Finding Fate

by Ariel Ellens

  Oh, yeah, don’t look so guilty.

  “Family. Can I come?”

  “No,” Colt snaps. He closes his eyes and takes a breath. “Shit. I’m sorry, Bella. I didn’t mean to be like that.” He opens his eyes and touches my face. I prefer his hand at my hip, but whatever. “Listen to me... it’s not quite time, okay?”

  The way his blinks, I can’t tell, but it’s almost like he’s trying not to cry.

  “What does that mean?” I ask. “Not quite time.”

  “It’s the only way I can say it. I don’t want to ruin this moment, here with you. This is... this is for me. Right here. This is everything I could ever dream of.”

  “Then don’t leave,” I beg.

  “Bella... here, you want to feel something?”

  I don’t have a chance to nod before he takes my hand. He touches it to his chest and I feel his heartbeat. It’s still pounding, the same rate before when we were just about to tear each others clothes off.

  I feel my heart starting to race again.

  “It’s been that way since I saw you,” he says. “I can’t control my heart right now. And you have no idea how much I need it. I just need you to trust me. I promise, for today.”

  “You’re not going to leave here and break up with your girlfriend, are you?”

  Colt cringes. “No... but probably tomorrow.”

  “You’re an ass,” I growl.

  “You’re jealous because you’re not sure if I’m telling the truth or not.”

  “And now you’ve ruined the moment.”

  “Good,” he says. “I’ll just make another one.”

  He moves so fast I cry out. I’m suddenly on top of Colt, his hands exploring my back. I start to kiss before I know what I’m doing.

  Gosh, what exactly am I doing here?

  We kiss for what feels like hours and then it breaks. And I know what he going to say. I wait it, trying not to look too disappointed.

  “Can I borrow your laptop for a second?” he asks.

  Okay, so that wasn’t what I thought he was going to say... but close enough. That means he’s going to leave my bed.

  “Sure. It’s in the living room.”

  “Need to check my email. For work.” He winks. “I hate doing it on my phone.”

  “Laptop is waiting then,” I say. “No password or anything... I have nothing to hide.”

  I smirk and Colt puts his hands to my sides and pushes, lifting me into the air. My hands grab at his arms, feeling his flexed muscles, and I melt. He moves me to the right and places me back down in my bed.

  That’s the single hottest move... ever.

  Colt rolls from the bed and stands. He’s not ashamed of himself and neither am I. I can stare at this all day. I’d prefer it this way, all day, every day. Now that’s a simple, perfect life.

  He grabs his boxers and jeans. He leaves the shirt on the floor.

  Maybe he’s not in a huge rush then. Maybe I can convince him to stay. Maybe I can at least enjoy him again before he leaves.

  His figure disappears from the bedroom and I roll to my back.

  I stare at the white ceiling and smile.

  These are the moments that are perfect. The moments I dream of, but the moments that sometimes worry me. How can everything suddenly feel and seem so perfect? It’s like staring at a bright blue sky, the sun hanging in the corner of a picturesque summer day with a storm waiting right behind you.

  That’s how it always feels and most of the time I’m right.

  “Hey... Bella...?”

  My head snaps to the left and just like that, there’s the storm, waiting.

  Colt’s not there but something catches up to me.

  My laptop.

  When was the last time I used my laptop? What was the last thing I...

  “Shit,” I whisper and sit up.

  I kick the covers off and reach for clothing. Now Colt appears in the doorway, and he’s not happy. Not happy at all.

  Shit.

  “Colt, what’s wrong?”

  “You tell me,” he says.

  He produces my laptop and shows me the screen it was left at. I take one look and then turn my head.

  It’s the article about his nightclub.

  The shooting.

  His interview.

  Everything.

  “That’s not...”

  “You searched for me,” he says. “What did you type in? Did you dig for dirt on me?”

  “No,” I say. I stand, now resorting to holding the bed sheet to my body. I feel vulnerable and in big trouble. Really big trouble. “I wasn’t looking for anything bad, Colt.”

  “Well you found it I guess.”

  “It showed up.”

  “Why? Just... why?”

  “Because you showed up in my bakery and then left.”

  “You do that with all customers?”

  “No, I don’t. Only the ones I fall in love with I guess.”

  Holy crap... did I just tell Colt that I’m in love with him?

  Colt steps more into my room. He puts my laptop on the small dresser next to my bed. The screen is halfway open. I can see the light of the screen reflecting against the keys of the keyboard. I reach and hit the laptop, closing it for good.

  Why didn’t I close out all the screens last time I used it?

  Colt leans against my door, his arms folded. I don’t want to admire his body right now but I can’t help it. His arms, his chest, his stomach...

  “What do you want, Bella?” he asks me.

  Now my eyes are back to his eyes. “I never said I wanted anything.”

  “Obviously you do,” Colt says. He points to the laptop. “What do you want to know?”

  “You tell me,” I say. “I’m not going to ask or pry things from you.”

  “You’ll just research it online.”

  “That’s not fair, Colt. Not at all. You came into my bakery and started asking questions, acting flirty with me. I knew nothing about you and you left.”

  “So?”

  “I was curious. You’re... hot, okay? I thought I could find out who you were.”

  “Why not ask me?”

  I shrug my shoulders. I guess I could have been more up front with him. But, no, I won’t take the fall for this stuff. No way. I didn’t do a thing wrong here. So what, I looked someone up...

  “I guess I did a good thing then,” I say.

  Colt’s eyes flare. “Good thing?”

  “Sure. If you don’t want to tell me about... your problems...”

  “Problems? What problems?”

  “The article,” I say.

  “You believe that? You believe something written on the internet?”

  “Should I?”

  Colt grits his teeth and pushes from the door. As he does, his hands come down in fists and hit my door. The thud is like a crack of thunder, making me jump.

  “I can’t believe this,” he says. “I come to town... I’m as honest as I can be with you, Bella, and this is how you treat me?”

  “Treat you?” I ask. I’m starting to yell. Colt is really getting annoying. I don’t handle annoying boys. I channel my inner Becca-Ann and feel like kicking him out, literally. “You’re the one who tells me you can’t control yourself. You can’t stop. But then when we’re finished you have to hurry and leave.”

  “And I asked you to trust me,” Colt says. “I’ll explain everything soon.”

  “Where are you going? Does it have to do with that article?”

  Shit, now I’m asking questions. I don’t want to ask questions. But I can’t help this... part of me isn’t sure if Colt has a girlfriend or if he’s in legal trouble. I’m not being that nosy, I just care that much.

  “I don’t know what you want from me,” he says. “I’ll I ask is that you trust me right now. So I can take care of things.”

  “Can I help?” I ask. My bottom lip quivers. The frustration now overflows with emotion. Damn, I hate being a girl sometimes. It’s a frustra
ted cry that’s coming on, one because I can’t change something... and because I can’t get what I want.

  Colt steps towards me. He takes my face in his hands. I blink a few times and a tear streams from my right eye. His thumb is there to wipe it away.

  “Bella, I need you,” he whispers. “I came into your bakery because I saw you standing there. I saw a beautiful girl standing there and I wanted to know why. And I swear to you, you deserve more than what you have and I’ll make sure you get it. But right now, I have personal things...”

  “Tell me,” I whisper. “I want to be there too, Colt. You’re not the only one with pain. With secrets. With a past. I don’t care about that article if you just talk to me.”

  Colt closes his eyes. He swallows hard, trying to suppress whatever emotion is building. I’m not sure if it’s anger or the urge to cry. I’ll take either, I just want Colt to open.

  “You want to know if I forced a man outside to be murdered? You want to know if I have a problem with gay people? Is that it? You want to judge me?”

  “I never said that,” I say. “Ever. I just want to know you, Colt. You.”

  He pulls me in for a kiss. It’s an aggressive kiss, our lips pressing tight. There’s no tongue and as he pulls away I’m suddenly hit with the feeling that I may have had my last kiss with Colt for a while... or forever...

  “I have to go,” he says, and then he’s gone.

  He’s out of my room, walking through the apartment. I’m frozen, looking from the laptop to the open door and back. Everything is spinning around me right now, trying to grasp the conversation. I finally find strength and move from the room.

  Colt is at the door and I scream his name. I’m desperate. I still holding the bed sheet to my naked body and I’m crying. The tears are falling and I don’t know why.

  “Bella, please...”

  “Colt, I can’t lose you,” I cry out. “It’s not fair. My mother is a drunk and I’m all alone. I was handed that bakery and I don’t want it. It should have died with my grandparents, but it didn’t. It’s there, living and dying at the same time. Like my mother. And you know what? You want a piece of my heart, Colt? Here’s something honest... I wish both of them would go. I wish both would just give up and... die...”

  It hurts so much to admit that but it’s true. I don’t want to see the bakery suffer in the shadow of my grandparents and I don’t want to see my mother suffer anymore.

  “You wish your mother were dead?” he asks, sounding offended.

  “I don’t know, maybe.”

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Colt says. Then he opens the door and stands there. His right hand is in a fist and he smacks the door. “Damn you, Bella. What you do to my heart... my body...”

  “Colt...”

  “You want your mother dead,” he says as he looks out the door. “I want mine alive. She’s being buried today, Bella, that’s why I came to town.”

  With that, he closes the door to my apartment and I collapse to the floor.

  -Chapter 15-

  There’s no point in getting up because Colt is long gone. The roar of his motorcycle begins and then it’s a heart wrenching sound as it fades away into the distance.

  My mind pounds at me with one thought.

  Colt’s mom is dead.

  She just died. She was being laid to rest today, right now. That’s where he had to go. And he didn’t want to tell me about it. It makes me want to be angry but how can I? If that’s his way of coping - sharing time with his family to say goodbye - who am I to step in the way? I know how I feel about him but that doesn’t mean I’m able to be let in right now, does it? Of course not. It’s up to Colt to decide when I’m able to be let inside his heart, his soul, his pain. Just like myself to him. It’s not implied anywhere that I had to confess a thing about my mother or the bakery. And even the stuff I said, did it matter? Did he hear it?

  I pull the sheets tighter together. They’re wrapped around my fists and rub my cheeks and eyes. When I pull my hands away, the sheet is soaked.

  I hate crying, seriously. I really hate it. It makes me feel weak, used, and I feel below the status of my mother then. I imagine her trying to console me, help me, but manipulate me. Again, old memories try to surface, ones that I’m fuzzy about, but ones that shape me into the person I am right now.

  I need to pick myself up off the floor and live. Colt will be back, I have to believe. When he’s done at his mother’s funeral, he’ll need me. Won’t he?

  Now I’m sitting outside my room and I turn to see my room. To see the nightstand. To see the laptop.

  Then again, what the hell do I know?

  Colt could just leave, right? He could just ride his bike back home, back to his life, his business, his... whatever.

  I think about the club and shooting. I didn’t ask. I didn’t press. I waited. Like a fool.

  My body aches for Colt, in so many ways.

  My phone rings and I dive into my room. I’m so wrapped in my sheet that I start to wrestle with it. I’m thankful nobody can see me right now as I thrash my arms and legs, desperate to get out of my sheet. Each time the phone rings, I scream, wanting out. I finally get out of the sheet and I’m on my knees, reaching for my phone. I don’t think about being naked but I wish Colt were here to see me in this position.

  It’s not Colt calling me.

  It’s... the bakery.

  The bakery?

  The bakery is supposed to be closed. No, the bakery is closed. I’m here, in my bedroom, in my apartment.

  So who is in the bakery?

  I answer the phone with a shaking voice, like a woman in a ghost movie, knowing someone or something is going to growl or moan on the other end of the line.

  “Isabella... is that you?”

  I gasp for a second, hearing shades of Grammie’s voice. Before my mind can run away with the attempt to believe a paranormal experience is occurring, I hear the murmur of people in the background.

  “Answer me!” the voice yells.

  And then I realize it’s my mother.

  “Mom? What are you doing?”

  “I’m working,” she says, “just like you want me to.”

  Her voice isn’t clear.

  Oh, no.

  She’s drinking and she’s at the bakery.

  I’m not sure if she knows the recipes or even remembers how to bake a thing. Let alone the concept of opening the place and helping customers.

  “Mom, you should have called me.”

  “No, no. You need a break, remember? Is someone in your bed?”

  I look to my bed. The sheets are a mess. The covers are a mess. It still has the sexy lingering smell of Colt and I.

  “Nobody is in my bed,” I say. I’m not lying but my cheeks still turn red. “Are you drunk?”

  “Nope,” my mom replies and then scoffs.

  Sure, she’s not drunk... yet.

  I have to get to the bakery before all hell breaks loose for real. Hell is there but it can only get worse and will get worse by the second.

  I stand up and look for my clothes. I can’t wear pajamas to the bakery. I really need a shower but there’s no time.

  “Mrs. Anderson is here looking for an order,” my mom says. “I looked and I can’t find a damn thing in this place. My gosh, Isabella...”

  “Her order wasn’t completed yet. It’s supposed to be...”

  Yeah. It’s supposed to be done today, right now, but it’s not. Because we closed. Because I needed a break.

  I’ve let the bakery down.

  I’ve let Colt down.

  I’ve let myself down.

  “Well, good job,” my mother says. “Now I have to deal with her bitchy attitude. I went to high school with her. She was such a...”

  And I’ve obviously let my mother down, but I’m pretty sure I let her down a long time ago.

  “You shouldn’t have opened,” I yell into the phone. “Why did you do this?”

  “Because it’s what you wa
nted,” she yells back.

  I hear more voices in the background. She sounds like she’s standing right there, at the counter. I visualize it - a line of people waiting, growing impatient. My mother standing there is a blurred haze, trying to do something.

  I need to get there and fast.

  “I’m on my way,” I say and hang up the call.

  I really don’t have time to think about Colt but my body does in other ways. I inhale the smell of my apartment. Outside, I take a deep breath, desperate to find anything that reminds me of Colt. I start the car and reach for the radio, ready to find some slow sad song to think about Colt.

  I don’t.

  I’m in gear, driving.

  I make it to the bakery in record time. I don’t like speeding and don’t condone it, but all I could see were cracks. Cracks in and out of the bakery. Each second, each alcohol laced breath from mother, all creating cracks to take the family business down.

  As I rush through the back, my mother appears, covered in flour and looking woozy.

  “Go get a glass of water,” I say with a growl in my throat.

  I hurry out front to find a line of ten people waiting for me. They’re all regular customers and the only who looks annoyed is Mrs. Anderson. I’d be annoyed too. Her order isn’t ready and my mother called her a bitch. I tend to her first, offering her anything in the glass case for free. Lucky for me, she accepts and then lectures me that her prayer group isn’t going to be very happy but considering the deplorable circumstances they will eat and spend their meeting praying for my mother.

  Good, one less thing off my back I guess.

  She’s out the door and I get everyone back in line.

  One by one, I calm the place down and tend to the customers. Orders are placed, orders are picked up. Orders are paid for. I don’t need to lie to anyone because they just look at me and seem to understand. Each sad set of eyes that meets mine makes me think of Grammie and Granpie. I can imagine them looking down from the heavens, shaking their heads. Their daughter a mess and their granddaughter rolling between the sheets with a guy like Colt.

  When Miss Peters is at the counter, her buffoon hair standing a mile high and her blue eye makeup teetering on the look of a clown, she smiles. There’s a small smear of red lipstick on her perfectly white front teeth and for some reason it all hits me. How much I maybe do like the bakery. The people, the personalities, and the protection it gives me. It keeps me inside, away from the world. Away from people like Colt and whatever he was still hiding from me.