“Tell me who’s annoying you so much and I’ll have a talk with them.” He gave me a heart-melting smile.
My smile in return was too sly to be called nice. “What do you say… really?” I paused. “Well, you are good at monologues.”
“Got it.” His smile turned more subdued. “So, am I sleeping at yours or will you be kicking me out after half an hour like last time?”
“Do you want me to get fired?” I returned.
“God, no. It would screw up all my plans,” he said with a straight face. “Natasha’s in London. It looks like she might be having an affair.” His mouth twisted and he licked his lips. I knew him too well not to know he was out of sorts. No one could tell when he was off. No one. Not Natasha, not Timothy, not that idiot Brian from the French intelligence—Eran was the one who called him that, not me. That particular Brian was with us in Amsterdam.
I could tell he was out of sorts because I was the only one who ever made him feel that way. On the extreme. It was then that he lost his limits. Then he would talk. If any of his co-workers ever heard him when he was pissed off, I think they’d be surprised.
Once, he called someone from the national management of HP a dick. Or, more accurately, he texted it to him.
That was a mistake, though. He’d meant to send that to Natasha and ended up sending it to that guy. I told you he was an idiot.
“What?” I was shocked.
“Don’t think about that now. I’m not in London, I’m with you.” I could see he was starting to lose patience.
“Let’s get inside. I just need to pay the taxi driver.” I didn’t want to change the mood after not seeing him for so long.
“Mom, I’m going to a friend, okay?” Shaked yelled from across the street. She’d met one of the neighbors’ daughters.
That was rather perfect, actually. Kids… such a blessing. That would give us until 20:00…
“What are you smiling about?” I laughed.
“I’m not the one laughing, what do you want from me?” he chuckled back.
“I’m on my period, so forget it,” I cut him down. “Kidding.”
I opened the door and we walked in.
I didn’t even manage to turn around before he grabbed me around the waist. I spun around and we kissed for a good minute and a half. That’s a lot.
We went up to my room.
An hour and a half later, we got into the shower.
“I thought I’d lose my mind having to go one more day without you,” he said, looking at me in a way I’d never seen from him.
I let water from the showerhead into my mouth, smiled, and shut my lips. it felt right not to reply to that this time. I stayed quiet and simply enjoyed what he said to me. May all you women out there experience this. Though… you wish. It’s mine. Sort of.
“Are you pissing in my shower? I’ll kill you!”
“Everyone pees in the shower—even you.
“But I don’t pee in your shower!”
“That’s because you don’t take showers at my place. Do you know that joke about a guy who comes to the doctor, saying that he’s got a problem: he pisses every morning at seven AM. The doctor asks what the problem with that was, and he said, ‘I only wake up at eight.’”
“Wonderful, you three-year-old boy. Wash up after yourself.”
“All right, all right,” he said, and watched me in a way that made me think this wouldn’t be the last shower of the evening.
“Will we be talking tonight, Eran? I can almost smell a reunion… though it’s nothing personal, is it?”
“Let’s sleep and talk about everything tomorrow, okay? We can have tonight only to ourselves, yeah? There’s no rush… though it is a hot topic,” he added, as if to himself.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Tomorrow, Noa, okay?”
“Okay.”
Chapter Seven
I woke up suddenly… at 04:12 AM?
Wow… what a night.
Where was Eran, though? He wasn’t in bed—what the hell?
Him and his early rising rituals. I’d never met a man who sleeps so little. How could he even function? If I don’t sleep properly for two, three days, I’m completely out of it. I could—under certain circumstances—be a panther for a week or so, with small cat naps in between, but not on a regular basis. Then, too, I should have at the minimum a six figure compensation. Six figures that become five when taxes are included is the rate from years ago—from my childhood years. My bosses don’t have a budget issue, so if I’m required to lose my mind… well. You know how it goes.
Eran thinks differently.
I can’t understand how a man pushing fifty can give a shit about money. Not in the sense that he’s wasteful, but in the sense that it isn’t the thing that drives him. And it used to be the opposite—which is the irony of the whole thing.
His brain got taken over by some professor at some point, turning him from a handsome capitalist who honestly did pretty well in the stock market, into a goal oriented idealist. What does he say…? An electro-optically guided ballistic missile. It’s a joke. He can’t actually see very well. And being tired probably doesn’t help. He’d ditched his glasses ages ago because he ended up losing them all the time.
An idealist is sexier than a money-hounding pig—but being poor is not sexy.
Oh well, his father took care of that a whole generation ago. He talks big… but it’s a lot easier to sound so righteous when you already have everything you need. And he’s about as righteous as I am Mother Teressa.
I help my father.
I also help Eran. Not only because I love him, but because I know he’ll also take care of me when I need. He protects me—and I protect him.
I walked into the living room and found him sitting there smoking. There were another six used cigarettes
