Chuckling to myself, I reach for my computer tablet, planning to do some work, but instead I find myself on Google, searching for Elijah Hart.
Page after page of cases he’s won appear, alongside news articles about his charity work. One thing is for sure: he’s a great man. Stoic and utterly brilliant.
And so not my type.
Hipsters with man buns, plaid shirts, and vintage denim who enjoy thrifting are more my vibe than a polished, sharp-suited man who thrives on power, buys a Ferrari in his free time, and schmoozes with socialites who drink champagne for fun, which, in my opinion, tastes like cat pee. Not that I know what cat pee tastes like, but I imagine it does.
I scroll through dozens of photos of Eli at dinner parties and fancy charity events, and notice that in none of them is he with a woman, except for his mother, the matriarch of the Hart family.
“Why doesn’t he have a girlfriend?” I mumble to myself.
Maybe he’s just really skilled at keeping his private life private.
There’s no way he hasn’t had a girlfriend because being handsome isn’t enough to describe how attractive he is.
Striking or magnetic is more fitting, and I bet he has more exes than clauses in a contract. He must have women throwing themselves at him.
Frustrated with myself, I clear my search history and press the power-off button, switching myself off from work for the night.
Leaning my head against the back of the sofa, I close my eyes to clear my mind, but the first image that flashes behind my eyelids is Eli… with broad shoulders, a chiseled jaw…
I snap my eyes open, and the image of him vanishes in a dreamlike puff of smoke.
Why is this happening to me? I lay my hand on my forehead.
Maybe it’s my hormones because, like clockwork, my period is due in a week. Yeah, that’s what’s wrong with me. It’s the only explanation.
Or maybe sex with Kai is what I need. Although the idea of listening to him ramble about surfing and how the swell was perfect already has me second-guessing calling him. He’s good with his tongue, just as long as he’s not using it to talk.
It’s been months since we hooked up, and I take it as a sign that he’s finally found himself a girlfriend. Something I wasn’t prepared to be for him because it just didn’t feel right. Convenient when he’s in town, yes, but there was nothing more to us.
In the words of my mother, when souls meant for each other meet, you’ll know.
She’s all about the soul, twin flames and more hocus pocus than I know what to do with sometimes, explaining that I would know from the feeling I got instantly, his smile would make my heart explode, and we’d just hit it off immediately and wouldn’t be able to stop talking, sharing so much in common.
I roll my eyes at how silly that sounds in my head, but it confirms Eli Hart is not my twin flame. If compatibility depends on conversation, there wasn’t much of it between us. No flow. Just awkward silences and forced replies from him.
That peculiar fluttering sensation in my stomach earlier was because I was hungry.
That was all it was.
I eye the ceiling and stare at the tiny, gray, dot-like marks above the fan, narrowing my gaze to a pinpoint focus.
“Ghost, have you been using the ceiling fan as a merry-go-round again?” On more than one occasion, I’ve caught him on the security camera, lying on his back on top of one of the blades, using his paws on the ceiling to spin himself around. He’s not a cat, he’s a spider: spider-cat.
He lets out a pathetic meow that sounds a lot like no.
I’ve become a crazy cat lady who believes her cat talks to her. It’s no wonder Eli Hart stared at me during dinner like I was from another planet, because I am.
When I was growing up, Slab City sure felt like it was.
And that’s yet another reason Eli Hart and I will never work.
We’re from different worlds.
He belongs to billion-dollar deals made wearing Louis Vuitton leather shoes, whereas I come from a trailer that rattled in the wind. He works on repairing and securing futures, while I’m still trying to find my place in the world, mending my desert past and stitching it together with the city I now call home.
I’m a mishmash of nothing and everything. The girl from Slab City who wore bibbed overalls covered in patches my mom made me on her first day of school, and everyone laughed at her. The next day, I went with another pair, the same but brighter, just to show them I didn’t care what they thought. And the day Jude Evans told me I was a freak, I pointed out that I would rather be a freak than a bland carbon copy of everyone else, earning the respect of three new girls in the class who have become my lifelong friends, one being Mistee, who now works for me.