Under Control.

chapter seven.

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They were slower to get going than Nora would have liked, with Julian taking his time to pack Fab's work into the trunk of his car with surprising care.

And even though there was still a little part of her that was tempted just to hail one of the very many cabs that had passed them by while she had been loitering around Julian's car and waiting, Nora couldn't help but be stirred by the simple fact that he cared so much, or, that he'd bothered to offer to drive her in the first place.

So it was for those reasons, plus one or two more that she was still doing a determined job of ignoring, that Nora stood patiently by and waited while Julian finished up his smoke — the very one that he'd plucked from behind her ear with a coy grin the very second they'd made it out of the building and on onto the street — before hopping into the car through the door he held open for her once he was done.

'It's fuckin' hot,' Julian mumbled into the soupy air once they were finally on the road.

It was a fact that went without saying, and so, for a moment, Nora wondered if he was talking to himself and to not her. Until, that is, he caught her eye.

'Tell me about it,' Nora sighed back at him once she realised he was waiting for a response, offering up the best she could muster toward a conversation after the day she'd had thus far, and in spite of the swirling mass of confusion that was still muddling her head.

They weren't good at this, really — either of them, at small talk. Nora figured it was mostly because they were both bad at it individually, and so putting them together and expecting it to work was always going to go down like a lead balloon. But at the same time, there was something more to it than just that — something that Nora wasn't willing to face head on, just yet.

For his part, Julian was mostly distracted by how much this moment in the car was reminding him of the first moment like it he and Nora had shared. It had been months now since that party — since the olive branch he'd offered to her that night out on the street. He'd only known her for a clutch of days and weeks, but somehow, it felt like longer — like always. And there was something inexplicable about the way that Nora was sitting beside him here and now in this steamy car, with her eyes barely open, her chest rising and falling slowly, slowly, keeping a steady beat, that was making his mind drift back to that night.

It was all of that, and the way the breeze through the open window was whispering over her before it made its way to him, smelling like sandalwood and citrus. It was the way the hem of her dress had slipped up her thighs, letting him see more of her than he ever had done before, and, it was the way she looked at him, all soft and dazed, when he brushed her knee by accident as he was trying clumsily to change gears.

It was like being stunned, seeing the gentle look on Nora's face, and feeling the dewy warmth of her soft skin against his own calloused fingertips. And everything together made it that much harder for Julian to keep ignoring how being around her made him feel.

But, by the time Julian had managed to wrestle his cascade of half-baked wonderings into being something like rational, they were already back at the gallery uptown, and the moment — whatever it was — had passed.

As Julian peeled into place, setting the car into the nearest tow-away zone and almost colliding with the curb in the meantime, he brought them both and the moment, too, to a halting stop.

Back in the stillness that had proved itself so dangerous between them, Nora cast a wary glance over at the boy sitting beside her.

Julian was staring straight ahead out the window and trying, it seemed to Nora, to avoid not only her but as well whatever it was that had just transpired in the sticky heat of his car. So, taking his silence for an answer to a question she didn't dare ask, Nora decided to leave him to it, and unbuckled her her seatbelt quickly before slipping away and making her way to the trunk.