Beastly (The Ever After Collection)

by Noelle Marie

  “What are you doing here?” he asked excitedly, releasing her from his robust hold.

  “Eating, of course, you silly boy.”

  Charlie blushed. “Oh.”

  “What are you doing here?” Emma asked.

  “Oh, well, some girl – she had a weird name, Babe, or Bambi, or something – called in sick. Mom had to come in and cover her shift, so now I’m stuck here too, doing my homework. It isn’t even due until Monday!” He scrunched his nose up at that, and Emma couldn't help but laugh.

  “Yeah, but now you’ll have all weekend to play,” she pointed out sensibly.

  In many ways, Charlie was Mr. and Mrs. Potter’s miracle child. After years of fostering many different children and even attempting to adopt a few of them – each attempt had fallen through – they’d finally managed to conceive a child of their own. They’d named him Charles after Mrs. Potter’s late father, but everyone called him Charlie.

  “Can I sit with you?” he begged, looking up at her with wide eyes.

  Collette groaned from where she stood on Emma’s right.

  “Charles Maverick Potter,” Mrs. Potter scolded from across the diner. She’d finally spotted where her wayward son had wandered and was quickly approaching. Charlie looked just like her. They shared the same blonde hair, round face, and naturally flushed cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Emma, dear,” she apologized when she reached them. “I hope he isn’t bothering you.”

  “He’s fine,” Emma assured her. “I don’t mind. And you can sit with us if it’s okay with your mom, Charlie.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Potter owned and operated Downtown Diner, the only eatery in all of Maple Valley if one didn’t count the gas station. (No one did.) While Mr. Potter often worked the grill in the back, Mrs. Potter was the face of the diner, waitressing when the urge struck her or one of her staff called in sick, like Bambi apparently had today.

  Charlie turned his pleading eyes on her. “Please, Mom!”

  Mrs. Potter sighed, throwing the dish towel she was wiping her hands with over her left shoulder. “Oh, alright. But you better be on your best behavior, young man. And since you’re entertaining Charlie, your meal is on the house, Emma. You, too, Collette, honey.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. Potter,” they chimed in unison.

  “Call me Molly,” she insisted, as she always did, before bustling away.

  Luca cleared his throat. “As I was saying, right this way, ladies.”

  Emma and Collette, with Charlie in tow, followed him to the northwest corner of the diner, where he promptly seated them in a booth with neon orange padded seats. “Your server will be right with you,” he assured with a wink before walking away.

  Emma groaned, sinking into her seat in embarrassment while Collette laughed.

  Charlie pouted. “What’s so funny?” he demanded.

  Neither girl answered him because their combined attention was suddenly stolen by a bit of commotion erupting on the other side of the dining room. A dumbfounded Luca was shaking his head, his hands high in the air in a placating gesture, as a flustered-looking Heath looked to be chewing him out for something or another before abruptly storming away.

  Emma’s wide brown eyes connected with Collette’s equally stunned green ones across the table. “Surely that, whatever it was, wasn’t because Luca sat us… well, you… here, right?”

  Emma shrugged helplessly.

  Collette huffed. “He’s such a jerk. What did you ever do to him?”

  Emma knew Collette meant the question to be rhetorical, but Emma couldn't help but think she had done something to him. She’d tried to hold his hand. She’d touched him. And unknowingly, she’d crossed some sort of invisible line.

  But she wasn’t about to tell Collette that.

  Fortunately – or maybe, unfortunately – before Emma was forced to say anything, Heath was there at their table, cheeks still faintly flushed in what had to be anger and hair haphazardly falling into his eyes. “Can I get you guys anything to drink?” he asked, the words strained as they left his mouth, but overall polite enough.

  Charlie beamed up at him. “Hi, Heath!”

  Heath’s entire expression softened at the enthusiastic greeting. “Hey, Charlie,” he greeted him quietly.

  Collette cleared her throat, and Heath’s features immediately shifted back into a hard mask of indifference. “I’ll take a water,” she ordered in a clipped tone, “with two slices of lemon please.”

  Emma frowned. She knew it was only wishful thinking, but she willed the hard line of Heath’s mouth to pull back into a smile. She willed the obvious tension in his shoulders to flee. Most of all, she willed that he simply look at her. But his eyes remained glued to the table where his hands were grasping the edge, knuckles white against the dark wood.

  “Ow!”

  Sharp pain erupted from where Collette abruptly delivered a vicious kick to her shin from across the booth. Emma glared at her friend, who was staring at her pointedly. Why would she…? Oh. Oh.

  She’d been staring like an uncouth fool.

  “Water’s fine,” she blurted before she could embarrass herself any further, trying to ignore the fact that she could feel a hot blush creeping up her neck.

  “Great,” Heath answered tightly before slamming two menus down on their table with more force than necessary. “Feel free to take your time ordering,” he added sarcastically before walking away.

  Collette waited until he’d disappeared into the kitchen to smirk at her. “You so like him.”

  Emma’s face grew impossibly hotter. “Shut up, no I don’t!”

  Charlie peered up at them, his brow wrinkled in confusion. “What are you guys talking about?”

  “Nothing,” Emma assured him quickly, shooting a particularly heated glare in Collette’s direction. “Nothing appropriate for little ears anyway.”

  The daggers Emma thought she was throwing at Collette with her eyes must have been of the plastic sort, though, because the redhead remained unmoved. In fact, a positively maniacal gleam suddenly presented itself in her eyes. “Hey, Charlie,” she said sweetly, “Heath lives with you and your parents, right?”

  Charlie instantly brightened at Heath’s name. “Yeah, he’s my new brother! He’s so nice. He plays Candyland with me!”

  Why did it suddenly feel like Emma was melting into her chair? So he played board games with his little foster brother? It wasn’t that utterly adorable.

  “Hmm,” Collette hummed, before continuing to dig for information. “And has he ever happened to mention any girls he likes while playing Candyland with you?”

  It was Emma’s turn to kick Collette from under the table.

  “Hey!” her friend cried in protest, but it was overshadowed by Charlie’s antics.

  “Ew, no!” he insisted, nose crinkling in disgust. “Girls are gross. Tanner Jennings told me that they even have something called cooties! First I thought he said cookies and I was confused. I like cookies. But then he spelled it, C-O-O-T-I-E-S, and he said it was some sort of disease.”

  Collette huffed, unreasonably disgruntled that an eight-year-old boy thought girls were gross. “Girls aren’t diseased,” she protested. “You should know better than to listen to that loony Jennings kid. Although… I suppose I can see why he was confused. His sister probably does carry a disease of some sort.”

  His sister, of course, was Lulu.

  Charlie was confused, but he seemed to know intrinsically that his friend had been insulted somehow. “I like Tanner. And all girls have cooties.” He frowned, glancing up at Emma. “Wait. You don’t have them, do you, Emma?”

  He looked positively devastated by the possibility.

  Emma was in the midst of assuring him that she most definitely did not have the ever dreadful cooties while Collette pretended to gag from across the table by the time Heath made his way back to their booth with their drinks. He set the glasses of water down carefully, the one sans lemon slices in front of Emma.

  “Have you guys decided
what you want to eat?”

  Emma and Collette had yet to examine the menus, but like most of the people of Haven Falls who frequented the diner, they knew the dishes listed on the laminated pieces of paper by heart. Only the special of the day – usually soup and a sandwich of some sort – ever changed.

  “I’ll have the chicken and bacon wrap, hold the mayo please,” Collette ordered promptly.

  Emma took a deep breath, gathering up every last bit of courage she had in an effort to confront Heath about their American Literature project. She knew it was time. It was the reason they’d come to the diner in the first place, after all.

  “Emma?” he demanded rudely before she could force herself to speak. “What do you want?” The words were pushed out through clenched teeth and the hidden connotations in them, imagined or not, were enough to make her finally snap.

  “What I want,” she said hotly, “is to talk to my Lit partner about a massive project we were assigned together. For some stupid reason, however, the unfair jackass is refusing to acknowledge my existence, let alone actually speak to me about the project that’s worth a third of our final grade!”

  Charlie’s eyes widened to the size of saucers and Collette’s eyebrows shot up at Emma’s sudden outburst. Heath, however, didn’t look impressed in the least. He slowly lowered the small pad of paper he was using to jot down their orders, his steely blue eyes finally meeting hers.

  “Maybe,” he pointed out lowly, “the reason he’s ignoring you isn’t nearly as stupid as you seem to think. Maybe he’s just looking out for your best interests since, you know, you seem perfectly incapable of doing such a thing yourself.”

  Emma continued to meet his stare head on, ignoring how Charlie continued to gawk and Collette was suddenly pretending to be interested in something on her phone. She wasn’t going to be cowed by Heath, not when that was exactly what he wanted. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “Whatever,” he scoffed, not explaining himself at all. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  Emma threw her hands into the air in exasperation. “You haven’t even given me a chance to understand!”

  Heath pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger in an obvious show of irritation. “Fine,” he suddenly bit out. “You want to work on this project so …fine,” he repeated. “Let’s do it.”

  Emma blinked at his unexpectedly obliging, if not exactly amicable, response. “Um, okay,” she agreed quickly, half afraid he’d change his mind. “Your place or mine?”

  “Yours,” he answered immediately.

  Emma worried her bottom lip, suddenly wondering if he knew that she knew the Potters were fostering him. “Alright,” she agreed, releasing her tortured lip. “Are you busy tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow is… fine.”

  Apparently everything was.

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  They continued to stare at each other. Not in an effort to soul search as some people might assume. Rather, Emma felt as if they were silently daring each other to back down.

  Neither did.

  Collette cleared her throat. “Well, now that that is taken care of, you were going to order, Emma, weren’t you?”

  Doing her best to ignore the weird tension that descended at Collette’s reminder, Emma offered the menus to Heath. “I’ll take the roast beef commercial,” she ordered as politely as possible.

  “Coming right up,” he bit out before snatching the menus and walking away. Emma made a point not to watch him.

  Heath must have talked his way into a break after that because it was Luca who brought them their food. When they were finished eating, they made sure to leave a generous tip (the meal had been free, after all) before rising from their seats. At the last possible second, Emma grabbed their bill – $0.00 though it was – and quickly penned down two simple words. She wasn’t sure if it would be Heath who’d pick it up or if he’d even “get” it, but she wrote them anyway.

  I’m sorry.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It wasn’t until the next morning that Emma realized what a thoughtless error she’d made. She had never clarified with Heath exactly what time it was that he would be coming over. Sometime in the morning? The afternoon?

  Not only hadn’t they picked a time, but she didn’t even know if he knew where she lived. Mr. and Mrs. Potter knew, of course, considering she’d been their go-to babysitter before Heath had arrived, but would he think to ask them?

  Emma wasn’t sure.

  Honestly, she wouldn’t blame Heath if he decided not to show up at all.

  Which was partially why she was so embarrassingly relieved when the doorbell rang a little after noon. Quickly cramming the last of three turkey sandwiches she’d made for her father to take to work that night into a Ziploc bag, she rushed to the living room. She didn’t even bother to peek out the window before throwing open the door.

  It was him. Heath. Tension she hadn’t even been aware was there fled from her shoulders. She smiled. “Hi.”

  For the first time since Emma had met him, Heath looked unsure of himself. His hands were stuffed deep in the pockets of his coat as he shifted his weight from foot to foot on her doorstep. “Hey.”

  The car he’d driven to her house – Emma assumed it was his – was parked on the road behind him. The old Chevy with faded red paint clinging to its body and a sizable dent on its hood had character, and Emma could appreciate the fact that someone in her class owned a vehicle nearly as ancient as her own.

  Heath cleared his throat, abruptly bringing her attention back to the boy in front of her.

  “Sorry,” she apologized, cringing in embarrassment. “Why don’t you come in?” She stepped out of the way so he could do just that. “Do you want something to eat before we get started?”

  Emma had tried to work away the nervous jitters she’d experienced while waiting for Heath to show by attempting to bake brownies. “Attempting” being the key word. They’d turned out harder than what she imagined Heath’s head to be. She was fairly certain they wouldn’t kill him though. Fairly certain.

  Emma didn’t have to worry about being indicted for murder by brownie, however, because Heath just shook his head.

  Emma frowned, forehead crinkling as her eyebrows drew together. She hoped Heath didn’t plan on giving her the silent treatment the whole time he was there or it would be next to impossible to get any work done.

  Before she could worry too much about that, however, Heath proved her wrong by hastily thrusting a piece of paper under her nose. “What’s this supposed to be?” he demanded.

  Upon closer inspection, she recognized the paper to be the note she’d written on her receipt yesterday at the diner. The two simple words she’d sprawled out glared up at her accusingly.

  “Is this some sad attempt at making fun of me or something? Because-”

  “What?” Emma interrupted, finding her voice. “No!” she exclaimed, appalled that Heath would think that. “Of course not! I just…”

  “You just what?”

  “I was just trying to apologize!” she exclaimed.

  Obviously.

  “I wanted to say that I was sorry for cornering you at your job and…” For whatever reason the second part of her apology was harder to spit out. “…and for grabbing your hand at the party at Percy’s house. I… I didn’t mean to pry or make you feel uncomfortable.”

  Heath stared at her, his expression betraying his incredulity. “You are exasperating.”

  Emma’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “Uh, have you met you?”

  That shocked a laugh out of him, the rich timbre of it making Emma’s face suddenly feel much too warm. He shook his head. “I practically shove you into a lake and yet you’re apologizing to me.”

  Emma barely managed to refrain from rolling her eyes. “You didn’t shove me,” she asserted. “I fell.”

  Heath shrugged. “Yeah, because of my asshatery.”

&n
bsp; “You may have been a bit… abrupt,” she finally settled on, “but I fell because the dock was slippery and I have about as much poise as a newborn deer when I’m on dry land. That’s hardly your fault.”

  Heath didn’t look like he believed her. “So are we going to work on this project or what?” He was clearly finished with the current line of conversation if his change of subject was any indication.

  Emma blanked for a second. “The project. Right. Uh, you can sit on the sofa if you want. I’ll run upstairs and grab my book bag.” She could see that Heath hadn’t bothered to bring his.

  Hurrying up the stairs Emma grabbed both her backpack and her laptop before heading back down to the living room. In the minute she’d been absent, Heath had settled himself onto the plaid eyesore taking up a decent chunk of the room’s space. His coat hung off the sofa’s arm as he openly looked around the room. Ignoring the way one side of his mouth lifted in a smirk when he caught sight of the kindergarten picture of her that her dad had sitting on a bookshelf near the television, she plopped down next to him. A respectable distance away, of course.

  She dug out her notes for their American Literature project. “Okay, so I was looking at the list of books Miss Blanchett gave us – the half that are still available anyway.” Most of the novels she’d already crossed off in black ink. They’d already been chosen by her classmates that had been assigned responsible partners. “I think there are still a few interesting prospects left. I’ve actually read a few of them before.” Yes, she really was the biggest book nerd ever. “Have you bothered to look over the list yet? What do you think?”

  Heath shrugged, still mostly preoccupied with taking in her living room. “Whatever is fine.”

  Emma frowned. “Okay. Well, I was thinking of maybe going with Gone with the Wind or The Catcher and the Rye. How to Kill a Mockingbird is-

  “Okay,” Heath abruptly agreed.

  Emma blinked. “Okay?”