A few heavy sighs, that constant stare at the side of my face and I had to fight the smirk that made my top lip twitch. Then she actually snorted.
"I can hear you pacing, Nash. Back and forth, up and down all night."
"How you know it's me pacing?" One brief glance down at her and I let the smirk pull up my lip. "There's other back and forth, up and down things I could be doing."
"That's not … " Her cheeks went pink and my smirk became a full-fledged smile. "Oh … you aren't … "
"I've been known to do a few back and forth, up and down things … "
"That's not. Well … I mean, I don't think..."
I laughed then. Couldn't be helped. Those round, sweet cheeks were completely red after that and I heard her low curse as the elevator doors opened and I headed for my door.
"You need your rest, Nash. I know you do," she called after me. In the reflection of the wall of windows to my right, I spotted her leaning out of the elevator, that mop of curly hair falling into her face.
"Night, Willow."
"I can help you, you know … "
The last sound I heard was her yelp as the elevator alert sounded for keeping the doors open too long. Then, there was quiet. At least for a little while.
Two hours later, Left for Dead and three games of Call of Duty still hadn't made me tired. Duncan had sent two messages while I was in the shower, then another one as I threw together two chicken Cesar wraps. I didn't respond to any of them. The man never slept, was always on the clock, reason enough for the two divorces he had before he'd hit forty.
I probably should have called him. I thought about it, thought about updating him on the new projections my assistant Daisy had sent from the contractors beta testing of our software. My plan was to revolutionize data security by perfecting the social engineering tech that kept banks and financial institutions from being hacked. The software had been free sourced for decades, but mine piggybacked on the hacker's ISP, reverse attacking them with a nasty virus I'd invented. Duncan had plans to go wide with our company and it made him nervous that I didn't worry about it as much as he did. But then, worrying was his job. Mine was the product, period,
But later, as I lay in my bed trying to relax, Coltrane's sax soaking into my ears, not even my annoyance with Duncan could keep my thoughts from straying to Willow. Hell, I even ended up thinking that a tunnel visioned asshole like him would have been smitten by Willow and her hippie vibe, if he ever had a reason to meet her. Everyone was smitten by her, and damn, but I had to admit it bothered me, which pissed me off even more. Four hours later, I was still awake, completely bored out of my mind. From my bedside table, the Ambien bottle seemed to stare at me, the blue and pink font a taunt, promising peace and serenity. All you had to do was pop that small blue pill into your mouth. One small pill would squash the insomnia. But only for one night. The insomnia would come back the next night and the next, I knew that. To get rid of it, I'd have to take those little blue pills every night, probably for the rest of my life. That cost was way too high, especially factoring in the side effects: the wild pounding of my heart and the fever that came out of nowhere, the listlessness, the empty, bottomless feeling that left me with zero desire to feel anything at all. The last time I had tried that mess, it took me a week to claw my way back. No, Ambien had to be a one-time-only, last resort. I wasn't that far gone, not yet.
For a second, thoughts of tapping on Willow's door popped into my head, but I ignored them as quickly as they came. She couldn't help, no matter how much she believed she could.
Instead I got out of my bed, picking up the tennis ball from the side table in the living room, bouncing it to the ground as I walked to the stereo. If Willow could play her monk chants at ungodly decibels, then she'd have to be okay with a little Coltrane coming from my surround sound. Headphones were fine usually, but sometimes you needed the music to fill the world.
Two long, drawn out notes rattled my speakers and I swear I felt that go deep, to my gut, inside me as I kept my focus on the wall and returning the tennis ball to its surface again and again. That sax went on and on, leveling the faint crackle and pop that came from the speakers-there was a hint of breath in that white noise, something you wouldn't notice if you only listened a couple of times. But I was a Coltrane disciple. I knew each breath as they came, the cleft of the crackle and the pause just before the long tones, moving between B, A, and G, a million other combinations came from that horn. I knew the direction of each chord and the steady beat of the bass as it thumped and rattled right alongside that slow, smooth sax. The song moved forward, the next started up and I zoned out, not even realizing how each thunck of the tennis ball against the wall was timed perfectly with the beat of the music. That is, until the rumble of a knock rattled my front door.