*Bella*
I gaped after Edward as he sped down the street, the pile of books in my hands teetering as I tried to crane my neck to follow his car even as he disappeared around the corner.
Did he just ask me out?
No, he couldn’t have just asked me out.
That was insane.
Right?
There was nothing about me that could hold his interest for more than a few days at a time. There was absolutely no way that Edward Cullen had just asked me out to dinner… on a date.
Or maybe it wasn’t meant to be a date at all. Maybe I was blowing all of it out of proportion and he just wanted a friendly meal.
I could do friendly. I’d been doing it with him for the past year.
But why had he taken off so quickly before I could really explain why I had to say no?
Huffing, I shook my head and turned around, heading back into the library and setting the books on top of the counter.
As much as I wanted to think about it and mull over it for the rest of the day, I had a ton of books that needed to be checked in, about an hour of paperwork for all of the books I was currently dragging in and another hour or so after that to make sure that everything had actually been done right.
“Bella.”
I peered around one stack of books to see that Jessica Stanley – the bane of my existence – was sitting primly in the cushioned seat behind the front counter, her manicured fingernails poised over the ancient keyboard and her blood red lips pursed at me.
“Yes?” I asked sweetly.
I was her boss. I had to be nice. I had to pretend that the sound of her voice didn’t grate on my nerves each time she opened her mouth. I had to pretend to like her because the last thing this bookstore needed was some sort of lawsuit that her father was so intent on handing out to anyone that “wronged” his baby girl.
Her previous ex-boyfriends had all ended up in jail for at least one night after they’d broken up with her over some of the dumbest traffic violations anyone could ever come up with.
Her father had this town absolutely wired and connected to protect his precious manipulating little daughter and no one had been able to get away with anything when it came to her.
I had no desire to lose the bookstore that had been in my family’s possession for the better half of a decade because I gave her an attitude. She was not worth losing my livelihood over.
“I heard that Edward Cullen was here.”
I wanted to roll my eyes. Oh, the urge was so great that it took a hell of a lot of willpower to simply close them and take a deep breath through my nose before I could answer her.
This was not the first time I’d had to field off her questions about my neighbor. She’d been one of the first ones in town to find out that he’d moved in next door to me and I’d had to literally get down on my knees and beg her not to bother him.
I’d gotten to know him a little bit by the time she’d found out and knew that the last thing he’d needed was to have a certain Jessica Stanley sitting on his front lawn in the skimpiest outfit she could possibly wear in a sad, pathetic attempt to charm him.
She’d agreed to leave him alone as long as she could have a paid vacation once every year. In turn, I’d had to give up my own vacation time to accommodate her and regretted it each time she came back from said vacation with a perfect tan.
There weren’t any words to describe how badly I usually wanted to bash her face into her skull when she went on and on about how beautiful Cabo San Lucas was during the winter.
“Yeah,” I said slowly, gritting my teeth together as my hands tightened around the edge of the counter.
“I was thinking that a week from now would be a good time for my vacation.”
The smile she shot my way was deviously sweet and I had to grip the edge of the counter even tighter to keep from fulfilling the urge I suddenly had to leap across it and start strangling her.
“Sure, Jess,” I said through my teeth, forcing myself to relax my fingertips. “That sounds fine.”
She nodded, squaring her shoulders in a way that I knew well before she went back to typing in the book titles with her annoyingly loud and pointless fake nails.
Narrowing my eyes at her victorious, silent gloating, I turned on my heel and stalked back out into the freezing air, pulling my coat tightly around my body and grumbling curse words under my breath as I made it to my truck.
I’d been running the bookstore ever since my mother had gotten remarried and relocated to
I didn’t particularly like the winters, but the summers were more than enough to keep me right where I was.
I’d bought the cabin as soon as the bookstore was in my grasp as a congratulatory gift to me. I’d worked hard to keep the library just as it had been when my great grandparents had started it and with the money I was now bringing in, it just seemed like a good idea to buy a permanent home.
Jake had moved in and at that time, I hadn’t minded much. It made sense that he would; we’d been together for about a year at that time and the next step just logically seemed to be moving in together.
Now that he wanted to get all of his things out of there – and taking half of the things that we’d purchased together with him, no doubt – I regretted that decision.
He’d called even before I was out of bed that morning and had demanded that I make time to be there tonight so that we could sort through all of our belongings and finally get this part of our lives over and done with.
It stung that he referred to our relationship as just a simple ‘part of our lives’. Like I was just a phase that he’d been going through and now that he was on to better, greener pastures, he wanted to be completely rid of me.
The past three years meant nothing to him.
And while I was struggling to find that piece of me that actually wanted to grieve for him, I never actually thought of him as just a phase. He’d been such a huge part of my life for so long that hearing that he just wanted to get away from me stung more than I’d expected.
And while I knew that Jessica would be stealing my vacation time from me as soon as she found out that Edward was in town, I really hoped that she wouldn’t. I hadn’t been out of the state in more than a year and had really been hoping to get away for at least a few days this year. Even if that meant renting a hotel room out in Queensbury; at least it would be away from this town and the people in it for a few glorious days.
Sighing dejectedly, I grabbed the last stack of books from the floor of my truck before kicking the door shut and starting my way back to the bookstore.
This really hadn’t been my day at all.
~*~
With file folders stacked on the floor in my living room, papers scattered all around me and a raging headache working just behind my eyes, I listened as Jake and his friends rummaged around upstairs, packing up his half of our lives and doing his best to get the hell out of the house.
I’d attempted to help them but had only gotten annoyed when none of them had listened to me.
We’d argued about the little things that our parents had given us as a couple, about pots and pans that he’d never use no matter how much he said that he would, about the couch that I’d picked out but he’d paid for, and lastly, about the stupid entertainment center.
Needless to say, my television and
I could replace almost everything that he insisted he needed, so it wasn’t really that big of a deal to me.
I’d officially given up arguing with him about taking whatever he wanted a few hours ago. It was pointless and all it did was add to the stress the rest of the day had unloaded on my shoulders.
I was pretty sure that I’d even watched Embry and Quil taking pieces of my bed out through the garage about an hour ago, but didn’t have the energy to tell any of them that I’d been the one to pay for the damn iron monstrosity Jake had wanted so badly.
I had absolutely no idea where I was going to sleep tonight, but couldn’t really find the strength to care much more about it. I had too much work to get done and the only thing Jake was succeeding in was pissing me off in a very large way.
So I stayed in the living room, cross-legged on the floor as I leaned over papers and tried my best to ignore the banging and crashing coming from my upstairs master bedroom.
I’d even stopped cringing whenever I heard one of the guys cursing and screaming down an apology from the top of the stairs. I didn’t even really want to think about all the repairs I’d have to make when they were finally finished.
If I thought about it too much, I’d probably go up there and start trying to scratch their eyes out. With my short, stubby, bitten-down fingernails, no less.
It would not be a pretty sight and while I currently had no surface to sleep on tonight, I had no desire to sleep in a jail cell, either.
Two hours later when the words on the pages started to run together and all the crashing and banging had stopped echoing in my house, I looked up to see Jake standing awkwardly in the doorway of the living room.
“Finished?” I asked dryly, resting an elbow on my knees and rubbing my tired eyes.
“There’s still some stuff in the garage that I can’t fit right now. I’ll let you know when I’m coming back.”
“What? The bike won’t fit around the bed?” I sighed heavily and waved him off, genuinely not interested in anything that he was already saying. “Give me the key and get out.”
“It’s on the table.”
“Oh, you graciously left me the table, huh?” I looked up at him, rubbing my forehead and shaking my head. “How very kind of you.”
He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his broad chest. “I’ll call you when I have some free time.”
“What if I’m not available?” I spat back, staring up at him from underneath my eyelashes.
“Then we’ll figure it out when the time comes. Don’t make this harder than it really needs to be, Bella.”
“Don’t you dare patronize me, Jake.”
He rolled his eyes again and I huffed out a deep breath through my nose, curling my hands into fists and bunching them on my knees.
“Get out,” I said under my breath, breathing as evenly as possible as I stared down at the papers that I no longer intended to finish tonight. “I want you to leave.”
“No problem. Tell your boyfriend I said hello,” he snarled.
I snapped my head up to look at his retreating back and narrowed my eyes, grinding my teeth together.
He had absolutely no right to assume anything anymore. He’d given up that right the minute he declared that we were over.
He had no right to make assumptions about Edward. Even after spending all that time with him, Jake knew absolutely nothing about our neighbor.
Correction: my neighbor. Jake no longer had any claim on anything that concerned me… including this street and the people on it.
I heard the three vehicles in the driveway back out and waited impatiently to hear the engines drown out as they drove down the road.
I sat where I was for a moment more, tapping my fingertips against my forehead as I took deep breaths in an attempt to calm myself down.
It took a few more minutes to realize that not only was the house now completely silent, but almost completely empty as well. The living room that I loved and had spent ages decorating specifically to my liking was almost stripped bare. I had a recliner that my father had given me when I moved out on my own, my television,
Carefully setting the folder I’d held in my lap on the floor beside the rest of the paperwork I hadn’t gotten through, I lifted myself off the floor and slowly walked into the dining room and up the stairs.
Turning into my bedroom, I slumped against the door frame when I saw that I’d been right about Jake taking the bed. Where the king sized bed frame used to be was now just an empty space on the hardwood floors. My dresser was still there, but the empty space on the wall next to it clearly told me that he’d taken his as well. One of the bedside tables was missing, as well as a lamp that had been the match to the one that used to be on my side of the bed.
It was hard to have a side of the bed if I didn’t even have a bed any longer.
To add insult to injury, there were scuff marks on my perfect hardwood floors, a chunk of the wall that had had the headboard pressed against it was dented in and a very large portion of the closet doorframe was crooked.
Scoffing and running a hand through my hair, I shook my head before making my way back down the stairs and into the kitchen.
The scene that greeted me only made me take a few more deep breaths as I stepped over discarded pots, pans, towels and plastic containers on my way to the refrigerator.
My home resembled more of a successful robbery than my ex-boyfriend moving out.
And then my jaw nearly dropped to the floor when I opened the refrigerator door to find that I only had a can of coffee that I’d never drink and half a gallon of milk.
The anger I’d barely managed to tame immediately flared up again as I slammed the door, fisted my hands in my air and screamed as loudly as I could.
He took the food. The petty, selfish, arrogant, misinformed bastard that I’d claimed to love less than a week ago had quite literally taken everything he could get his hands on.
I wanted to kill him all over again.
Not only was my house practically empty and all the food gone from my refrigerator, I was also starving. I hadn’t realized it until I opened the damn refrigerator, but nonetheless I was still starving and lo and behold, I didn’t have any damn food.
Irate, I kicked the refrigerator and hopped my way into the dining room when I only succeeded in stubbing my toe to grab the phone. I grabbed the menu for the only local pizzeria in town that had decent pizza – Rickie’s – and dialed in the number, crossing my free arm over my chest as I waited for someone to pick up.
Walking into the living room, my gaze landed on the house across the street and I bit my bottom lip.
His kitchen light was on. He didn’t have any food – and it finally dawned on me that that was probably the only reason he’d asked me out to dinner – but he was probably wandering around in his kitchen, looking for something edible anyway.
Finally getting someone on the other end of the line, I quickly ordered two large cheese pizzas and a dozen barbeque chicken wings before hanging up and crossing my arms over my chest.
I was an idiot for thinking that he’d asked me out on a date. He just wanted to eat and he probably wanted me to go with him so that people wouldn’t approach him as quickly as they would if he were alone.
It was nothing more than that. There was safety in numbers and all he wanted to do was eat. No dates, no candle light dancing over his chiseled features as he sat across from me at a romantic restaurant, no whispered words over our main courses and definitely no goodnight kiss when the night came to a close.
Not a damn thing more than Edward wanting to actually eat.
Shaking my head and sighing heavily, I bent down and gathered all the files and papers from the floor, tapping them into place before picking them up and walking into the dining room to set them on the table.
I grabbed my keys and purse, slipping my boots on and grabbing my coat before I ran out of the house and quickly got into my cold truck, shivering as I stuck the key in the ignition and quickly backed out of my driveway.
I was on a mission. I wasn’t sure if my mission would be accepted at all, but it was worth a try. The worst that could happen was that I’d get a door slammed in my face and I’d have to return to the cabin that I used to love being in.
Back when it was an actual home instead of an empty shell of a past relationship ruined by jealousy and a whole hell of a lot of miscommunication.
Gently tapping my hands on the center of the steering wheel as I pulled in to Cumberland Farms, I parked and sighed heavily, digging my wallet out of my purse before jumping out of my truck and walking into the convenience store that I hated.
The local high school kids thought that this was their home away from home and never failed in making lewd comments when anyone walked by them as they stood outside, leaning against the brick and smoking cigarettes they couldn’t even buy themselves.
The clerks inside the store weren’t any better, either.
And if they weren’t the only ones in town that sold beer in twelve packs, I’d never step foot inside this place ever again.
I bypassed the high schoolers, keeping my head down as I yanked open the door and stepped inside the warm store.
“Bella!”
I cringed and slowly looked up to the counter, seeing Mike Newton standing behind it, licking his lips in a way he probably thought looked suggestive.
He looked like an ass.
“Hello, Mike,” I mumbled, quickly walking to the coolers in the back and grabbing the twelve pack of Heineken.
I slowly walked up to the counter, both wanting to get the whole thing over and done with and wanting to prolong having to deal with Mike staring at my breasts as he rang me out.
Like he did with every female that walked into the store and was dumb enough to say hello to him.
Like I did every damn time I walked in and he was working.
Inwardly groaning and biting the inside of my cheek, I set my beer on the counter as I reached it.
“Having a party, Bella?” Mike asked, smirking at me as he scanned the bar code on the side of the carton.
“Just a quiet night at home,” I sighed, fidgeting with my wallet as I stared intently at the small screen that had yet to display my total.
Could he go any slower? How long did it take for the scanner to capture the bar code?
I pulled my coat tighter around my chest when I caught his gaze wandering down that way and cleared my throat.
“Heard that you and Jake broke up,” he said casually, shrugging one shoulder as the total finally popped up on the display.
I wanted to ask him how he’d heard about it so quickly after it had happened, but caught myself just as the question was about to leave my tongue. In a town this small with as many nosy people in it as there was, it was inevitable that the end of my relationship would be front page news for at least another week.
“Yeah. I’m a lesbian,” I lied quickly, throwing a twenty dollar bill at him. “He didn’t like that too much.”
I watched with smug satisfaction as his jaw dropped, slowly taking the money from the spot on the counter where it had landed and punching it into the register.
“Really?”
I nodded, taking a deep breath and making myself meet his gaze. “I’m all for the ladies, Mike.”
“Oh,” he mumbled dejectedly as he counted back my change and handed it to me. “Well, have a nice night, Bella.”
I stuffed the change in my wallet and grabbed the beer, nodding and cheerfully waving at him as I quickly walked out of the store.
“You too, Mike!”
It should’ve bothered me that that would be around town in a matter of minutes, but it didn’t. It should’ve bothered me that Jake would probably hear it sometime tomorrow, but that didn’t bother me, either.
Until someone set him straight, Mike Newton would not be bothering me when I walked into Cumberland Farms anymore and that fact just managed to lift my spirits a small fraction.
Gleefully setting the beer in the passenger side of my truck, I backed out of my parking space and drove across the street to Rickie’s.
The one good thing about this town was that everything was in one little strip. There was a liquor store that carried only wine and hard liquor, the pizzeria, Sticks Pharmacy, Cumberland Farms, Stewart’s, Mama’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Shop and T.J.’s Deli all lining both sides of the street.
Jumping out of the truck with my wallet in hand once again, I ran into the ridiculously small pizza shop, paid for my food and walked back out with it five minutes later.
Moving the beer from the seat to the floor, I placed the hot food on the seat and threw my wallet back in my purse before backing out of the parking lot and pulling back onto the main road.
The nerves started to kick in as I pulled onto my street. My hands involuntarily started to drum against the steering wheel and I started gnawing on my bottom lip as I drove up over the small hill leading to our homes.
He could close the door in my face. He could not even answer the door when I knocked. There were a number of things that he could do and everything I imagined never turned out very well for me.
He was probably so tired of seeing me by now. I’d seen him once a day since he’d arrived when usually, I barely see him at all during his stay. I was probably the last person he wanted to see right now and as I pulled into my driveway, I noticed that his kitchen light was still on.
Maybe he left it on and he fell asleep. Maybe he wasn’t even awake right now. Just because it was barely seven at night didn’t mean that he hadn’t been exhausted and had fallen asleep without turning the lights out. He didn’t have a regular job like most of this town did; I couldn’t begin to imagine how little sleep he actually got while he was working.
I pulled into my driveway and stared at his house from my rear view mirror, my bottom lip still caught between my teeth as I continued to chew a layer of skin off of it.
The worst that could happen was that he wouldn’t answer the door. And if he didn’t answer the door, then I had at least three more days worth of food until I could get a chance to run to the grocery store.
Slowly getting out of the truck, I closed the door behind me and walked around to the other side to grab the food, beer and my purse in my hands all at once.
I eyed the distance between our houses and the lingering ice that was on both of our driveways before hitching my purse on my shoulder and balancing the food and beer in each hand.
I closed the door with my hip and slowly started the trek across the street, straining my eyes to look out for the ice that was dangerously lurking underneath my feet and waiting for the best time to make me slip and fall.
Maybe I should’ve written him a note and taped it to his door again. It was cowardly and pretty childish of me to do so, but it had seemed to work well in the past.
I leaped onto the porch, easily bypassing a patch of ice at the bottom of the stairs, proud of myself for not letting the ice attempt to kill me today and walked up to his front door, catching my bottom lip in between my teeth again.
It would be a miracle if I had a bottom lip left after tonight.
Taking a deep breath, I gently kicked the bottom of his door in lieu of knocking, straining to hear any movement inside as I shivered and waited impatiently out in the cold.
I kicked one more time when I failed to hear anything after a minute, pathetically hoping that he just didn’t hear it the first time.
But when another minute had passed and I still didn’t hear any movement behind the door, I sighed heavily and turned to walk back down the porch steps.
I eyed the ice glinting in the dim light of the overhead street lights and carefully stepped onto it, knowing that jumping over it again was signing my death certificate and almost immediately lost my footing to land squarely on my ass.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I moaned as the chicken wings and pizza went flying out of my hands.
The beer landed next to me, my hand still gripping the top, but I was pretty sure that I heard a few bottles break.
And I wanted to cry. I just wanted to put my head between my knees and sob my little heart out because this entire day had been nothing but one big disappointment.
Instead, when I felt the tears start filling my eyes, I used the top of the beer pack to push myself back to my feet. Sniffling, I picked up the pizza boxes that had merely skidded across his driveway. The chicken wings, however, hadn’t shared the same fate. The top of the white Styrofoam box had popped open and I could barely see that there were barbeque wings scattered all across the driveway.
Swiping at my cheeks as the tears I was trying so hard to get rid of spilled out, I carefully began kicking the ruined chicken wings into the road, sniffling pathetically as I did so.
God, I hoped that he was sleeping because if he walked out of his house and saw me like this, I’d never be able to look at him ever again.
Naturally, not even ten seconds later, I heard his door open behind me and barely bit back a sob as I quickly scooped up the half-full chicken wing box and held it tightly in my free hand.
I sure as hell hoped that whoever was running this chain of events I’d gotten myself into was amused.
“Bella?” he asked, his soft voice hanging in the air as I shuffled around his driveway with my head tilted as far away from him as possible.
And when I opened my mouth to try for some stupid joke that would dismiss my very odd behavior, nothing but a strangled sob made its way out.
I wanted to die.
Or at least find a very deep, very dark hole that I could hide in until he went back to
So I clapped one of my hands over my mouth and shook my head as I made my way over to the bottom of his stairs to get the beer.
“Bella, are you okay?”
And he was there. No warning; nothing until he was standing on the bottom step of his porch stairs, barefoot and without a coat as he grabbed the beer before I could.
“I’m fine,” I squeaked, sniffling loudly as I stared at his bare feet.
“Are you hurt?”
My pride was pretty well damaged and my ass kind of stung, but other than that, I was just peachy.
“No,” I squeaked again, shaking my head as I once again folded my bottom lip into my mouth.
Even his feet were attractive. Ugh, what was I thinking? He was my neighbor; my very famous, very attractive neighbor that had never looked at me as more than part of the couple that helped snow blow his driveway during the winter. Even thinking for one minute that I could register on his radar was complete lunacy.
“Bella.”
And then my chin was in his hand and his eyes were boring into mine as he forced me to look at him.
“You are not okay.”
“I was just…” I hiccupped and closed my eyes tightly, trying to brush his hand away. It didn’t work. “You’re hungry.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
He jerked my chin gently and I opened my eyes again, feeling even more humiliated that his motion caused a few more tears to trail down my cheeks.
“I just… I…”
Oh, God, it was never going to end, was it? I was stuttering and on the verge of sobbing and no matter how badly I wanted to say, “I was going to bring food over so that we could eat”, it wasn’t coming out at all.
“Breathe, Bella,” he said softly, setting the beer back on the ground to frame my face with his hands.
His thumbs brushed away the tears on my cheeks as he stared into my eyes and I felt myself calming down minutely.
The embarrassment, however, flared up in full force and I felt my face burning as he just continued to stand there, looking ten drastically different shades of perfect with the backlight from his porch light illuminating all of him and his beautiful green eyes still looking into my boring brown ones.
“What are you doing here?” he asked softly.
“I can leave.”
“I never said that I wanted you to leave. I just wanted to know what you were doing here… and why you were kicking chicken wings across the road.”
Why would the world make me suffer this embarrassment, but fail to open up and swallow me whole when I couldn’t deal with it anymore?
I’d have to move. There was no way that I could deal with seeing him when he visited without thinking about this exact moment and wanting to throw myself off a cliff.
“I haven’t eaten and I don’t have any food either,” I said, my voice sounding strangled and garbled. “So I figured that I’d go and get something so we could…”
I swallowed hard. This sounded exactly as dumb as I thought it did. What had I been thinking? Honestly?
He wanted peace and quiet and I hadn’t been able to give that to him since he showed up. Hell, it probably looked like I was doing exactly what he’d come here to escape from; setting up camp on his front lawn despite the temperature outside.
I was a shitty neighbor. I was a horrible friend.
“Nevermind,” I mumbled, feeling the tears building in the back of my throat again. “I’ll just… I have…”
“What kind of pizza?”
I blinked at him, completely ignoring the tear that traveled down my cheek because of it.
“Excuse me?” I mumbled, my voice monotone.
“What kind of pizza did you get?” he asked softly, a small smile curling on his lips as he wiped away my tears again.
“You really don’t…”
“If it’s cheese, I’m dragging you into this house no matter what you say.”
I nodded, finally giving in to the urge to lean my face against one of his palms as the small smile on his lips turned into a rather large grin that I wouldn’t mind seeing every day for the rest of my life.
“Then what are we standing out here for?” he laughed, moving his hands from my face to bend down and grab the beer again.
I missed the feel of his hand on my face almost as soon as it was gone and sighed a little as I followed him back up the steps and into his house.
I closed the door behind me and looked around the living room, finally realizing that I had never actually been in his house. He’d always been over at mine and I’d never made it past his front porch.
I recognized most of the furniture that had been dragged into his house when his parents had come to visit and envied him of his couch. And the small, elegant black metal and glass TV stand sitting on the opposite side of the room. And the recliner that I knew was only a year old as compared to the twenty-something year-old faded blue monstrosity I had in my own living room.
“Some of those might be broken,” I told him sheepishly as I followed him into the kitchen to set the pizza boxes and chicken wings on the stove top.
He slowly set them on the counter next to the sink, looking over at me with one of his eyebrows quirked up.
“Why?”
“They landed pretty hard when I fell,” I mumbled, hastily opening the top pizza box to find that the pizza was actually attached to the top of it.
Oh, just fucking perfect. I hadn’t noticed that the box might have been upside down before I’d picked it up, but it obviously had been. I really don’t know how I missed that or managed to turn it right side up without realizing it, but I guess crying and sniffling and trying to avoid my neighbor could’ve had a lot to do with that.
“That can’t be good.”
“I should just go,” I mumbled, snapping the pizza back into the box and covering my face with my hands.
“What? Why?”
“I’ve been having a very, very bad day and that,” I pointed at the pizza box, dropping my hands to my sides, “is not making things better.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I haven’t had the greatest day, either.” He ripped open the box of beer and grabbed two bottles, inspecting them both before handing one to me. “Tell me about it.”
“You don’t want to hear about it.”
“I wouldn’t have asked if I didn’t want to hear about it.” He twisted the top off of his own beer bottle before setting it aside and poking through the rest of the bottles to assess the damage. “Let it out, Bella.”
He didn’t want me to do that. I’d be nothing but a puddle of stuttered words and pathetic tears on his kitchen floor if I did and really, neither of us needed to deal with that right now.
“It really…”
“Bella.” He stopped poking around in the cardboard box on the counter and turned to face me, crossing his arms over his chest. “You brought me food. I’m absolutely starving. I have two shoulders and you’re free to use them whenever you’d like. Tell me why your day was so bad.”
“Only if you tell me about yours.”
“Deal… but you first.”
Sighing heavily, I twisted the top off of my beer and turned to throw the cap into the garbage next to the refrigerator before leaning back against the counter and watching as he went back to prodding around in the cardboard box of beer.
So I told him everything that had happened to me that day. From Jessica Stanley stealing my vacation time – conveniently leaving out the reason for it – to Jake coming in to destroy my bedroom and taking all of my decent furniture and food and ending with the mountain of paperwork that I had yet to get done.
He listened as if I was the most important thing in the world and I slowly felt all the tension and disappointment I’d had ten minutes earlier slipping away from me. I couldn’t remember why I’d been crying in his driveway – something that he thankfully didn’t mention as we stood there – and all of the day’s events felt as though they’d happened ages ago.
It had been a really long time since I’d felt that way. Jake had been there for me to talk to, sure, but he never actually listened to anything I had to say. He’d ask questions in the right places and make the appropriate noises as he nodded his head, but if I asked him about it the next day, he wouldn’t be able to remember any of it.
It was very nice to know that someone was actually listening to me and cared enough to even ask in the first place.
He’d picked out only two bottles that had small hairline cracks in them and stuck the rest of the box in his remarkably empty refrigerator before attacking the pizza boxes and heaping the slices on a very expensive white plate rimmed in gold. He ate an entire slice as I picked my pieces off of the top of the box and followed him into the living room, both of us collapsing onto the couch.
“What happened to you?” I asked, leaning my head back against the couch as I watched him devour two more pieces of pizza in about a minute.
I’d gotten the short version when I saw him earlier in the day, but I was pretty sure that there was a hell of a lot more to it. He’d distracted me too easily by trying to help me with the books I’d picked up from the old Warrensburg library that was closing and I hadn’t gotten a chance to pry.
“Tried to go shopping,” he mumbled around a mouthful. “And I was almost out of there before the woman in front of me noticed that I wasn’t just a regular Joe and started screaming at the top of her lungs.”
He rolled his eyes and licked his fingers of the grease that lingered there.
I found myself captivated by his tongue and lips as they wrapped around each fingertip and had to force myself to look into his eyes as he began talking again.
“Didn’t take long for the rest of the damn store to realize that it wasn’t just a spider she was freaking out about. I ran out of there as fast as I could and haven’t left the house since I got here.”
“That really sucks.” I tipped my head back as I took a sip off of my beer bottle. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged one shoulder, biting off the end of another slice of pizza before looking up at me again.
“I just didn’t expect it here, you know? It’s never happened before and I guess I just thought that it would continue on that way.” He rolled his eyes then, shaking his head. “It was stupid of me to think it wouldn’t.”
“It wasn’t stupid. You come here to get away and leave all of that behind for a few days. You deserve some time to yourself and it was very rude of them to take that away from you.”
He stared at me, slowly licking a small spot of pizza sauce off the corner of his mouth – rendering me completely speechless and partially breathless for a second – before a smile started to take over.
“You are the first normal person that has ever seen it that way.”
I felt my face starting to heat up and quickly picked up the last piece of pizza on my plate, hastily shoving the end of it into my mouth and avoiding his gaze.
“It’s true,” I mumbled, reaching down to pick at the fabric of my jeans. “I mean, you’re probably even tired of me bothering you.”
“You never bother me, Bella. I enjoy your company.”
If I thought my face was red before, I was pretty damn positive that it was absolutely nothing compared to what it was now.
“You wanted a break from everything,” I said quietly, setting the piece of pizza back on my plate.
“I’ve still got that. This time, I’ve had your company and it’s made my stay just that much better. I enjoy spending time with you, Bella,” he said again, his voice low and soft.
I looked up at him and swallowed hard, meeting his intense stare.
“I enjoy spending time with you, too,” I whispered, clearing my throat and sitting up straight when I realized that we’d begun leaning in to each other.
Oh, Christ, what was I doing? Leaning into him and whispering to him? That was a fantasy that would never bring itself to fruition, not something that would actually happen.
“I, uhm,” I cleared my throat again, watching as he shifted on the other end of the couch. “I need to go grocery shopping, too so… did you want to… uhm,” I laughed nervously, “do that together? Maybe?”
He just stared at me, his beyond perfect jaw moving as he continued to chew on the pizza he kept eating as I rambled.
I really needed to stop doing that.
I really needed to stop barging in on him and acting like a crazy person when I wanted to spend time with him.
Which was not going to be easy by any means.
“You could, uhm… wear a hat or something to hide? You know, from the people that can’t control themselves?”
Why wasn’t he saying anything?
“Or you could,” I swallowed hard, looking down at my leg and setting the half eaten slice of pizza I no longer wanted in between us on the couch, “give me a list and I could go for you? I mean, you’re gonna need something to eat when I’m not home.”
I wanted to smack myself. Like he was relying on me to feed him… right. I mentally scoffed. I was not that important in his life and I shouldn’t let myself think that I was.
I was just as disposable as the next girl. I just happened to live next door to him; I was convenient and easy.
My face flushed again at that thought and I really did cover my face with one of my hands without thinking about my actions beforehand.
I wasn’t easy. I was… accessible. Yes, that was a better word. Accessible.
“What are you thinking about?”
Oh, great, the most basic form of rejection; avoid the question altogether and ask something else.
“Nothing,” I sighed heavily, shaking my head and closing my eyes tightly. “It’s nothing.”
“What time do you get out of work tomorrow?” he asked casually.
“Six, but I’m going out with some friends afterwards.”
I picked at my jeans again, biting my bottom lip as I thought about the club Angela and Rosalie were going to drag me to.
Friday nights were our girls’ night out and the only time we ever cancelled them was if the weather was bad. This Friday was merely going to be colder than hell, but at least there would be no snow.
This week we were headed to
If anything, I’d have a few drinks and be able to get this horrible conversation and rejection out of my head until I came home to deal with it all when I walked into my almost empty home.
“What about Saturday?”
“I work until four,” I sighed, picking at a wayward string I’d managed to find on my jeans.
“Did you want to go then?”
My head snapped up and I couldn’t stop the stupid wide grin that immediately spread across my face.
He hadn’t rejected me after all.
My heart soared as I sat up straighter and nodded, reaching for my abandoned slice of pizza to bring it back into my lap.
“Yeah, okay.”
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