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“I wasn’t staring,” I argued, immediately turning my gaze back to the TV, where Matthew McConaughey approached my girl Kate Hudson in a bar.
“I can see your reflection in the window.” He pointed the glass in front of him, and my eyes darted to it.
Sure enough, my reflection was staring back at me.
I cursed myself internally.
“Yeah, well, it’s weird having you in my apartment,” I answered, shrugging as if it was no big deal. Which it wasn’t, obviously.
“Trust me, I know.”
His voice took on an odd tone with those words, something that I couldn’t quite place. There was a heavy pause between us, and I used that time to stare at the TV and continue to drink my wine.
There was the sound of him tinkering with the radiator, looking at various things and huffing as he moved his large body about.
“So, what have you been up to over the past few years?” When he asked the question, Blake seemed hesitant, like he wasn’t sure if he was even allowed to ask it.
“Well, living here in this fine establishment,” I waved my arms around me, indicating the apartment.
Over the past five years of being there, I had done what I could to spruce the place up. About a year into my living there, I had painted the walls, covering the dingy beige paint with a bright, eggshell white. I’d spent my time collecting beautiful paintings and prints from local artists, displaying them gallery wall style on any available surface or wall I could find.
But the cabinets, counters, floors, and appliances, well, they had seen better days even when I had moved in.
And now, five years later, they were looking even more, worse for wear.
“Yeah, your previous owners didn’t really do anything to keep this place up to date,” Blake said.
He had been lying on his stomach to look at something underneath the radiator, and he rolled onto his back, pushing himself up on his elbows to look at me.
“And I suppose you’re going to change all of that?” I arched an eyebrow at him.
“I am.”
I rolled my eyes and gave a dark chuckle. “Great, there goes my rent.”
“I’m not changing your rent. Or anyone else’s, for that matter.”
I blinked at him, shocked, before continuing on with sarcasm dripping from every word. “So, you’re going to what? Just come in here and update the place and not charge us an arm and a leg to do it?”
“Look, Nell,” he put a hard emphasis on my name like he wanted me to notice that he was using it and not the one he had known me by for all those years. “Believe me or don’t. I’m not the bad guy here. I know that will come as a shock to you. But I didn’t buy this place to turn it into something else. I knew what I was getting into.”
“So you went off to college and saw the light. Is that it? Dropped out to finally start helping people less fortunate than you merely out of the kindness of your own heart?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. The wine made the words come out more harshly than I meant them to, but I didn’t take them back. There was no way that the Blake Whitlock I had known all those years ago would be doing anything like this just for the sake of it.
Growing up, he had been the poster child for young, hot, and privileged. He had walked around our school with the richest of the rich and behaved accordingly. He treated people like playthings and had never shown remorse for doing it. Their entire group, my brother included, had looked down on scholarship students or students whose parents had *gasp* worked two jobs to make sure they could afford the tuition at our private school.
“Do I need to remind you that you had all the same luxuries growing up as everyone else? You went to a highly accredited private school. You great up on the Upper East Side in a penthouse with a doorman, Nell. Please don’t act like you’re above it all. You aren’t. You were right there in the middle of it like the rest of us.”
His blue eyes held mine, but they weren’t hard like I had expected them to be. His words might have been defensive, but something I had said hurt him. It was written plainly on his face.
I blew out a breath. “I’m sorry. It’s just… sore subject, that's all.”
I lifted one shoulder in a shrug and let it drop, taking another drink of my wine to excuse myself from having to say anything else.
“Yeah, I get it.” Blake nodded slightly. “And you aren’t wrong. I was an asshole back then. We all were. But it’s been a long time, Nell. People change.”
I held his stare, not backing down. And I’m sure that I would regret this later, and more than a little positive that my decision was fueled mainly by wine and how hot he looked sprawled out on my hardwood floor, but I decided to believe him.
