Reality Blurred

by Aven Ellis

  I found myself doing that this morning: projecting the worst-case scenarios for a particular situation. Then I realized I had to stop it. Can something bad still happen? Yes. But am I spending a lot of energy worrying about something that could be nothing? Also yes.

  I stopped myself. I’m going into the situation with an open—yet cautious—mind. I won’t spend hours scripting endings that might never happen.

  Sometimes, you have to let life unfold and see where you end up, and that’s what I’m doing today. I can’t control the future. I can’t continue to worry about it. All I can do is let life take the turn it’s going to take and see where the road takes me afterward. XO Skye

  It has taken all my energy to follow the advice I doled out in my blog post today. Sure, I was able to shelve my brain during the Reality TV Show Roundup segment with Aly and Rick, recapping the previous week of shows and giving my Skye’s Eye On tidbits for the upcoming week. It’s a new feature, created with my addition to Boulder Live. Aly looked absolutely thrilled to be doing it during the pre-show meeting, as in she would have been happier having an ingrown toenail pulled than discuss reality television with yours truly.

  But once I was done with work, my brain shifted right back to worry, about the one topic that has had me scripting horrible scenarios in my head.

  What did Maxime do to Juliette?

  Have I read him as badly as I read Tom? I tossed and turned all night, coming up with all kinds of things that would make me want to stop seeing him. The list included:

  He cheated.

  He dumped her in a state of duress, like a pregnancy, accident, or medical issue.

  He’s married, which is idiotic, but once I start scripting, I can’t stop.

  He didn’t spend enough time with her and neglected her for hockey. Again, from what I know of him this doesn’t make sense, but could this be what happens down the line?

  He doesn’t want children. We haven’t gotten that far in our conversations, but I do want to be a mother someday. In the far-off future, that is.

  He is bad in bed. My guess would be this isn’t the case based on his kisses. And just because Juliette thinks he’s bad in bed doesn’t mean I would. I’d have to find this out for myself.

  I stopped myself at six. I could torture myself all day with wondering if knowing this piece of his past will change my mind about him, but what if it doesn’t? What if it has nothing to do with the relationship I’m forming with him? I trust him to tell me the truth, and I trust myself to think carefully and make the right decision for myself after hearing his story.

  I trust that I do know this man. What we have is real, and no matter what he tells me, we’ll be okay in the end.

  I pull into my apartment building and park my car. It’s warmer today, a practical heat wave at forty-eight degrees. I think back on my day as I head upstairs. I haven’t heard anything from Maxime, which is weird. Normally, we text during the day.

  Does his silence mean something?

  It could be bad.

  Or it could be nothing.

  Ugh.

  I step inside my apartment, heaviness settling over me. Natasha is curled up in a sunny spot on the hardwood floor, her gray fur glittering in the ray of light warming her tiny body. I think I’ll follow her lead before dinner and curl up in my bed and take a nice nap, letting the sun peek in through my window. Sunshine always improves my mood, and I think I could use it right now.

  I head back into my bedroom, and even though it’s only four o’clock, I change into my pajamas, crawl under the covers, and let the sunlight fall across my skin. I close my eyes and drift off, hoping I’ll wake up in a much better mental place before I talk to Maxime tonight.

  ***

  My phone is buzzing. Somewhere. It feels like it’s in my ear.

  I lift one eye. My room is pitch black. I find my phone underneath my pillow. Wait. What? I took a nap. Why is it so black in here?

  I glance at the clock.

  It’s eight.

  Eight?

  Shit!

  I was supposed to talk to Maxime at seven.

  I just missed a phone call from Maxime; there is also a stream of missed texts.

  I don’t read them. I’m sure Maxime thinks he scared me off with his cryptic comment and now I’m avoiding him. I quickly redial his number. One ring … two rings … three rings …

  “Dammit, pick up!” I yell.

  “Hello?” Maxime asks at the exact same time.

  Great timing on my behalf for the second time this evening.

  “Maxime, I’m so sorry. I crashed out in bed and missed your call,” I say quickly. “Can we still have our date?”

  “So you aren’t avoiding me.”

  It’s a statement, not a question.

  “No, absolutely not. In fact, there’s nothing more I want than to see your gorgeous face on Connectivity right now.”

  “Let me disconnect and do a Video Connect.”

  Maxime doesn’t sound right, I think, looping my fingers around the ends of my hair. I don’t hear the lightness in his voice that I’ve come to know whenever we talk.

  Worry eats away at my stomach.

  If he does have a wife, I’ll kill him.

  Within seconds, I get a Connectivity Video Connect request from Maxime. I accept, and his face pops up on my phone. My worry immediately flips to full-blown alarm. Gone is the brilliant smile. The sparkling eyes. The face that normally shows excitement whenever my picture comes up on his screen looks worried.

  “Hi,” he says softly, anxiously raking a hand through his hair.

  “You’re scaring me,” I whisper.

  “I’m scared,” Maxime admits. I watch him swallow. “I don’t want to lose you, and I know I might after I tell you this stuff about me.”

  “Maxime,” I say, pushing down my fears, “I don’t think there is anything you can say that would change how I feel about you. Unless you have a wife. Or you murdered someone.”

  There. I see a smile tug at the corners of his mouth. “No. Nothing on the criminal scale.”

  I don’t let him see it, but I feel some of my doubts slip away.

  “Okay,” I say, sitting upright and crisscrossing my legs. “Let’s get this out of the way. Tell me the story, and then I can tell you that it doesn’t matter, and we can have a good evening.”

  Maxime’s smile falls. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Then tell me.”

  Maxime exhales. “Okay. I met Juliette when I was playing hockey in Belgium. I had gone out after a game with my friends, to a pub. It was a big win. We were having beers. There were some girls at the bar, and when it was my turn to go up and get another round, I ended up next to Juliette. She started talking to me. Juliette was like a bright light. Bubbly. She talked and talked and used her hands,” Maxime smiles at the memory. “She was outgoing. She made me laugh. Juliette was everything I’m not.”

  I want to counter that, to ask what universe he’s in where he doesn’t see these qualities in himself, but I know I need to simply let him talk.

  “I think I fell in love with her that night,” he continues, his expression turning serious again. “I asked her out for the next night since I didn’t have a game. I didn’t know her, but I know I had to be with her. I could never get enough of her.”

  I nod, knowing I’d felt the same way about Tom.

  “I soon realized how different we were,” Maxime says. “Juliette shines in every room she enters. People gravitate toward her. She feeds off that energy. She loved pubs and parties and nightclubs. She loved being out late. The more people she could be around, the happier she was.

  “The very things that sustained her, though, drained me,” Maxime continues. He pauses again, clearing his throat before continuing. “I’m not like that, Skye. I’m an introvert. I don’t like parties and nightclubs and people looking at me. I’m not a dancer. I don’t like being in large groups of people at pubs until the wee hours of the morning.”

>   I try to reconcile the man I know and care about—my Maxime—in this world. My man, the one who loves books and his private lake and his Belgian coffee at home—doesn’t sound like he would fit in this environment at all.

  “I’d come home exhausted and resentful,” Maxime says, running his hand through his hair again, making it messily stand up on his head in the most endearing way. “When I’d suggest we stay home, she would call me old. She said I wasn’t fun, that I was too young to live a life holed up in my flat like an elderly man. We’d argue. I couldn’t help feeling she was right. What twenty-year-old guy wants to stay in? My teammates didn’t act like that. Neither did my siblings. I know I’m not normal. I’m not. Eventually, the fights grew worse. She picked fights with me if I wanted to leave a place before she did, and she pouted if I wanted to make a meal at home and watch a movie.”

  My heart breaks for him. Maxime doesn’t see that this wasn’t his fault. He thinks he was boring and left Juliette no choice but to leave him.

  “Juliette and I stayed together for a few years. The reasons that drew me to her, that I loved, were all the same things that drove her to leave.”

  Relief washes over me. I didn’t realize I was holding my breath until I exhale loudly.

  “What?” Maxime asks, confused.

  “Maxime Laurent,” I say firmly, “If I could reach through this screen right now, I’d do two things. First, I’d smack you for scaring me with your cryptic ending of our phone call last night. Then, I’d take your gorgeous, adorable face in my hands and kiss you like mad.”

  “Skye, don’t you see what I’m saying? You like being out. You’re on TV. You have that light, that brightness, and whenever I’m with you, I feel it, too. I’m afraid that one day, I’ll disappoint you and you’ll resent me and find me as boring as Juliette did. We’re young, but I don’t always act my age. I have an old soul. I was crushed when Juliette and I didn’t work. I can’t imagine how I would feel if the same happened with you. Because I think it would be even worse.”

  I stare back at him, shocked by his admission.

  Maxime is emotionally invested in me.

  This isn’t slow in his mind, not like how he said he wanted us to be. His heart is taking the lead.

  I’m silent, drinking in this moment in complete and utter amazement.

  I know, right now, without a doubt, I’m falling in love with him.

  “Maxime,” I say at last, “do you realize this whole conversation makes me even crazier about you?”

  Maxime blinks in surprise. “What?”

  “All the things you describe about yourself are things that I draw energy from. I love your quietness. We have incredible conversations because you are wise beyond your years. I love that you treasure books and quiet and love your dogs and your coffee. If I want to go out to a club, I can do that with Sierra and JoJo when you are out of town, like when we went to the wine bar for girls’ night. I’m right where I want to be, and I know what I’m getting. I’m getting you, Maxime, exactly the way you are. Exactly the way I want you to be.”

  Skepticism remains in his beautiful eyes. “You say that now.”

  “I’ll say it later.”

  He lets go the second I say those words to him. I see the tension ease from his body as he relaxes his shoulders and exhales, and I long to be cuddled against him.

  “This road trip needs to come to an end,” he says. “I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too,” I say, an ache filling me. “We’re going to have the ultimate cozy night date when you get home. Pajamas required.”

  A sexy smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “What if I don’t sleep in pajamas?”

  An image of a naked Maxime flashes through my head. My face grows hot. I’m about to tell him I like that idea when he starts laughing.

  “I’ll bring pajama bottoms,” he says, his eyes dancing at me.

  Hmm. I can totally take those off.

  “Okay,” I agree, keeping my plan to strip him naked to myself.

  “I was hoping you’d fight that a little more.”

  “Maybe I like unwrapping things.”

  Maxime’s cheeks get a light sweep of pink across them, and I fall a bit more in love.

  I’m about to say something when my stomach lets out a hideous growl that, once again, echoes off the walls in my bedroom.

  Maxime bursts out laughing, and I know my face is the color of a beet.

  “You have the loudest stomach of anyone I’ve ever known, and I’m in a dressing room of guys all the time.”

  “I know,” I groan, embarrassed by my Abominable Snowman growl. “I didn’t eat dinner.”

  “I’ll make sure I have groceries delivered before our cozy date.”

  “Ha-ha, so funny. But do put colored sprinkles on that list, please.”

  “Colored sprinkles … Anything else?”

  Condoms?

  Thankfully that thought didn’t slip out of my head.

  But I will be sure to bring some, just in case. I clear my throat and think of other necessities we’ll need for our date.

  “Wine,” I say.

  “Hmm. Sprinkles and wine. Sounds like an interesting dinner.”

  “It will be perfect.”

  “What else will we do?”

  “Oh, I think we’re serious enough for me to introduce you to the Island of Misfit Toys,” I say. “We’re going to watch Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”

  “But it’s not Christmas.”

  “And that matters why?” I challenge.

  Maxime grins. “I guess it doesn’t.”

  “Pajamas, wine, sprinkles, and a holiday movie; it’s going to be the best date ever.”

  “Fire in the fireplace,” Maxime adds. “I’ll cut some wood.”

  “You chop your own firewood?” I ask.

  “Yeah, I like doing that. It’s a good workout.”

  I get a quick picture in my head of Maxime outside in his flannel shirt, swinging his ax and splitting logs with his powerful, muscular upper body as snow gently cascades down on his thick, wavy hair.

  Good lord. That’s all kinds of lumberjack, manly hot. I absently tug at my thermal pajama top.

  “It sounds very romantic,” I say, heat rising within me.

  “It does,” Maxime says, his eyes locking with mine.

  We don’t say anything for a moment, but our eyes say it all.

  We’re going to have one very romantic evening when Maxime gets back.

  One that will include making love for the first time.

  He needs to come home now. I think I might die before this swing through Canada is over.

  “I have one more request,” I say, twirling a lock of hair around my finger.

  “Yes?”

  “Can I watch you chop wood?”

  Maxime gives me a quizzical look. “Um, okay, but it’s not very exciting.”

  “Maybe you can teach me how.”

  “Is that the reason you’re asking? You want to learn how to chop firewood?”

  “Maybe. Will you wear that red and black flannel shirt? You’re kind of a sexy lumberjack in it.”

  Now he begins to blush.

  “So, your fantasy is a date with a rugged lumberjack?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “My fantasy date is with you,” I say. “I can’t wait for you to come home, Maxime.”

  “I can’t either.”

  My stomach lets out another growl.

  “Hungry for me?” Maxime teases.

  Now I’m the one blushing. “Apparently so.”

  As I take him with me to the kitchen, so we can talk while I heat up something to eat, I know tonight has been a turning point for us. Maxime trusting me with this story—and revealing how much he already cares about me—shows he’s trusting himself.

  He’s trusting us.

  And I intend to do the same thing.

  Chapter Twenty

  Celebrate Life with Sprinkles—The Blog
r />   Good Things Come to Those Who Wait

  Today, I’m shooting my first feature for Boulder Live, and I feel as though I’m living a dream. I’ve waited for this moment; sometimes, it seemed like it would never come. Sometimes, I made questionable decisions, but my determination and patience have paid off. Life doesn’t always happen on the timetable we want. Things don’t go according to plan, and sometimes, they even backfire spectacularly. But when the moment we’ve worked so hard for, waited so long for, finally arrives, it makes that moment that much sweeter. Keep focused. Fight for it. And when your moment comes, savor it. XO Skye

  I arrive with my videographer at a beautiful split-level home with lots of large windows. In my first feature for Boulder Live, I’m interviewing a woman named Whitney Green, a seasonal decorator. The company—called Décor Bliss—is based in Seattle but recently opened their second branch in Boulder. In my research for the interview, I learned that seasonal decorators come into your home and take decorating off your hands, creating a magical Christmas setting or the perfect table for a dinner party.

  Whitney is going to show us this home in Boulder, which she has been hired to decorate for spring. She also said she would bring some St. Patrick’s Day decorations to show us what a holiday-type service would include.

  “First shoot, are you ready?” Hayes Blevins, the shooter, asks, turning off the engine. This Boulder Live van rivals my car in the competition of which will hold out longer before completely imploding.

  I glance at Hayes. He’s in his twenties like me, and we are both cutting our teeth together on Boulder Live. Hayes was hired only a month ago, from a small station in Iowa, so this is a step up, closer to the bigger Denver market. On the drive over, we discussed how lucky we feel for whatever breaks we get and how we plan to make the most of them. Our time together so far has been brief, but I can already tell I like him. If he knows anything about my time on Is It Love?, he’s too polite to ask.

  “I’m ready. I know a lot of reporters don’t like these kinds of stories—the fluff pieces—but I do,” I say. “These stories add balance to the serious news of the day. They give people something fun to think about, teach them something new, or inspire them.”