A/N: I originally planned on posting this and the next installment as one chapter but it ran a little long so I've split it into two parts. I won't make you wait very long for the second part. I'm hoping to update tomorrow but definitely Sunday at the latest. Haha yay for self-imposed deadlines!
To those reading, commenting and favoriting (is that a verb?) - mwah! You're the best :)
Chapter 4 – Gin & Whiskey (Part 1)
"Sit here," Erin tosses her wool coat over the arm of the couch in her small, comfortable living room. She drops her house keys in a shallow bowl beside her landline and bounces away to the bathroom down the hall, saying, "I'll get some antiseptic for that cut."
"It's not that bad," Robert answers, as he takes the offered seat on the sagging couch. He sinks onto her sage green cushions wearily, still trying to make sense of what just transpired on the sidewalk outside.
With a sigh, he cranes back his neck, resting against the sofa board for a moment. But he cringes as his hand inevitably drifts up to the cut near his eye again. It's an odd cut to be made by a fist, too uniform in the way it sliced open his skin. He asks aloud, as a half-hearted joke, "Are Andy's knuckles made of brass? Or some kind of titanium alloy?"
From down the short hallway, he hears a medicine cabinet opening and closing, with pill bottles jostled around. She walks around a second hallway to an adjoining room. Another set of cabinet doors open, from somewhere in the dark kitchen. He can hear the telltale sounds of glass bottles clinking against one another.
"It was his Cornell class ring," Erin answers matter-of-factly as she re-enters the room, frowning with heavy disapproval—at Andy, at his alma mater, at anything to do with him. She slides around the squat coffee table and gingerly steps over Robert's sprawled legs, flicking on the desk lamp perched on the end table. She reaches under the rose-and-cream colored lamp shade and clicks the switch clockwise twice, casting a soft orange glow on the room. The light turns her hair a deeper shade of auburn and Robert finds himself reminded of the scarlet color of sugar maple leaves fluttering to the ground in late autumn. Erin's shaking her head ruefully, still thinking about Andy and mumbling, "He never takes the damn thing off."
She brings antiseptic…and a bottle of scotch whiskey. She sets the whiskey down on the coffee table and takes a seat on the cushions beside him, her nylon-clad knees bumping against his as she inches up closer and beckons him near. The frown on her face softens, giving way to plain concern.
"Let me see," she says softly, sliding her finger across the top of the unscrewed tube of antiseptic. She rubs the smooth, translucent gel between her thumb and first finger. He sighs and sits up while she gently applies the ointment, her fingers brushing against the side of the cut with a gentle, cool touch. Still, it stings and he cringes again, sucking in a quick intake of breath, even under her careful ministrations.
"Sorry," she mutters, adding, more to herself than to him. "I can't believe he hit you."
"Not the most intelligent career choice," Robert agrees wryly, though he can psychoanalyze Andy well enough to know that this wasn't about him at all. The cut on his face is the collateral damage of some classic repression on Andy's part. Jessica has little to do with any of it. Robert, even less so. The simple fact is Andy still wants Erin…or at least wants Erin to want him.
And maybe he's just in a sympathetic mood, but Robert can certainly understand the wanting part.
"Are you going to fire him?" Erin wonders, her thumb smoothing down the gel along the length of the cut, following close beneath his eyebrow. Her other fingers have casually drifting beyond his wounds, stroking the untouched skin near his hairline.
"I don't know," Robert replies truthfully, leaning slightly into her simple caress without meaning to. He's currently too fixated on the color of her red hair and the way it frames her comely face to make employment decisions. As she leans closer to him, fussing with the gash left by Andy's ring, her hair falls near her eyes and he has an idea that he might reach up and tuck those wayward strands back behind her ear. They're sitting close enough that all he would have to do is reach up and take it…
What did he say to her earlier in the night? You could take it or leave it. To take it would be to accept that you're an adult woman with an adventurous spirit…to leave it would be fine too.
He knew she would take it. Or did he? What exactly was he expecting to happen if she did? He honestly can't remember now. It was a moment in time, a stitch in the fabric of their lives. Of course, he didn't think that deeply about it when he said it. He was in a dark mood and in need of distraction.
Fast forward a handful of hours later and he's very distracted. She holds his attention like a moth to a flame and he's not usually one to leave the flame untouched. Admirably, he shakes the feeling off, turning his attention away from her pretty features with effort. Instead, he reaches up and pulls her wandering hand down to rest between both of his own. He pauses briefly before forcing himself to say, "I should go, Erin."
She ignores his words and continues to examine the cut critically, pursing her lips briefly, not really pleased with her efforts. Meanwhile, his fingers have curled themselves around her thumb and are tracing the lines on her palm. He has no control over his own fingers and they play him false too easily. Erin's glance slips down to their tangled hands and then up again, to meet his gaze directly. His eyes meet hers, wondering at her thoughts.
He doesn't have to wonder long. The purse of her lips melts away and she smiles again, just one too many times—raising her eyebrows once and tilting her head towards the whiskey bottle on the coffee table, as a not-so-subtle invitation.
"C'mon, Robert, we deserve a night cap after all that," she begs, quickly adding, "And it'll make the side of your face feel better."
"I don't think that's a good idea…"
"Good ideas are for all the hours before midnight," she argues, allowing her left hand to join the others, reaching for the watch band on his wrist and twisting it face up. The time reads 1:33.
Play time, her coy expression speaks for her. She then reaches for the bottle of scotch and unscrews the top nimbly, with one hand, as if she's opened that bottle the same way a thousand times before. But he knows better. "Just one…"
"I drove here…"
"I'll call a cab," Erin has an answer for everything.
His face hurts like hell. It'll bruise and, by morning, he might even have a black eye for his trouble. And Erin's grinning again—the little minx. She's drunk but he swears she knows what she's doing. At the very least, she's very aware that she currently has some mystical power over him. Oh, he can see it in her foxy little smile. And she certainly knows what she wants.
She knows how to get it too.
The bittersweet smell of scotch whiskey lingers in the air pleasantly and he's run out of excuses. While keeping his steady gaze locked with hers, he takes the bottle from her all too willing hands.
