he read me out the number. I motioned to Jazz for a pen and scribbled it down on my hand.
“Let me know how things go?” he asked, and I nodded, forgetting for a second that he was on the other end of the line and couldn’t see me.
“I will,” I promised, and hung up.
“So, you got the number?” Jazz asked, and I waved my hand at him. He squinted at the inky scrawl, then shrugged.
“I guess I’ll take your word for it.”
“I guess you’ll have to,” I shot back playfully, and I found myself flashing a flirty smile in his direction. Come on, Mona—you have to be better than this. You have to restrain yourself at least a little. But how was I meant to? He blinked at me, and for a second I saw that lust in his eyes again. A moment passed where I was sure he was going to lunge towards me, pin me against the counter, and fuck me again right then and there—but it passed quickly, and I had to push any thoughts like that from my mind. I tried to cut myself some slack—it had only happened the night before, after all—but it was hard. I didn’t want to get hung up on him, yet here I was, subconsciously pushing us towards the bedroom once more.
“Should I call first, or shall we head around to the neighbors?” I asked, doing my best to move past the moment we were both trying our hardest pretend hadn’t happened. Jazz lifted his chin, thinking for a second.
“Next door?”
“Sure thing.” I nodded, glad to be getting out of the house—everywhere I looked, it seemed to serve as a reminder of what we’d spent last night doing. The spot where he’d scooped me up into his arms, the door he’d opened to carry me into the bedroom. I could still practically feel the sound of his heartbeat against my head, the soothing thump-thump-thump that seemed to go faster every time I touched him.
We made our way out into the early Spring sunshine and I sucked in a lungful of the warm air—God, it felt good. I had always loved being outside, and this little suburbia sequestered away from all things urban felt good, even if I wasn’t here for the circumstances I would have chosen.
Jazz caught my arm as we approached the door and I turned to look at him, trying to ignore the familiar trail of sparks he sent across my skin.
“What?” I asked, keeping my voice down.
“I just…” He ran a hand through his hair. “I think it would be good if we pretended we were together.”
“Did you not hear the conversation we had back there, or…?” I shot back, a little sharper than I intended.
He shook his head. “Not because of that. I think they’ll just…take to me better if they think I’m with a woman, you know?”
“Are they old-fashioned or something?”
“Yeah, from what I know.”
“If it’ll help us figure this out,” I conceded. “Come on, let’s get this over with already.”
As Jazz knocked on the door, I looked up at the house above us—my eyes drifted to the attic, and a cold shiver ran down my spine. What was in there? Or who?
A few seconds later, an older man came to the door; he opened it, and looked us both up and down. He didn’t seem hostile, necessarily, but he also didn’t look delighted to see us.
“Hello.” He nodded in the direction of Jazz, glancing over at me and giving me a cursory look-over. “Everything alright?”
“Uh,” Jazz didn’t seem to have planned very well what he was actually going to say. “I actually need to talk to you about something.”
“Yeah?” The man, who I assumed was Paul, leaned up against his doorframe. I tried to peer past him without being too obvious about it but he shifted to block my view. Dammit.
“I was wondering if I could have a look at your attic?” he blurted out hurriedly.
“What for?” Paul eyed him with an obvious suspicion. Wow, they really didn’t like Jazz around here—I thought he might have been exaggerating it, but it was clear the disdain he had for him.
“I was thinking of blocking up my own attic, you know, because of Ella,” he managed. “And I was wondering if I could get a look at how you did yours.”
“You do all that work on your bike, couldn’t you figure it out yourself?”
Jazz scuffed his foot against the ground, obviously not sure where to take the conversation next. Then, thankfully, we heard a set of footsteps heading towards us.
“Is that Jazz?” A woman’s voice, warmer than the man’s, drifted from the hall. The man rolled his eyes skyward and stepped aside, letting his wife approach us. She smiled broadly, her eyes flicking between the two of us.
“Good to see you.” She nodded in Jazz’s direction. “How’s Ella?”
“She’s good, thank you.” He smiled back at her. “In fact I was just visiting because of her.”
“Oh, really?” Mary glanced at her husband. “Then come on in! Let me get you something to drink.”
We made our way into the house, and Jazz repeated what he’d said to Paul; Mary seemed a lot more receptive to the idea, and gestured for him to go up and take a look. Paul followed him without a word, obviously the less trusting of the two. Mary and I were left alone in the living room, two glasses of lemonade between us.
“So, how long have the two of you been together?” she asked casually. I flushed and stumbled over my words.
“I, uh, we’ve—a couple of months?” I replied, my voice ticking up at the end as though I was asking a question. She cocked her head at me and smiled, and for a second I thought she’d rumbled us.
“I’ve seen you going in and out of the house a lot.” She raised her brows at me playfully. “I think it’s good for the little girl to have a mother figure.”
“So you know Ella too?” I moved the conversation away from myself as deftly as I could.
“Yes, I chat to her whenever we’re both out in the garden.” She sighed fondly, a small smile on her lips. “She’s such a sweet little girl. And her father is quite the catch!” She winked at me, as though we were just a normal pair of girls chatting away over a glass of wine. I managed a weak smile back, feeling guilty even though I had nothing to feel guilty about.
Before I could put my foot in anything, Jazz and Paul reappeared at the door. Jazz looked distracted and there was a small furrow between his eyebrows. It was clear that he hadn’t found what he was looking for.
“Can we go?” He glanced at me, and I put down my drink. I would be glad to get out of there—something about this place was off, despite Mary’s hospitality. And it went beyond Paul’s obvious suspicion of Jazz—no, this was something more potent. It seemed to hang in the air around us, even if I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Sure.” I got to my feet. “Thanks for the drink, Mary.”
Paul saw us to the door, and as soon as we were outside, Jazz began to pace around the other side of the house.
“What are you doing?” I demanded, following him as best I could on the slippery wet grass. He was moving quickly, a man on a mission.
“I couldn’t figure it out in there,” he muttered, and I wasn’t sure whether it was to me or to himself. “It doesn’t make any sense…”
“You’re going to need to tell me what you’re talking about,” I demanded, and he finally came to a stop once he was around the back of the house.
“The attic was sealed tight,” he explained with a sigh, craning his neck to get a better view from where he was standing. “And I can’t see anywhere from the outside to get in through.”
“So…?”
“So, I’m not sure if we actually saw anything in there.” He shook his head. “Maybe I was just being paranoid after what happened to Ella.”
“She was just standing there in the window,” I reminded him. “She was staring at it. She must have seen something to catch her attention like that.”
“Kids are more imaginative than you think. Maybe she was just imagining it. And the stress probably messed me up worse than I thought…” He trailed off, and it seemed very much like he was trying to talk himself out of any of this having actually happened. But I wasn’t going to let that happen.
“Someone was in there with your daughter, no matter what way you try to slice it. You have the pictures of the footprints, remember?”
“I know,” he conceded. “But maybe…maybe a lot of this is coincidence. More of it than I think.”
“And maybe we need to get the forensics guy in here before we can rule that out for good,” I suggested. I knew I was being a little unfair—that he probably knew better than I did what was good for his daughter—but I’d seen the look on his face when he saw something moving in that attack. He believed it then, and just because he couldn’t figure it out didn’t mean that nothing was going on at all.
“You’re right,” he agreed, and we began to make our way back to the house. “Can you give him a call? I need to pick Ella up.”
“Will do,” I agreed, and stepped back into the house as he made for the car. As the door shut behind me, an eerie silence seemed to envelop the place, and I quickly grabbed for my phone to distract myself from it.
I put in the call, and the forensics guy—Oliver—said he’d be by as soon as he could but that he couldn’t promise anything with his current workload. I sighed and went to sit on the couch, arms crossed, and tried not to focus on how quiet it was in here and how alone I found myself. I was glad when I heard the roar of the engine pulling up to the house, and I jumped out of my seat to welcome them both back home. We still felt like we were forming into a little family, even though I knew I should have been rejecting it.
Ella came crashing through the door, buzzing on the excitement of seeing one of her friends for the whole day. She usually came back bouncing off the walls, and I never minded—it was good to see her so full of joy and life, especially when things seemed to be getting grimmer and grimmer by the minute for the rest of us.
“Mona!” she squealed, and threw herself at me—I gave her a quick hug, and watched as Jazz dumped down a pile of food on the table.
“I picked us up takeout.” He grabbed some plates from the cupboard. “Help yourself.”
Why was he doing all of this? He could have just asked me to leave, gotten rid of me and tried to pretend that the last night hadn’t happened at all. Instead, he seemed…keen to keep me around? Maybe I was imagining it, but that was how it felt to me. I grabbed some slices of pizza and a soda and sat back down on the couch, where Ella was already picking out a movie for us to watch. She settled on one of her favorite animated films as we settled down on the couch. Here we were again—playing family, playing Mom and Dad. The mixed signals were flying everywhere and I couldn’t help but pay them some attention. I tried to focus in on the movie and the food in front of me, and pull my mind away from the gorgeous man sitting only a few feet from me.
When the movie was done, we all went to start putting the plates away and tidying up. Ella was telling us all about her day, and her excitable chatter was a pleasant distraction from everything else that had happened that day. Until, of course, she suddenly fell silent—and the words I desperately didn’t want to hear came out of her mouth.
“What happened to the man in the attic?” she asked, glancing between us. We both froze, exchanging a look with each other as we desperately tried to figure out what the hell we were meant to tell her. Jazz opened his mouth and closed it again, at a loss for words, and I was forced to jump in.
“The man in the attic?” I began playfully. “I think you mean the alien in the attic!”
“Really?” Her eyes widened at me, and I leaned down to lead her away to the couch. I could feel Jazz tensing up at the very mention of the thing we’d been trying to forget, and the last thing he or I wanted was for her to figure out that something was amiss with the whole situation.
“Or something else!” I went on. “What do you think is up there?”
The rest of the evening was spent coming up with the kinds of creatures that might be hiding away in the attic—unicorns, dinosaurs, monsters, princesses. Ella had such an enormous imagination that it almost helped draw my mind away from what was actually up there—or at least what we thought there was. For the first time in a long time, I found myself relaxing, and was glad, at least, that this little girl got to stay in my life.