"Hey, that's my line!" I winked.
He frowned. "I've never spent much time around anyone who eats food."
"Oh. Um. I could show you how, if you wanted... " It was easier to say in the darkness, knowing as I spoke how my voice would betray me, my hopeless heroin-like addiction to him.
"Can't I come in?" he asked.
"Would you like to?" I couldn't picture it, this godlike creature sitting in my father's shabby kitchen chair, maybe speaking to my shabby father. Would his contact be like Midas' touch? Would the chair become attractive, my father handsome? Would I?
"Yes, if it's all right." I heard the door close quietly, and almost simultaneously he was outside my door, opening it for me to get out of.
"Very human," I complimented him.
"I believe it's called etiquette, Bella."
"Whatever!" I giggled. He walked beside me in the night, so quietly I had to peek at him constantly to be sure he was still there and that I hadn't imagined the last six weeks. In the darkness he looked much more normal. Still pale, still dreamy in his beauty, but no longer the fantastic sparkling animal of our sunlit afternoon in the meadow.
He reached the door ahead of me and opened it. I paused halfway through the frame.
"The door was unlocked?"
"No, I used the key from under the eave."
I stepped inside, flicked on the porch light, and turned to look at him with both of my eyebrows raised. I was sure I'd never used that key in front of him.
"I was curious about you."
"You spied on me?" But somehow I couldn't infuse my voice with the proper outrage. Nobody had ever spied on me before <3.

293

Chapter 14

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