AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Oh, hey,” she said with the faintest smile on her face.
“Hey,” I replied with a nod, trying to convince myself that just being a couple of metres from her made me feel good enough.
“I didn’t think you were coming,” she said. “Thought you had better things to do tonight?”
I gave her a shrug and decided not to be too liberal with the truth. “I found myself here instead.”
She nodded and went back to trying to skip her stone. But it just plopped in the water, and she grumbled in frustration accompanied by a little stomp of her foot.
I was never going to like words like ‘cute’ but she was cute. Everything about her made me want to smile. I ran my hand through my hair and tried to calm down.
“It’s fine, Barlow. It just takes practise.”
She sighed. “Yeah, it’s not the stones. I mean, it’s not helping. But…”
She was feeling a little funky, too.
“You want to talk about it?” I asked.
“There really isn’t anything to talk about. I just feel shit,” she explained as she shook her head.
I understood that more than I wanted to. “Yeah, fair enough. Pity party for two, yeah?”
She laughed, but I didn’t think there was any humour in it.
“What?” I asked.
She bit her lip, then forged ahead. “I just never imagined, of all the people in my life, I could feel the most normal around you.”
There was a weird feeling in my chest and I wasn’t really sure how to take that. Most people would love hearing that. I was…
“I feel like that’s supposed to be a compliment…?”
Her smile fair blew me away. “It just never crossed my mind that I’d come here instead of all the parties we’d been invited to or instead of sitting in my room with my movies because just sitting with you, even saying nothing, I feel less alone than I do anywhere else at the moment. I guess I’m trying to say thank you.”
Part of me wanted to tell her she didn’t have to thank me for that. She’d just put into words exactly how she made me feel. And I was the one everyone wrote off. If anyone had any reason to be thankful, it was me. But I couldn’t tell her that. Besides, she had people in her life that should have been there for her instead of me. A certain person in particular who, if he was right for her, should have known she needed him.
“For what? I haven’t done anything a decent human being shouldn’t already be doing.”
“A, you’re talking about Mason now and that’s hardly fair. And B, you’re not supposed to be a decent human being, remember?”
“Oh yeah,” I chuckled. “I’d almost forgotten.”
As she tried skipping another stone, she laughed…until it failed again, and she sighed in annoyance.
I was moving towards her before I knew what I was doing.
“Come here,” I said.
I took another step to stand behind her. One hand went to her waist and the other took her wrist softly. She leant back into me and, Jesus, but it was a test of my self-control.
She smelled amazing. She was amazing. I wanted nothing more than to turn her around and see what all this talk about sex and babies really meant. But, holy shit, I couldn’t do that to her.
Even me knowing I was going to behave myself didn’t stop the sizzle between us.
There was tension. I felt tension. Prime sexual tension. But it felt…totally normal. Like this energy buzzing between us was fine. Like there was nothing wrong with it. That in itself felt wrong, but I couldn’t bring myself to do more than just enjoy it in the moment.
I had the girl of my dreams in my arms and, while nothing could – or would – ever come of it, I could rest easy knowing what it felt like.
