Page 67 of Ruthless Sin
She glances at me over her glasses.
“You stayed where you were, Nico.”
“Compris,” I say. My voice comes out even.
“Bon.” Good.
Mila comes out. Back in the dark green sweater and the flat shoes. Her hair pulled back behind one ear. The waist of her is under the sweater again and I cannot see it anymore and that is worse. She takes the box from Marguerite and tucks it against her chest and walks toward the door and I watch her walk and I need to get out of this room.
Marguerite puts her hand briefly on Mila’s shoulder.
“Bonne soirée,ma chère.” Good evening, my dear.
She turns to me.
“Nico.Mes amitiés à toute la famille.”
My love to the family.
She opens the door.
The bell announces our leaving.
I open the passenger door for Mila.
She gets in with the box on her lap.
I close her door, walk around, get in, and start the engine.
I take the long way home because I need the drive — something to do with my hands, something to look at that isn’t her, time to get my pulse back below a hundred before we’reback inside those walls together. The streetcar tracks and the live oaks closing over St. Charles and the light coming through at an angle turning the whole street gold.
The streetlight through the oak canopy turns the whole road the same amber-gold as that dress against her skin. Ochre, almost. I don’t say it because if I start I won’t stop there.
At the boutique she almost smiled. The corner of her mouth, barely, when Marguerite said the loyalty-program line. I have been thinking about that corner of her mouth for the last four blocks and before I decide to do it I am already pulling off.
I pull off into the parking lot of a place I haven’t been since I was a kid, the drive-through menu board lit up with thirty-two flavors in colors that have nothing to do with paint and everything to do with being nine years old in the back of Papa’s car.
Mila looks at me.
I put the SUV in park at the speaker.
“Welcome to Sweet Cream. What can I get you?”
“One of everything,” I say.
“Sir?”
“Every flavor you have. Small cups. All of them.”
Mila’s head turns toward me slowly.
“Uh, okay. That’s. Thirty-two flavors. You want all thirty-two?”
“Yes.”
I pull forward to the window. Mila hasn’t looked away. I don’t look back. If I look at her I’m going to say something I cannot take back. Her thigh is close to the gearshift. The ochre dress is in a box on her lap. I am running on the thinnest margin of control I have had since Moscow and I am buying this woman thirty-two flavors of ice cream because the alternative is pulling over and telling her what I actually want and I’m not going to do that.
The kid at the window hands me two cardboard carriers. Thirty-two small cups. Plastic spoons.
