Page 44 of Forever Flustered

“I’ll still be here,” she murmured, swallowing against the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her. “I will still be here and be your friend. I always will be…” They stared at each other, both of their eyes shining with emotion, and she was pretty sure that they both knew they’d come to a fork in the road.

“Maureen…”

“Shh, Melon-head,” she chuckled tearfully and saw his precious smile before it faded. “You’re still here, and we still have time to get to know each other. I don’t want to start fretting about ‘goodbyes’ when you’ve got a couple of days left, you know?”

“You’re too good for me,” he whispered, his eyes dropping to her lips.

“I could be perfect for you,” she countered softly, tracing the shell of his ear and marveling at him in wonder. He was so beautiful inside and out – and if he left tomorrow, she would never forget him as long as she lived. “If you decided to let me…”

“You want it all…” His voice was low, hushed, questioning, but it felt like it was more of a reminder to himself - not actually waiting for an answer.

“Don’t we both deserve it?”

“You do,” he agreed, his fingers brushing against her cheek like he was trying to memorize what her skin felt like before he left.

“You do too – you just need to want it bad enough.”

His eyes met hers, stormy and broken, but he didn’t say a word. Eli couldn’t, and she knew it. If he agreed with her statement, then he was being pushed into a position that he wasn’t ready to be in – cornered. If he denied it, then it was denying what he felt for her… and he wasn’t ready to do that either.

Arching forward slightly as he leaned down, she murmured against his lips an acceptance of sorts, understanding the lack of commitment. His breath met hers, shaky and emotional, as if he was on the edge of some chasm. She could almost see it in her mind, buffeted by the elements and pulled, holding fast to all he once knew and fighting helplessly against everything tugging him into the unknown.

“It’s okay,” she promised against his lips, hers caressing his almost in a tease as he held himself tautly, fighting it, fighting this. Gosh, he was so stubborn, and his nickname of ‘Melonhead’ was so darn fitting sometimes. His phone dinged once more between them, as his eyes met hers… and she saw the moment he broke.

He drew in a ragged breath - and then kissed her. His eyes glazed over just before they closed, and his lips claimed hers in a way that no other man had. Oh, she’d been kissed before, but this was like a comet across the sky, straight into her soul. His mouth opened, sliding against hers, and she was here for it as their arms curled around each other in an embrace that she could have only imagined or fantasized about. He was lifting her off the couch, closer to him, the phone completely forgotten as it fell to the carpet with a hollow thud. Her fingers were in his short hair, holding him close, as she tasted him, knowing that this could be the only time that he gave in to these feelings building between them. He was such a stick in the mud. She both loved that about him and hated it with equal amounts of passion – but wouldn’t change a thing either.

As the phone rang from the floor, their kiss ended, but neither moved away. Eli lay there over her, perched and waiting as he drew in his breath like a man who’d run a mile, his eyes were a hurricane of awareness and comprehension of a moment they couldn’t come back from… and she was like the shore, waiting to see how deep the tide would be this time around once he had a chance to think about things.

That’s the biggest problem – he’s a planner, a thinker, a doer… and his thoughts, his commitments, his ideas of how things should be keep him from being free – and she couldn’t blame him. That was steady. That was safe. That was control in a world full of chaos, and everyone needed something safe to hang onto. His eyes searched hers; she could see the mix of emotions.

“Don’t,” she begged softly, cradling his beloved face. “Whatever is going on in that head of yours, don’t let it steal your joy right now.”

He hesitated – and she had him.

“It was a kiss, an expression of emotions, of how we feel at this very moment, so don’t let your thoughts of tomorrow diminish any of it today… please, for me,” she murmured softly, holding his eyes. “I need this for a moment – and I’m asking you to give me these few precious seconds, so I can keep them close.”

“All right,” he whispered softly, brushing back her hair from her cheek as he drank her in. “This is ours.”

Leaning up, she kissed him tenderly once more as they ignored the cell phone that began ringing once more on the floor beside them.

CHAPTER 15

MAUREEN

Sometimes Eli got the weirdest thoughts in his head, like a bear trap that would snap shut, clamping down tightly, because that was how it was designed to operate. While she had a relaxing afternoon in her mind, spending time just lounging around and talking, he had a different idea. They went to the hardware store, and then he spent a few hours replacing the light fixture on the front of her house with a floodlight, complete with a motion detector. He also replaced the back porch light, installed one of those Ring doorbell systems, and then decided to tackle reattaching a piece of trim on the window that he saw was ‘not quite seated’ in his opinion. While it was nice to have so much unexpected help fixing up a few things – it was also terribly frustrating.

Distinctly unromantic too.

Maureen knew he was doing this on purpose, distancing himself for a reason. While she understood, it also hurt because she felt like in those moments that she was losing him to whatever thoughts he had in his mind. Oh, she wished sometimes that she could crawl around in there, pick at a few spots, rearrange things, or simply pluck out the offenders – but then again, it wouldn’t be Eli.

After all of that, they were going to Flyboys tonight – and wouldn’t be alone again. Yep, while this was a setup by the team to get them together, it was also backfiring spectacularly in her face. The good news was that whatever Mallory had done, she had single-handedly driven more customers to her. She had appointments scheduled for each day next week, which was a nice change. Bless him, Eli just listened to her take the calls, taking everything in as he looked around, watching her work.

“Where are your parents?” she asked point-blank, looking up at him from where he was standing in the distance, looking at a painting she’d bought at a yard sale because it had mermaids swimming in the ocean. That was her ‘thing’ – mermaids, unicorns, flowers, and those paintings with knights and ladies from long ago. She loved the idea of romance, of love, of destiny… even if she was skeptical sometimes.

“Why?”

“Because friends help other friends,” she replied evenly, tempted to throw her pen at him. “If you had a problem and needed help, I could get there much faster than you could.”

“I would never ask that of you.”