by J. L. Berg
“And why would I go on a date with you?”
“Because you’re already falling madly in love with me. It’s hopeless.”
I was honestly waiting for her to smack me. When I saw just a hint of a smile appear at the corner of her mouth, I knew I’d gotten to her.
“Amelia,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Amelia—that’s my name, stupid.” She giggled.
“That’s kind of a stuck-up name, Amelia. I’m picking something else.”
“You’re renaming me?” She laughed.
She was now completely caught in my trap.
“Yep. From now on, you will be known as…Mia.”
“Oh, um…are you good with a crowbar?” she asked, pointing to the large tool propped up against the far wall.
“Better than you, I’d wager.” I pointed to her leg.
She gave me a sour look before showing me what still needed to be ripped up.
“You know these are original floors that you are tearing out, right? They’re probably over a hundred years old,” I said as I started pulling up the oak in the dining room.
“Yes, I know that, but they can’t be rescued. Apparently, the owners before me didn’t care so much about the historical value of them because they were trashed. They looked like someone had taken a sledgehammer to them and then left an entire litter of cats to urinate on every board for a month.”
“Is that what smells in here?”
“Did you think it was me?”
“Well, I mean—”
“Garrett!” she shrieked, leaning over to playfully hit my arm.
She realized what she had done a second after she did it, and she stepped back. It was scary how easily we had just fallen back into our normal banter. It made me wonder just how little effort it would take to tumble back into everything else.
Rather than suffer through the impending awkwardness, I started my job of taking up the wood floors. She busied herself by sweeping the four-thousand nails that were being thrown all over the place from each board being pried out of place. We worked through the afternoon.
In the evening, Mia asked, “Hey, do you want to order a pizza or something?”
“Uh…actually, I have to go to my sister’s for dinner tonight.” I didn’t really, but I’d reached my threshold for the day. The silence was getting to me, and if I had to spend one more hour in here watching Mia bend down in those shorts, trying not to see her ass cheeks peek out from the bottom, I would go crazy.
“Oh, okay. Well, you better get going then.” Dodging my gaze, she became very interested in a spot on the wall that needed to be patched.
“Yeah, I guess I should.”
I walked to the door and stopped. I swung around on my heels, finding a surprised Mia behind me.
“What time tomorrow?”
“Excuse me?” she asked in surprise.
“What time do you want me to come back over tomorrow?” I repeated.
“You’re coming back?”
Our eyes met, and I nodded. “Yes, I like to follow through with things until the very end.”
The double meaning was not lost on her.
Chapter Five
~Mia~
Like clockwork, he showed up at my doorstep the very next day.
Then, the day after, he returned when I was done with my shift at the hospital.
He even came back the following night, holding a bag of takeout in one hand and a change of clothes in the other. This was the second day he’d arrived in a suit. It was further proof that the boy I’d left on the football field after graduation day had disappeared, replaced by a man I barely recognized.
This new Garrett was not the lighthearted boy I remembered. He was a little rough around the edges and a bit bossy, and he had a hardness to him that I didn’t recognize. It wasn’t what I was used to, but if I had to admit it to myself, it was sexy as hell. I had adored playful, carefree Garrett. He was always loving and gentle, and he’d dedicated himself to me completely. But grown-up Garrett was full of mystery and angst. I didn’t know what he would do from one minute to the next, and I hated myself for liking it.
He wasn’t for me, and I didn’t need to add complication to his life again. He was just doing me a favor with the floors, and I needed to keep my distance. If the past had proven anything, it was that he deserved someone a hell of a lot better than me.
“You brought food?” I asked as he breezed past me toward the kitchen.
“Well, you have absolutely nothing in your refrigerator, and I nearly starved to death last night, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. You know you’re a grown-up now, right? Food doesn’t grow on trees. You have to actually go to the store, pick it up, and prepare it.”
He was also incredibly sarcastic. That, unfortunately, wasn’t new.
“I know I am a grown-up, Garrett,” I huffed, crossing my arms over my chest.
His eyes immediately dropped, hungrily watching the way my breasts strained against my tank top from the pressure of my arms. His emerald gaze traveled back up to meet my eyes, and I blushed like a teenager. I looked away to find plates for the Chinese food he’d brought over, but I could see him smirking out of the corner of my eye. He knew he’d gotten to me.
“You still wear that necklace.”
It was a statement, not a question. I’d wondered if he would say anything about it. I’d caught him staring at it on the first day he’d shown up to help. We had been hours into destroying my floors. Leaning against the wall, I’d tried to catch my breath, and I’d quenched my thirst with a glass of ice-cold water. When I had looked up, I’d seen the crowbar on the floor, and his eyes had been locked on my chest. I’d instantly heated, thinking he was blatantly checking me out, but then I’d realized the heat in his eyes was from anger, not passion. He’d seen the sterling silver key pendant with his birthstone in the center hanging from my neck. He’d given it to me for my sixteenth birthday, and I’d never taken it off since he’d placed it there.
“I’ve never taken it off.”
He just grunted and continued pulling out cartons of takeout. His eyes drifted up to mine briefly, and he held our stare as if he wanted to say something, but then he let it go. We loaded up our plates, sat down at my kitchen table, and silently ate our moo shu pork and fried rice.
“Why?” he asked, breaking the silence.
I stilled, unable to look up and meet his penetrating gaze. “I…I needed to keep a part of you with me.”
I looked up and our eyes held for a moment before he pushed away from the table, startling me.
“I’m not hungry anymore.”
I finished my dinner alone with my knees pulled into my chest, and then I pushed my plate away. I listened to him in the living room, tearing up the floor like a madman. I could hear boards flying and nails hitting the walls. The tears rimming my eyes threatened to spill over as he took his anger and hurt out on the floor. I finally rose from the table to clean up our plates and glasses.
What had I done to this man? Had I really thought this would be better? No answers, no closure had turned into just anger and lost hopes. I’d done this.
It was just another reason he deserved so much more.
After another few minutes, I heard his movements slow and return to a normal pace until he stopped altogether, and I heard him empty a bottle of water in a few chugs. The broom then began making slow, methodical sweeps across the room, and I figured it might be a safe time to enter.
All that double-time pace must have caused him to work up quite a sweat. When I came into my living room, I was faced with Garrett the God. Holy shit, that man should warn people before he takes his shirt off. There were a lot of new additions to the twenty-five-year-old Garrett, starting with a set of eight-pack abs and a chiseled chest that made me think dirty, dirty things. Garrett 2.0 also came with a few tattoos, which I usually wasn’t attracted to. But on him? Yum.
I realized about a half a second too late that I’d been caught in
my oglefest, and I immediately turned away, trying to hide the blush spreading across my horrified face.
“Um…I can do the sweeping if you want to take a break,” I offered, still unable to turn toward him.
If I looked at him, I would be looking at all of him, and then we’d be back to where we were a few minutes earlier—me swimming in my own drool, thinking of all the various ways I could get him up to my bedroom and the many, many things I could do with him once we were there.
“All right,” he said, holding out the broom just inches from his glistening body.
The pads of my fingers grazed his stomach as I took the broom, and I was pretty sure I’d whimpered as that tiny part of my body came into contact with his. Up until that moment, I’d thought eight-packs were a myth, a legend told by magazine editors and sorority girls, but no, they were real. That eight-pack was no joke.
I felt his eyes on me as I finished sweeping up the mess he’d made, and then he quietly watched me as I bent down and picked up each and every nail that had been strewn around the room.
Sick of feeling like an animal in the zoo, I decided to end the silence. “I thought you worked, like, a billion hours a week? How have you managed to get so much time away from the office?”
He seemed a bit taken aback by my question, but he gave a hint of a smile. His eyes always crinkled in the corners when he smiled. It made him appear younger, more like the boy I remembered.
“Been talking to Leah about me?”
“I mean, she was talking about you. I didn’t ask,” I answered, basically repeating the words he’d said to me days earlier.
“Hmm…well, to answer your question, I don’t have to work a billion hours a week. I just choose to.”
“Why? Why would anyone want to work that much?” I asked.
His eyes flew to mine in a heated glare. “Some people enjoy what they do. Maybe I’m just driven.”
“What do you do?” I asked.
“I’m in pharmaceutical sales.”
“Oh, please!” I said, laughing, “That’s total bullshit! You? In sales? You have to hate it. The Garrett I knew would have cut off his left arm before taking a job like that.”
I could see by his expression that I’d hit home. His eyes lost focus, and he wouldn’t meet mine.
“Yeah, well…I guess we all change, don’t we? The girl I knew would have never become a tight-ass accountant, so I guess we didn’t know each other as well as we thought we did.”
“No, I guess not.”
The rest of the evening was spent in stifling silence as I tried to remember the boy I once knew. I wondered if I would ever understand the man who was standing before me.
Do I deserve to?
~Garrett~
“You look lovely, sweetie,” my mother said over my shoulder.
I gazed into the floor-length mirror wedged in the corner of my parents’ bedroom. I’d snuck in here a few minutes earlier to try and adjust the monstrosity of a bow tie that was currently choking the life out of my windpipes.
“I feel like a penguin,” I muttered. I readjusted the bow tie for the hundredth time.
“A very handsome penguin,” she amended.
She spun me around, which was not an easy task. I was only sixteen, but I was a football player, and I practiced every waking moment. I was a walking, talking muscle machine, not that I was bragging.
“Are you ready for tonight?” she asked.
“Mom, it’s just a dinner.” A dinner I had to wear a freaking tuxedo for.
“Garrett, Mia’s family is different from ours.”
“I know, Mom. They’re loaded,” I scoffed.
“It’s more than that. They think very highly of themselves and the people they associate with. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Mia would never hurt me,” I said adamantly.
“You really like this girl, don’t you?”
“I love her, Mom.”
Vibrations on the nightstand next to my bed tore me from my dream, bringing me back to reality. My eyes blinked open, and I groggily searched around in the dark for the source of what had awoken me. Palming my phone, I hit a button, hoping it would end the incessant buzzing.
Without bothering to see who the hell was calling me at this unholy hour, I said, “Hello?”
“Garrett? I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Mia?” All remnants of sleep fell away at the sound of her panicked voice.
“I think someone just tried to break into my house,” she said.
“Did you call the police?” I was already standing, pulling on a pair of jeans over my boxers.
“No, I think they’re gone. A car drove by, and it might have scared them off, but I’m frightened they might come back. I didn’t want to call the cops. What if it was a cat? Or a drunk frat boy? I’m sorry. I’m being stupid…and I woke you up…” she trailed off.
“Look, I’m already dressed.” I paused, throwing a shirt over my head. “I’ll drive over now and check things out for you. Then, you’ll at least be able to go back to sleep.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be there in ten.”
I ended the call, grabbed my keys, and threw on a pair of shoes. I ran toward my front door, and the small mosaic mirror next to it caught my eye. Clare had bought the mirror for me while on her honeymoon a few years ago. I took a quick look at my refection as I undid the lock.
It was two in the morning. My ex-girlfriend—ex-fiancée, if I wanted to get technical—had just called. And what had I done? I had jumped out of bed to be her knight in shining armor.
“What the fuck are you doing, Garrett?”
My reflection had no answers, so I just turned toward the door, opened it, and walked out—toward Mia, which is where I always seemed to go. The irony wasn’t lost on me that in an entire city filled with thousands of people, Mia and I lived less than a few minutes, a few city blocks really, from each other. The one person I needed to be the farthest away from was basically my neighbor.
In the time it took the radio DJ to run a few commercials, I was knocking on Mia’s door, impatiently waiting for her to answer. My eyes scanned the area, looking around for anything out of the ordinary. I was planning on walking around her house, but first, I needed to make sure she was safe.
The door creaked open, and there was Mia, standing in pink boy shorts and a tank top. My eyes quickly swept down her body, remembering how she’d felt under me, over me—
Fuck.
She’d just been scared out of her mind by an attempted robbery, and here I was, practically drooling at her door like some pervert, trying to figure out if I could see her nipples through her top.
And I could.
My hungry gaze obviously gave away my thoughts because she hastily covered her exposed body with the matching robe that had been hanging open.
Mentally shaking my head to clear away the pornographic thoughts, I asked, “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I haven’t heard anything else. I’m sure it was nothing.” She looked embarrassed and flustered.
“You don’t know whether it was nothing, Mia. Why don’t you go make yourself some coffee or something? I’m going to go check everything out. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She agreed, and I turned to make my way around her house. I checked her window locks and gate. I found footprints near the entrance of the locked gate at the side of her house. They weren’t mine or hers. Of course, I couldn’t tell if the owner of the footprints had sinister intent, but it was enough to piss me off.
I walked back through her front door and turned to lock it behind me.
“We’re replacing all your locks tomorrow. You’ve got twenty-year-old locks out there, Mia. And you’re getting a dog.”
She was just sitting down with two cups of coffee at the kitchen table as I made my announcement. She turned and gave me a dumbfounded look. “I’m getting a what?”
“Locks. You need new locks.�
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“No, the other part,” she said.
“Oh, you’re getting a dog.”
“Says who?” She crossed her arms over her chest.
I’d noticed it was a common trait of hers. The thin robe she was wearing did nothing to cover up her round breasts. Her pouty stance only pushed them higher, making them strain against the thin pink fabric.
“Says me. You are a single woman in the middle of the city, Mia. You need protection.”
“So, rather than being rational and getting something like—oh, I don’t know—a security system, you decide I need a dog?”
“Yes. Security systems are expensive and can be dismantled. Dogs can be trained, and they are good companions.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she threw her hands up in exasperation. “You are exhausting. I am not yours to boss around, Garrett.”
“Oh, I know that, Mia. You made sure of that a long time ago,” I practically spit, venom lacing my words.
I regretted the words the second they had left my mouth. I saw the hurt on her face as she looked ashen and gutted.
“I’ll look into the dog. Thank you for coming over,” she whispered.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I turned away. The coffee she’d made was still sitting on the kitchen table. It was probably now lukewarm from my icy words.
“Hey, why don’t you head upstairs? I’ll make sure everything is locked and secure,” I offered.
She didn’t even argue. She just retreated upstairs. As I listened to the soft sobs echoing down the hall, I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. I didn’t understand her. I couldn’t comprehend why a girl who had left me looked so destroyed.
She left me, damn it.
I should be the one with the right to bleed, not her. What puzzle piece was I missing here?
After cleaning up the coffee and quickly checking the locks again, I quietly jogged my way up the stairs, and found her bedroom. The stark white walls and dark wood furniture decorating the room looked washed out against the soft light emanating from the small lamp at her bedside.