Page 33 of Beautiful Noise
She wouldn’t without telling me.
Who the fuck am I kidding? She would definitely leave and not say shit to me.
When I didn’t get a response or hear even the slightest movement, I knocked again but this time I called her name. After the third time I pulled down on the handle and peeked inside just in time to see Kori with a towel wrapped around her body as she entered the bedroom from the adjoining bathroom.
Upon seeing me, her face set into a scowl and she clenched the towel tighter like I didn’t know what was beneath it.
“I knocked,” I muttered, trying extremely hard to keep my eyes focused on her face.
“I was in the shower.”
“Clearly.”
“What do you want,Ezren?”
I cringed at the clipped way she used my name and the fact that she continued to use the one only my mother called me. After all the things I had done with and to Kori’s body, I didn’t want her addressing me the way my mother did.
“Dinner and will you please stop calling me Ezren? The only person who uses that name is my mother and mostly because I think it reminds her of my father.”
Low blow, but shit, I needed something to make her stop using the name. What I shared wasn’t exactly a lie. I had my father’s name and it did remind my mother of him…
But it reminded me too.
“Fine,Eccentric,and I cooked so…”
“E is fine and I know. I was just coming to ask if you’d eat with me.”
That was a lie. I hadn’t been anywhere near the kitchen to know she’d cooked.
“I already ate.”
“Okay then, come talk to me. Get dressed and I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” I rattled off then slipped into the hallway before she had a chance to say no. She still could or just flat out ignore my request, but I was hopeful.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kori.
I changed my mind nothing short of a dozen times but decided I had nothing to be ashamed of. I had a job and was trying to do better for myself. Who the hell cared that my job was cleaning houses?
I was a college educated woman who had a lot of potential and even more to offer the world, if I could just figure out what my thing was. So no, I wasn’t ashamed of my current situation. I wasn’t necessarily proud of where I was in life, but I hadn’t just said fuck it and given up.
Fast forward, so now, here I was on my way to the kitchen to sit with the man I had been avoiding all day. Even if I didn’t have to try hard because he had been hiding away in his studio. Maybehewas avoiding me.
Either way there was currently a herd of butterflies—no, elephants—stampeding in my stomach and my heart rate was at a tachycardic level. When I reached the kitchen, I caught him seated in the same spot he was last night, a full plate sitting between his corded forearms resting on the island.
He had his food but was evidently waiting on me.
I smiled internally but managed to keep the reaction from being exposed on my face.
“You didn’t have to wait,Eccentric,” I muttered, sliding into the space across from him. He reached for a wine glass which I hadn’t noticed and filled it for me, resting his fingers on the base as he pushed it across the marbled island.
“E.”
“Right, because that makes perfect sense to call you E, not Ezren or Eccentric. As if you need to be any more complicated than you already are.”
“What nicknames make sense though? A linebacker-built guy named Tiny or a barely four-foot, hundred pound guy named Big Lou.”
“Okay, so maybe those don’t, but I was referring to the fact that your nickname has a nickname,E.”