Chapter 10: The Note in the Pocket

Elliot did not say anything.

He looked at the note in my hand and stayed exactly where he was, six feet away, with his hands at his sides.

"Door," I said.

"Felicity, I'm recused from the whole bid."

"It's not the bid. It's the night. You said I could use that word if the door was shut."

He opened the nearest door, a dark phone room the size of a closet, and held it for me.

I went in.

He followed and pulled it shut, and the lock clicked.

There was one small lamp and one stool and about three feet between us.

I held up the paper.

"You said it didn't happen."

"I know."

"You said the night didn't happen, and then you put it in your pocket and carried it around for ten days."

"Ten," he said quietly.

Something in my chest went rough and tender at the same time.

"Why?"

He looked at the paper, not at me.

"Because everyone who works for me tells me I'm a genius or a bastard," he said. "It depends on the quarter."

"Nobody has told me where I lost points since I was nineteen."

"You wrote it down on a hotel pad in four lines at five in the morning. It's the only honest review I've had in years."

"It says you lost points for the tonic."

"I stopped drinking at twenty-two."

His mouth quirked, without humor.

"My father drank his shop away. I take it personally. I didn't tell you, and you got it right anyway."

I stared at him.

"That's not what I came to be angry about," I said.

"What did you come to be angry about?"

"That you stood in a room with me and said it was a clean slate."

"And you had this in a case in your pocket, and I didn't know."

My voice cracked on the last word.

"Do you know what that does? I thought it was just me."

"It was never just you."

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