The House of Eve (30)

The name of endearment and the concern in his eyes made her feel foolish, and her determination to walk away from him dissolved.

“Nothing.” She lowered her chin.

“Something is definitely wrong. Let me take you home.” He tucked her under his arm and led her to the car.

Without asking for permission, William took her back to his apartment. They had spent afternoons there in between Eleanor’s work shifts and curfew every weekend since they had met. William had a roommate, but she had only met him once. He unlocked the apartment door and then reached for her coat.

“Why don’t you have a seat, baby. I’ll make you some tea.”

William had a bevy of Ebony and Life magazines on the coffee table, and she flipped through one of the Ebony magazines without really looking at the pages. A few minutes later, William returned with a bamboo tray and a warm mug of peppermint tea with cream and sugar. He had so much class.

“So, you ready to tell me why you were ignoring me just now?” William reached down for her leg and gently dragged her foot into his lap. While she blew on her mug, he started to massage the ball of her foot through her nylons, hitting all the pressure points. She suppressed a moan.

“Babe?” He gazed at her. “What’s up?” His brows were knitted in concern, his look so loving that Eleanor nearly quashed the whole thing. But she needed to know. She looked around the spacious apartment, taking in all the well-appointed furniture that could have been featured in the magazine she was holding.

“Did your mother decorate this place for you?”

“How’d you guess?”

“I see the resemblance in taste from the house you grew up in. So unlike mine.” She said those last three words quietly.

“Well, if I give my mother an inch.” He gestured at the artwork on the wall.

Eleanor looked down into her mug searching for courage. “Listen, I have enjoyed these past few months with you more than words can say. But folks like you don’t want to see us together.”

“Folks like me?”

She nodded. “With means. Living high off the hog, as my mother would say. I don’t come from any of this.” She gripped her mug tighter. “I grew up in a shotgun house. Do you even know what that is?”

He shook his head.

“It means that when you open the front door you can see clear through to the kitchen. All in one shot. My daddy worked my whole life at Ridge Tool Company. Biggest factory around. When he made it to operator three, he sat my mother down from her job as a school lunch lady. But she didn’t sit long.”

William’s fingers stopped moving.

“She got in her mind that I was going to college, so she turned her love of baking into a business. Would be up all night mixing and stirring, and then out all day dropping off deliveries. And that’s how I come to be here, at Howard. I don’t have a fancy last name that can open doors for me. My mama’s cakes and my daddy’s factory work is what got me in the door. And a lot of studying and ingenuity on my part.”

“I’m so glad you shared that real part of yourself with me. It means a lot.”

“Well, I’m telling you all of this because I think Greta would be a better fit for you.”

He snorted. “Greta? Where did that come from?”

“She cornered me at your parents’ house last month, telling me to leave you alone. That you weren’t my kind.”

His brows crinkled. “Greta’s parents and my parents have been shoving us together since second grade.”

“And?”

“And nothing. There’s no chemistry.” He switched out her left foot for her right one. “I see her more like a cousin.”

“Kissing cousins?”

“Where is all this coming from?”

Something cautioned Eleanor against telling William about overhearing the mothers’ conversation at the store.

“It’s just, if you were meant to be with someone else, you know, the girls you grew up with…” Her voice trailed off. She couldn’t bring herself to finish with the rich, fair-skinned, and connected ones.

William paused. “Baby, I’m not caught up in all that class and colorism bullshit. It doesn’t matter to me where you come from. I just want to spend time with you.”

Eleanor bit her lip to contain the swell of solace she felt hearing that. But she still wasn’t sure what to believe.

“Elly, look at me.”

After a moment, she looked up from her mug and joined eyes with him.

“My family has their way of doing things, but I’ve never been one to get in line. I love you, and I want us to be together.” His fingers moved from the heel of her foot and rolled her ankle. It was the first time he had ever said those words and she shivered with relief.

“Unless you feel different.”

“I don’t, I feel the same way about you. Just not trying to get my heart broken.” Her voice was husky.

“Never.” He kneaded her calf, made his way up to her kneecap, and then he was kissing her neck, her cheek, her chin. Finally, he found her mouth, with a hunger that she felt pulsate all the way down to the tips of her toes.

This was where she was supposed to push him away, but after enduring Rose Pride and Greta trying to tear them apart, she wanted nothing more than to connect with him. The rage that Eleanor had felt earlier in her chest morphed into a longing in the pit of her belly.