The Third Thing: A Novel by Sirkka Smith

Author:Sirkka Smith [Smith, Sirkka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taricha Books
Published: 2021-04-27T16:00:00+00:00

26

Xo’s Reaction

Xo entered the coffee house in a daze and stumbled up to her studio, continuously replaying fragments of what had just happened and then retreating from the emotions that welled up as a result. To find order in the chaos, she reviewed past interactions with Elliot. She couldn’t have been this oblivious. She could tell when a guy was interested. Right? There were signs, like random touching, or suggestive comments, such as Alec did. Of course, she’d been wrong about Alec…so were those the right signs, or were they the signs of someone who didn’t truly care about her? Elliot didn’t act that way at all.

After standing in the middle of her apartment for some time, she realized it was well past dinner. She took off her boots and opened the refrigerator. Deep down, a tiny part of her acknowledged that she had known for some time that Elliot cared about her. A lot. He’d even said so, she’d just sort of brushed it off. Maybe he cared in a different way from all the guys she had known before, and that was why he acted differently. Though he did touch her…sometimes. His hands were different from other people’s then, too; he didn’t seem to be taking something away from her. It was more like an electric current recharging her, one that was hard to break away from.

The refrigerator door beeped, startlingly: a warning that she had been standing there too long letting out the cold air. Xo opened the freezer compartment. It contained a few frozen burritos and the dead pigeon. She closed the freezer again and considered the choices in the refrigerator.

What would Elliot have done if she’d ended up with Alec—never said anything at all? She felt sick remembering how hurt Elliot had looked. He’d be even more hurt if he knew that while he was lovingly thinking of her, she was considering flings with random people—no, even worse, a friend of his—at that restaurant instead of thinking about him. She prayed he never, ever found out about that. Clearly she wasn’t the kind of person Elliot was, or the kind he thought she was. He hadn’t just started by saying he liked her, but that he wanted to marry her. Though maybe he was trying to show her that he was serious, different from these other relationships he had apparently been trying to protect her from. And she’d panicked…just like she panicked last night with that guy from the restaurant, at a decidedly different suggestion.

She had no idea what she wanted anymore, there was too much whirling around in her mind to tell. Every memory of Elliot had now taken on a new meaning, a layer she’d been unaware of before.

The refrigerator beeped again. She was still holding it open, staring into it blankly. Food at least should be a decision she could manage, and it would help her think. She scanned the shelves, mostly leftovers from downstairs: day-old pastries and lunch foods, which Jacqua doled out generously enough.

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