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“Cool. You need anything before I head out?” I offer.
“Nah, I’m good, thanks,” he flashes me a small smile, but this time, it seems genuine, kindling a spark of hope.
Maybe things are weird for now, but maybe they’ll get better with a little time. “Okay. Well, I’m out,” I say, grabbing my keys off the hook by the door.
I hesitate for a moment before I leave. “You know, they just started a new season of Weekend Genesis,” I tell him, referencing a show we’re both into, “Maybe if you’re not doing anything this weekend, we could get caught up.”
I glance at him over my shoulder. He nods. “Yeah, maybe we could.”
That tiny spark blooms into an ember, and I feel a little lighter as I bid him goodbye and leave. And as I leave my apartment in the rearview and get closer to picking up Lena, my worries are quickly forgotten and the excitement creeps back in.
Chapter Two
Lena
I glance in the mirror and fuss with a single stray hair. I wonder again if maybe the lipstick I’m wearing is too much, or if I look too pale and need more blush.
I shouldn’t be so nervous, it’s not like this is my first date with Elliot. He knows what I look like by now, and since he’s the one that approached me, I guess he must like what he sees. Especially considering that the night he met me, I hadn’t exactly put a ton of effort in.
I’d been in jeans and a t-shirt, my hair in a simple ponytail and nothing on my face but a little mascara and a tinted lip balm. And he’d come up to tell me how amazing my voice is and how beautiful I am.
So maybe I’m trying to make up for it a little and dazzle him a bit now. But even so, I’m nervous.
I haven’t seriously dated a guy in six years. I’ve been on a handful of dates, but I just haven’t really connected with anyone until Elliot. Admittedly, it’s not easy to connect with someone with the emotional walls I’ve got up, but with what I’ve been through, it’s hard to let those down.
It’s hard to trust anyone when the man you think you’re going to spend the rest of your life with vanishes when you need him the most.
He was my twin brother Owen’s best friend. I’d known him since the three of us were ten years old, but back then he was gross and infested with cooties like the rest of the boys.
But things changed when we were fifteen, suddenly he wasn’t just Owen’s annoying friend anymore, he was…Shaun. Suddenly he wasn’t irritating, he was funny and thoughtful and sweet, and my little schoolgirl heart had swooned.
And when we started dating, it wasn’t some awkward, tense thing, with me and my brother fighting for his affections, but instead the three of us were just an inseparable group.
Sure, Owen razzed us mercilessly any time we shared a kiss, but he also gave us privacy when we needed without being shitty about it. And in return, I was happy to let them have their guy time without me when they needed it. But for the most part, the three of us did everything together.
Which is why after we walked the stage after graduation, my parents didn’t really think twice about letting us ride to our graduation party with Shaun. None of us thought much of it; we’d ridden with Shaun a thousand times.
It wasn’t his fault. Maybe a driver with more experience might have been able to pull something off, but the roads were windy and downhill, and the brakes went out with no warning.
We’d hurtled down the hill and even though he’d tried the emergency brake, there was just no way to slow the velocity of the car enough to make a particularly sharp turn, and we punched right through the guardrail and over into the woods.
That’s still the last thing I remember from the accident, the next thing I knew I was waking up in the hospital a week later and my brother was gone.
The grief of my brother’s death threatened to drown me, but what made it even worse was the fact that I was facing it alone. I tried to reach out to Shaun, over and over, but he wouldn’t return my calls. I think I saw him at the funeral, but before I could extricate myself from my family, he’d vanished.
When I went to his house the next day, ready to give him a piece of my mind for the silent treatment, his mother told me he’d left that morning and even she wasn’t sure where he was going.
So just like that, the two people I loved most in the world were both gone, and I couldn’t make sense of any of it. I still don’t understand it.
It took a long time for that wound to heal, and honestly, it left a scar that’ll never be completely gone. But I don’t want to spend the rest of my life mourning someone who decided to abandon me, so I’ve been trying to move on.
Although my attempts were pretty unsuccessful…until I met Elliot.
As if my thoughts have summoned him, there’s a knock at my front door and my heart starts racing. Excitement chases away all the ghosts and I push painful memories aside so I can hopefully make some happy new ones.
I take one last glance in the mirror, straightening the strap of my dress and smoothing a lock of hair down. Satisfied that my appearance is as good as it’s going to get, I spritz on a quick dash of perfume at my wrists and neck, then run to answer the door.
I try to calm the butterflies as I open my front door, but a fresh flock takes flight the moment I see him. I don’t know how the hell my Plain-Jane ass attracted the attention of a guy of his caliber, but I’ve been thanking my lucky stars since I met him.
