He laughed, shaking his head at my extreme enthusiasm, and I kept going. “If you throw in a dinner with anything not containing injera, you’ll be my hero. Not that I don’t love the stuff, but I’m ready for a pizza or something.” I was the first one to admit that my love for injera waned after weeks of eating it cold for at least one meal a day.
“How about pizza and beer? Then music.”
I rolled my eyes in ecstasy. “That sounds incredible. What time should I be ready?”
“I’ll be here at 7:30. The show doesn’t start until 9:00, so we can eat and then walk there. The Beer Garden is right behind the bar where they play.”
I gasped at that. “Beer Garden? You really are trying for superhero status.”
“Just making sure you get the best of Ethiopia.” He grinned in that way that made his dimples pop, and I was a complete fucking goner.
Once he was back in the vehicle, I stood by the entrance to the guesthouse and lifted my hand to him, feeling like this was nowhere near sufficient for a goodbye. “See you in a few hours.”
Elias nodded and the intensity in his eyes once again made me wonder what exactly was going through his head. “Eshi, Desta. See you soon.”
After I watched him drive away, I climbed the stairs to my room, sporting a grin of my own. Self-recrimination about my poor choices in men flew out the window with every step.
By 7:15 p.m. I’d changed clothes twice and was doing way too much for what should have just been dinner with a colleague. I’d turned it into a thing, and was currently standing in front of the mirror in my room tugging at my dark brown curls, which had become completely unruly in the last few weeks. I’d also gotten a hell of a tan from so many days in the sun. The deeper brown tone of my skin made my hazel eyes look weirdly lighter, like some kind of wild cat. Which, given my current mood, was probably appropriate.
I looked good. Not that it mattered, because this was not a date.
Sick of myself and my fretting, I grabbed the black leather bomber jacket I’d brought, and was tugging it on over a green sweater when I heard a knock. I rushed to the door, my heart almost pounding out of my chest. As soon as I opened it, I realized I had not been ready for what was waiting on the other side.
Elias looked fucking edible.
I actually had to lean on the doorframe to keep from coming too close. I tried to discreetly take in what was in front of me, and knew I was failing miserably. He was wearing a white linen shirt under a brown leather blazer, with extremely well-fitting dark blue jeans and red Chucks on his feet. His curls sprung high on his head, held back by his usual thin elastic band. Tonight he was also wearing a few silver bracelets on his wrists, and a wide silver ring on his right hand.
He was such a fine man. His perfectly shaped lips were incredibly distracting, made for kissing, and God, I wanted to.
I realized I’d only opened the door to stare at him, and let out a flustered, “Hi.”
The smile he gave me was radiant, like he was so damn glad to see me. I was reading too much into it, I knew that. But when he stared me up and down and kept his eyes on the general area of my mouth for a few seconds longer than warranted, my head, once again, started going places it shouldn’t.
“Eshi, Desta, are you ready to go?” Maybe I was imagining things, but it sounded to me like he was a little flustered too.
“I am. I took a nap, and now I’m starving.”
He grunted in approval, which made my belly flip and the skin on my face tighten. But when he spoke, that’s when all the blood in my brain went south all at once. “We have to get you what you need, then.”
When we came out of the guesthouse he walked me to an older model Toyota Corolla and held the door open for me. I sent myself another reminder that I was not on a date and got into his very well-cared for car. “Wow, this car is pristine.”
He seemed pleased at my noticing, and by the compliment, but when he spoke he was a little apologetic. “I’m a bit intense about it. Taxes for cars here are really high. And it’s almost impossible to get a loan from the bank. It took me a long time to save enough to buy it, so I make sure I care for it.”
I smiled at the obvious pride he had in his car and thought of how different things were for us. Even knowing as much as I did about the many inequalities in the world, a lot of them were just that: something I knew about. Not something I’d needed to live with, or through. My work exposed me to them, yes, and I hoped in some way I helped bridge those gaps, but I was always at a safe distance. I didn’t really have skin in the game, not like Elias and Tsehay did. Maybe that was why they held themselves to such an impossibly high standard.
“You’re a man who knows how to care for things, that’s for sure,” I said, unable to keep the admiration out of my voice, or my mind from marveling at how he cared for the people in his life.
Elias’s smile was the exact reaction I’d been hoping for. “And I employ that care in taking us where we need to go. Are you ready for some beer, pizza, and music, Desta?”
His energy and smile were infectious, and I felt one
