AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Food?” The idiotic question makes me cringe, and the movement sends a fresh wave of pain through my nose. “Ah!”
The furrow is back. “Yes, food. That’s what people eat. Come on.”
I lean even farther back, my shoulders hitting the edge of the chair. “No, that’s okay. You don’t need to do that.”
He’s right there, hands still resting on my thighs, trapping me with his concern. An unfamiliar panic flutters in my belly, low and hot, and everything I’ve been struggling to hold slips from my fingers to the floor.
Julian snags my coat off the floor and pushes to his feet in one smooth motion. “I’ve been responsible for your face being busted up twice now. Let me at least buy you lunch.” He holds out my coat, and I take it before he bends down to pick up my phone and the ice pack. “Where were you headed?”
“Two Birds.”
“So you’re done boycotting them, huh?”
Julian’s smirk at my confession has the panic in my stomach moving decidedly south. Wordlessly, I follow him out the door, shrugging my coat on and flipping my hood up against the rain. It’s only when we’re a few feet from the door that I realize that Julian already had his leather jacket on.
“Were you on your way out too?” I crane my head to peer up at him, the edge of my hood obscuring half my view.
Water beads in his hair, the ends sticking out from his bun dark with the moisture. The cranky part of my brain thinks he looks like a wet dog, but the not-cranky part of me can’t help comparing him to Ryan Gosling in The Notebook. Which makes me hate myself a little because I despise that movie. I don’t hate Ryan Gosling, though, who does? And I definitely don’t hate looking at Julian.
Dammit. I have to stop that.
Julian ducks down to make eye contact with me, a grin on his face. “I was. You know you ran into me, right?”
“I did? I thought I ran into Tina?” Heat creeps up my ears despite the chilly air.
Julian laughs and pulls open the door to the coffee shop. “You did. You’re not usually a face-in-the-phone kind of person.” We shake the water off our coats and hang them on a set of hooks by the door. “What was so interesting?”
“Interesting?” For fuck’s sake, I sound like an idiot. “Just an invitation, nothing that exciting.”
He steps in line and I follow, sliding next to him because I can’t see the menu board from behind his broad shoulders. “An invitation? Why would that make you jumpy?”
“I’m not jumpy.”
His large hand grasps both of mine, stopping them from twisting the edge of my sweater between them. “Your nervous tick begs to differ.”
Thankfully, the person ahead of us finishes their order and saves me from having to answer Julian. I place my order, then scurry away to find a table. Julian follows a few minutes later, pulling out a chair and settling before he speaks.
“It didn’t happen to be the invitation to the MailboxM.D. launch party?”
I shrug. “Why would I be nervous about that? It’s just a work party.” I can’t meet his eyes as the lie pops out. Instead, I keep my gaze on the table, his callused knuckles just in my peripheral vision. A vine with small purple forget-me-not flowers on it snakes out from beneath the cuff of his sleeve. It’s so delicate and feminine, I can’t stop looking at it.
I barely glimpsed the tattoos covering his chest before he zipped up his jacket, covering them at the party. There were so many, I couldn’t figure out the pattern in the moment.
His fingers flex, as if he’s stopping himself from making a fist. “Because parties mean dates. And last time you came to a Mailbox party without a date, we both know what happened.”
His words trigger something deep in my being, and I go still.
My focus narrows down to the wood grain of the table, following the lines up and down as his words ring in my ears. The panic that had uncurled in my gut as I pushed the thought to the back of my mind comes roaring back, holding me hostage once again. My eyes track back and forth across the table, following line after line.
Scenario after scenario of what could happen at the party races through my mind, too fast to articulate, too vague to be anything other than an ocean of fear. I’m drowning in the possibilities of how many ways I could be hurt, trapped, forgotten, or even worse, in the spotlight. Faceless people stare at me in each scenario, whispering knowingly to each other or looking through me while I beg and plead for someone to see me, help me.
The worst part is each scenario is a complete figment of my imagination, but knowing that doesn’t stop my body from locking up.
I need to answer him. Until the holiday party, I had been doing such a good job of keeping my anxiety under control. But it’s been getting worse and worse ever since that night. I don’t think anyone at work suspects, but Julian is annoyingly observant. I’m sure he’s noticed.
So much for trying to get things back to normal. But my throat is frozen, my tongue swollen and heavy in my mouth. I’m intensely aware of every molecule of air passing through my nose and into my lungs. It’s cold, the opposite of my burning skin. The clinking of spoons in mugs, voices talking, and shoes squeaking against the floor penetrate my thoughts, interrupting each half-formed excuse I create. I feel myself disappearing into the ambient noise of the coffee shop—my thoughts running away and overwhelmed by the sensations pummeling me.
“Frankie?” Julian’s voice cuts across the other noise. I shake my head, my throat too stuck, my mind pinging in too many directions to articulate anything else. Of all the times to have my brain betray me like this.
