Farewell Apathy

by Jenn Hype

  I think I’m the only one sitting on pins right now, but the intense vibe going on is really freaking me out. I’m two seconds away from doing or saying something incredibly stupid just to ease the tension, but Wyatt throws his head back and busts out laughing before I have the chance. Keegan just smirks at him and winks while I stand here like an idiot, not understanding in the slightest what the hell just happened.

  My pulse picks up and my fingers start tingling, something that feels a hell of a lot like jealousy coursing through my veins. I don’t like it, and I won’t entertain it, so to distract myself I run over to the truck and grab the first box I see. Not even one step away from the truck, and the stupid curb just comes out of nowhere and trips me. Keegan and Wyatt are both still holding boxes of their own, so they aren’t able to get to me before I fall, but luckily the box I’m holding breaks my fall.

  Nope. This cannot be my life. I am not going to be that girl who trips all over herself, making herself look like an idiot just because a hot guy is around. I’m also not going to be looking up anytime soon, because I’m embarrassed enough without having anyone see my face blushing furiously.

  Keegan none-so-discreetly clears her throat several times before I realize she’s trying to get my attention. It’s no longer just my face that’s blushing when I realize I’m sitting on top of a pile of Wyatt’s underwear. No, that blush is quickly spreading down my neck and over my entire body. When I see the condoms scattered amidst some seriously sexy boxers, I’m afraid the blush is going to turn into hives or my skin might actually start melting.

  I can’t even bring myself to look at him. It’s not that underwear freaks me out or anything - I’m not twelve - but all I’ve done since meeting him less than an hour ago is act like an idiot. I manage to scooch over and out of his way, watching from my still crouched position as he fixes the box and fills it back up.

  When he’s finished, he closes up the box and his eyes meet mine. There’s humor in them and I can’t tell if he’s just amused by the situation or if he’s actually laughing at me. His face is inches from mine as he remains in a crouched position that mimics my own. The wind kicks up, sending the most heavenly scent straight to my nose. He smells like clean sweat with a hint of cologne or aftershave. It’s potent, not because it’s strong, but because it has me envisioning having my face buried in pillows that smell like him while he grips my hair from behind and...

  Keegan clears her throat, stopping my fantastically bad timed fantasy, luckily before I did something stupid like moan out loud. I’m not sure how long we stay like that. Probably only seconds, though it feels like hours. Keegan’s eyes flash, her head tilting like she’s trying to tell me something. I look over just in time to see Wyatt shake his head like he’s trying to snap himself out of a similar trance. The thought that maybe Wyatt is as affected by me as I am him is a heady feeling, and I take a second to remind myself that hyperactive hormones have no place in my life right now.

  Wyatt stands and holds his hand out for me to take, offering to help me up, but I push up without taking it. My body feels stiff, and I arch my back, trying to stretch it out. Wyatt’s eyes dart down to my chest, and I might have let his eyes linger a little more than appropriate.

  He squeezes his eyes shut for at least three Mississippi’s – yeah, I counted – and when he looks at me again, his eyes are glazed over. That’s definitely lust I see lurking in those blue eyes, but he also looks…angry?

  Well, that’s confusing. Maybe I’m reading him all wrong. I try not to dwell on how disappointing it feels, knowing this attraction could be totally one-sided.

  With a hand on my hip, I hold my free hand out, palm up. “Gimme your credit card,” I say flatly, thanking the Lord above for my voice coming out sounding confident and normal. I thought for sure it was going to sound all breathy and husky, giving away the internal struggle I have going on with my libido.

  “Uhhhh, what?” Wyatt raises one eyebrow and looks at me like I’m crazy. I feign annoyance and pretend to be irritated, because feeling anything towards him other than lust makes it so much easier to not be affected by how gorgeous he is.

  “You guys can carry all the stuff; I’ll start unpacking it. But first I’m going to order a pizza and you’re buying since we’re helping you move. So, I’ll need your card.”

  I see Keegan beaming out of my periphery, smiling at me like a proud mamma. I’ve impressed her with my sassy attitude, and I actually feel a little proud of myself for finding the confidence to look directly into Wyatt’s bright blue eyes without melting into a puddle on the ground.

  “My, my, you ladies are a couple of bossy ones aren’t you?” Keegan snickers behind him, but his full attention is on me, his eyes never leaving mine as he pulls his wallet out of his back pocket and slides out a plastic card. He places it in my hand, and when his fingers make the briefest contact with my skin, a shiver racks my body in a very obvious - and humiliating - way.

  Wyatt chuckles and shakes his head, leaning down to pick up the box he’d put down a minute ago. “Lucky for you both, I happen to like a little bit of attitude in my women.” My breath catches when he winks at me. It is seriously unfair to the rest of mankind how good looking he is.

  “Buddy,” Keegan starts in, “trust me, you are the lucky one. Now if you two are done eye fucking each other, I’d like to get going before I get too tired to help and end up planting my ass firmly on Wyatt’s couch while he does all the work.”

  My head jerks to Keegan and I give her the dirtiest look I can muster, walking over to her and punching her in the arm before walking through the door.

  “Ow! Dammit, Brailey, that hurt!” Keegan whines.

  “What floor?” I ask Wyatt as the elevator dings and the doors slide open.

  “Fourth,” Wyatt calls out over his shoulder as he walks in the direction of the stairway, earning himself a laugh from Keegan.

  “Yeah right, you take the stairs if you want, playboy, but I’m not carrying boxes up four flights of stairs.” Wyatt opens his mouth to respond, but Keegan cuts him off. “And don’t you dare make a comment about it being good exercise, because I will turn it into you calling me fat and pretend to be offended just to spite you. So unless you wanna hear me bitching at you all night while I complain about my fat ass, then you should probably just shut it and get on the damn elevator.”

  Wyatt wisely doesn’t argue, just nods his head and offers a, “Ladies first,” before following us onto the elevator. The ride to his floor is quiet and uncomfortable. Uncomfortable for me, at least, which seems to please Keegan who is wiggling her eyebrows up and down at me the whole time, her eyes darting back and forth between me and Wyatt’s ass.

  My head falls back in frustration just as the doors open and Wyatt steps out first, calling back to us over his shoulder. “I’ll go first this time so you guys can get a better look at my ass.”

  Freaking Keegan.

  Keegan calls after him, but I zone out and don’t hear what she says. I’m too busy wondering how in the hell I’m going to survive this night.

  Chapter Four

  The night actually went pretty smoothly at first. Keegan did indeed plant her ass on Wyatt’s couch and watched him do all the heavy lifting, just like she’d threatened. Wyatt didn’t seem to mind, probably because Keegan kept making sexually inappropriate comments about his ass every time he would walk through the room. I’m sure his ego is already big enough and he didn’t need the boost, but he seemed to enjoy it anyway.

  I busied myself with unpacking the boxes labeled for his kitchen so we would have dinnerware to eat off of when the pizza came. I was also just a little afraid to open any other boxes. My luck, I’d come across one filled with bondage toys.

  Keegan and Wyatt spent a half hour fighting over what to get on the pizza until I got annoyed and ordered so many different variations that we could have fed the entire fourth floor.

  Having just moved in this afternoon, Wyatt’s kitchen was understandably void of f
ood, other than the beer he somehow snuck into his fridge. I have no idea what my tolerance is to alcohol, but I know I haven’t had it since waking up at Mayford.

  With my track record so far with Wyatt, I figured alcohol probably wasn’t a good idea. Seemed logical at the time, but when I kept either stuttering or melting every time he so much as looked at me, I started to reevaluate that whole abstaining from alcohol idea.

  It was the jealousy that made me yank the beer bottle out of Wyatt’s hand. Not one he was offering, because that would make sense, right? No, he was already drinking this one and it was halfway to his mouth when I stole it and walked off.

  First bad decision of the night.

  Beers number two, three and four were my next bad decisions.

  I’m currently nursing bad decision number five, but the time to worry about bad decisions was like, three decisions ago, so I’m cool with my choices now. “People are so dumb!” Okay, that came out a little more slurred than I thought it would.

  “What people?” Wyatt laughs from behind me. I’m thinking sitting on the floor right in front of him was bad decision number six, because his legs part slightly when his body shakes with laughter and I slip right between them. Not a particularly intimate position, but I’ve been fighting off lustful feelings all night, and being closer to the object of my lust isn’t doing me any favors.

  “The stupid criminals on the show! Duh.” We’re watching Cops, which started out hysterical in the beginning of the night, but now that the alcohol has kicked in, I’m just getting annoyed. Annoyed is good. Annoyed is better than lust drunk. “These idiots try to run from the cops, even though they have to know it’s a waste of time, and then they have the stupidest excuses. I mean, if you’re going to do something as dumb as drive around with drugs in the console of your car, then at least have a contingency plan in place. Sure, it makes for good television, but these poor cops. I don’t know how they do it.”

  Laughing that damn laugh of his that makes my insides tingle, Wyatt leans forward to grab his drink off the coffee table sitting in front of me. He and Keegan wisely switched to water after one beer. At the time I thought, “Great! More for me!”

  Idiot.

  His large frame practically engulfs mine, and is it just me, or did the heat just kick on? He’s taking forever to grab his stupid drink. I’m going to suffocate in his scent if he doesn’t hurry up and pull away. Okay, in reality, it’s only maybe been a few seconds, but I swear every time I breathe him in, my blood alcohol levels spike. Don’t know how that makes sense, but it’s how I feel.

  The second he pulls away from me I’m jumping to my feet. Jumping would be bad decision number seven. Gravity apparently hates me when I’m drunk, and sudden movements have become my enemy. So when my hand reaches out for something to grab on to, that fickle bitch known as fate sticks my hand right on his crotch.

  Ho-ly crap. That is definitely something to grab on to.

  Blushing something fierce, I quickly right myself and fumble my way past Keegan and towards the small hallway. His apartment is exactly like mine, only the layout is flipped, so the bathroom should be easy enough to find.

  “Whoa, where you going, Peaches?” I scrunch my nose at the endearment, but still halt in my tracks. I haven’t heard him call Keegan ‘Peaches’ all night, so does that mean the nickname is unique to me? Why do I so badly want Wyatt to have given me a cute nickname?

  I’m twenty-six, so I’m sure I’ve lusted for men before, but not in my ‘new’ life. Mark is attractive, and I’m sure some women would even consider him sexy, but I just can’t bring myself to see him that way. No matter how much I try, all I see when I look at Mark is a companion. He wore his expensive suits well, and it’s easy to see his appeal, but I’m sad to say I feel nothing even remotely more than friendly towards him.

  Wyatt is all man. He’s rugged and rough around the edges, with his jeans that hug his muscular thighs in a way that has me picturing them flexing while he holds up against the wall, driving into me over and over. The basic cotton tee he’s wearing shouldn’t do much to add to his appeal, but it stretches taut across his chest, making my fingers itch, imagining how it would feel to trace those lines down his chest, across his hard stomach and down to his…

  My lust for him feels so raw and primal, so all-consuming that it feels impossible to think or even breathe when he’s near, so basically I’ve been suffocating all day.

  Keegan has a naturally flirty personality, and it probably doesn’t mean anything, but do I really know her well enough to make that assumption? Every time she laughs at something he says or touches his arm lightly, I have the bizarre desire to scratch her eyeballs out with my fingernails.

  “Peaches?” Wyatt’s voice snaps me out of my trance, and I realize I’ve been staring at him the entire time I was zoned out.

  Wait…what did he ask?

  Oh yeah, bathroom.

  “Knock it off with the cutesy nickname,” I spit out when I manage to find my voice. “I just need to use the restroom, if that’s okay with you.”

  “I’ll show you,” Wyatt says as he moves to stand. I’m unreasonably annoyed by his show of hospitality, but recognizing how unreasonable it is doesn’t keep me from getting pissed off at him for acting like I’m a child who needs supervising.

  “All these apartments are basically the same. I got it.”

  The stupid floor is uneven and it’s making my legs all wobbly. I can hear Keegan and Wyatt laughing behind me and it takes everything in me not to literally growl.

  “Haven’t unpacked the toilet paper yet! It’s in a box in the bedroom!” Wyatt calls out and I growl after trying a third door and still not finding a room with boxes. Similar or not, navigating an apartment that’s a mirror image of your own is extremely difficult while inebriated. Finally, I see a mattress on the floor behind door number four. There are several boxes scattered around the room, but my vision is blurry and I don’t feel like trying to figure out which box is labeled bathroom, so I just start tearing into them carelessly.

  When I come across the box filled with condoms and boxers I laugh. The next box I open steals all the laughter right out of me, though, when I come face to face with a handgun. I know it’s not uncommon for people to own guns and I have no reason to be afraid of Wyatt, but really, what do I know about him? And if I’m being truly honest with myself, it’s not so much the fact that he owns a gun that bothers me, as much as it is the realization of just how irresponsible I’m behaving.

  Forgetting all about the bathroom I walk back out to the living room, prepared to make up an excuse to get myself and Keegan out of there, but I come up short when I see them laughing together on the couch. Keegan leans into him and says something low in his ear, and when his mouth turns up into a sexy smirk, I hit my limit.

  Two days. I’ve been on my own two days, and I’m a freaking mess. Screw excuses, I just need out of here.

  “Hey, where are you going?” Keegan yells after me when I bolt to the door, but I’m too upset to stop. I’m fully aware of how random it is for me to just go running out of his apartment without saying a word, but I need some time alone. Time to reset and sober up and I don’t know, freaking get over myself or something.

  I’m already down a flight of stairs when Keegan catches up to me. I didn’t want to wait for the elevator and risk having to explain my sudden departure in front of Wyatt, so the stairs seemed the best option. Only now that I’m on them I’m thinking it was a bad idea, considering how I’m struggling to stay upright.

  “Hey, stop, what’s going on?” Keegan asks pulling on my arm, jerking me back. Not hard, but enough to make me stumble.

  “He has a gun!” I shout a little too loudly in the confined space. Hell, Wyatt probably even heard me.

  “So?” Keegan looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. Well, maybe I have!

  “So it’s a gun!”

  “Yeah, people own guns, Brailey. It’s in the freaking constitution. Owning a gun doesn’t m
ake him a bad guy.”

  “But we don’t know him! He could be a psychopath or something!”

  “Unless you found a meat locker and a machete, I’d say we’re okay. Pretty sure psychopaths tend to get a little more creative than just using a gun.”

  I can’t do this in the middle of the stairwell while I’m drunk and all mixed up in my head. “Whatever. Just let go, Key. I’m just going home to go to bed. I’m tired.” I don’t sound tired, I sound whiny. Plus, I don’t even technically have a bed, but I can’t ask to stay on her couch like I’d planned. She’ll keep trying to talk to me and talking is the last thing I want to do right now.

  “Knock it off, B. I know what you’re doing.” I’m still making my getaway, but Keegan is hot on my heels. I manage to make it to my apartment without falling and breaking my neck, but when I drop my keys, Keegan bends down and gets them before I can react. She opens my door and pushes me inside. “Sit,” she barks at me.

  With a mock salute I take a seat on the floor – because, ya know, no couch yet - and watch Keegan’s face go soft when she sits down next to me. I immediately don’t like the look she’s giving me; I’ve seen it many times from the staff at Mayford. That look is called pity.

  “Don’t look at me like that.”

  “I’m not looking at you with anything except understanding, so shut it.”

  “Huh?” I shut my eyes tightly because suddenly Keegan has three heads. “Why the hell am I so wasted when I’ve only had like…” I start ticking off beers on my fingers, but stop when it gets to four because math is hard.

  “Sweetie, you had six beers. My bad for not cutting you off, didn’t realize you were such a cheap drunk.”

  “Math is stupid.” Yep. Totally blaming math for being the reason for my drunkenness. “I’m sorry I’m acting like a crazy bitch,” I apologize and give her a pouty, puppy dog face.

  “No apologies necessary, B. I shouldn’t have flirted with him so much.”

  I smile at her, because Keegan really does seem like she’s going to be a great friend to have, and I…