Glancing up the sidewalk ahead of me I stopped, tilting my head to the right. Up ahead, bending down and putting his head halfway in a bush, Christian was muttering angrily to himself. It was confusing, but at the same time I couldn’t help but laugh. There was this guy, a guy that I had thought to be completely put together socially, hanging out of a bush on the side of the road. Very slowly I walked up behind him, watching him as he rummaged around in there, grunting and hissing.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He snapped upright, his cheeks red, a twig in his hair. It made my heart stutter a little bit. I lifted my eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. He pointed at the bush and looked down, and then pointed in the other direction and looked at me. It seemed he really didn’t have an answer to my question which was even more confusing.
I was about to tell him never mind, when a small meow came from the base of the bush. Suddenly my cat, wild and woolly, darted out of the bushes and jumped right into my arms. My mouth opened wide and I lifted its chin, seeing the familiar bell hanging from his collar. I gasped and hugged the cat tightly, tears burning at the corners of my eyes. “You! I’ve missed you so much! That mean man didn’t hurt you, did he?”
My cat purred loudly, rubbing his nose against my face. I looked up at Christian with a gleaming grin. “Did you have something to do with this?”
He shuffled his feet, straightened out his jacket, shrugging his shoulders. “I just didn’t feel right. You were sad, and that dirt bag had your cat. Someone had to stand up for it and he obviously wasn’t listening to you. So, yeah, kind of.”
I looked around, and then back down at the cat, my brow furling. “But, how did he get in the bush?”
Christian chuckled nervously. “When I went over there to get your cat, I really hadn’t thought the process through. I didn’t bring anything to take him back in, and I’ve never really been around cats. Well, your ex, after his three brain cells reconnected and he realized who I was, started talking trash. I was fine at first but it got to me… so I knocked him out.”
My mouth dropped open again, and I looked down at my cat. Christian chuckled, scratching the back of his neck. “Anyway, when he went down, your cat darted right out the front door. I’ve been chasing him all the way up the street. In fact, I’ve been pretty much chasing him for blocks.”
I pressed my lips together and glanced over at the house in front of us. He followed my gaze and let out a long sigh, his shoulders going loose, and his arms dangling. He turned toward the house and put his arms out. “He just came home. I was chasing him thinking that he was going to get lost somewhere and he came straight home.”
I giggled, snuggling the cat to my face. “Come on. Come inside, get warm, pull the twigs out of your hair, and I’ll make you dinner as a thank you.”
He didn’t hesitate which made me feel good. I took him inside, hung up his jacket and showed him to the living room where he could relax. It was obvious that he had been outside for hours and was freezing. I grabbed my fleece throw and tossed it to him. “I’m going to make us a cup of coffee, and then I’ll get dinner started. The remotes right there and your more than welcome to watch anything you want. Thank you by the way.”
He looked up at me and smiled, a very genuine smile. When I got to the kitchen, I giggled to myself excitedly as I leaned down and scooped some food into the cat’s bowl. He rubbed against my legs and purred and it felt so good to run my hand through its fur. I was inspired, and I felt truly happy. I couldn’t remember the last time that I just felt truly happy, not wanting to worry about any of the stressors of life, not wanting to worry about people or the bakery, or even my ex. As far as I was concerned, now that I had my cat back, I never had to talk to him again. All of it was because of Christian. He had gone out of his way to help me, to make me feel better.
I started a pot of coffee and poked my head around the corner. “How do you like your coffee?”
He didn’t answer. I shuffled out of the kitchen and over to the living room looking inside. Pressing my lips together, I held back a laugh seeing that he had covered up in the chair and was fast asleep. My cat rubbed against my leg and looked up at me, meowing as he stared over at Christian fast asleep in his chair. I shrugged. “Some things have changed around here. You’ll get used to it.”
When I walked back into the kitchen, I paused and took it all in. Reaching my arms out in front of me, I cracked my knuckles and loosened my shoulders. I felt like I was back to my old self again. The kitchen was at my disposal, and I was excited to cook for the first time in a long time. The confidence I had been lacking spread over me like a warm blanket and I couldn’t have been happier. I went to work, pulling the ingredients out of the cabinets, flipping through my recipes, and turning my kitchen into my laboratory. I took temperatures, I mixed things, I added spices and sweeteners, and when it came time to put everything in the oven, I didn’t even hesitate.
As the chicken roasted and the sides continued to cook, I sat down at the kitchen counter and sipped my coffee. If everything went okay in the next forty minutes, it would be the first meal that I had cooked since my ex broke up with me that I didn’t turn into a complete disaster. It was crazy to me that one man and one furball could pull me back that quickly out of my funk.
Christian
Rolling my eyes beneath my closed eyelids, I woke to the feeling of something soft vibrating against my chest. I blinked my eyes wildly and looked down, finding Rory’s cat rubbing up against me. I cleared my throat and looked around finding myself in her living room. Out the window it was dark, and I glanced at my watch wondering how long I’d been asleep. It had only been about an hour, but the smells coming out of the kitchen were amazing.
I ran my fingers through the cat’s fur and ruffled its head. “You’re welcome. I’m not sure if this is a showing of friendship or just thank you, but I’ll accept it. Though, you probably owe me an apology for hiding in the bush for so long right outside of your own house.”
The cat sniffed my shirt and sneezed, scaring itself to the point that it jumped down and ran off. I rolled my eyes and chuckled as I moved the blanket from on top of me and stood up. Stretching my arms high up into the air, I glanced around the room. It was a comfortable house, the kind you walked into and felt at home almost immediately. She had started a fire in the fireplace, and the furniture was big and overstuffed, the house tidy but lived in, and the food cooking in just the other room.
As my eyes skimmed the mantle over the fireplace, I saw a familiar sketch. Slowly I walked over and looked down at it. It was so familiar because it was an artist rendering of the main character for my book. My eyes trailed over to the bookcase where I found one of the art prints from the show. It was the same character, the main one. I lifted the picture off of the shelf and looked at it, shaking my head. She hadn’t told me that she was a fan, in fact, she told me quite the opposite. But as I put the picture back on the shelf, I suddenly realized that she wasn’t a fan of the show, she was a fan of the books.
Every book in the series, minus the last one, were lined up in a row in the center of the shelf. Each one of them looked well read, the pages changing color, the edges folded, and the spine slightly worn. Unless she bought them recently, just because she met me, it meant she had read all of the books. Suddenly her apprehension toward the show made way more sense.
One of the most common comments that I got, something that I completely agreed with was the fact that the show veered away from the books so much that it was almost another story. Even the main character wasn’t exactly how I pictured her when I wrote the books. If Rory was a fan of the series and had read them as many times as it looked like she had, I was surprised she wasn’t even more angry than what she was. That was my first reaction when I saw the show, livid, concerned, and disappointed. I had so many high hopes and dreams of what the show would be like, and they failed to meet my expectations on every level. It was one of the lowest points that I ever felt, finishing the firs
t season, my mouth gaping open, the books clenched in my hands. I had immediately called the publishing company, and the studio, and my agent. Each one of them got the same speech, the, “I’m going to kill you if you don’t get this right,” kind of speech.
Of course, from the outcome it’s obvious that they never took me into consideration. As I turned to walk back over to the couch, Rory appeared in the doorway. She grinned at me. “Good morning. Did you have a good nap?”
I didn’t say anything about the books right away, not wanting to scare her off. “It was nice. I have to say it was a lot better than the beds at the bed-and-breakfast. As nice as they are, their food is not very good, and their beds feel like they’re about 100 years old.”
Rory giggled. “That’s probably because they are. But tonight, you eat with me so hopefully it’s a little bit better. Are you ready to eat?”
I patted my stomach which was growling. “I don’t think that there’s a person in the world that could wake up to the smells of that food and not be starving.”
The truth was, I woke up in her house, and it felt perfectly natural. I felt at home. As much as I wanted to say it was the comfy furniture and the fire, I knew the real reason I felt at home and she was standing staring at me, waiting to take me to dinner.
Chapter 15
Christian
“Oh man, that sounds absolutely amazing,” Rory said as she laughed wildly sitting across from me at the dinner table. “I can’t even imagine how amazing it would’ve been to see that. To see your fist contacting his face. It would’ve been so satisfying.”
I chuckled as I swallowed bite of her delicious food. “It was pretty amazing. I thought his jaw would be harder than that, but nope. He went down like a sack of potatoes. And your cat, he looked at him, me, and the door. He didn’t know whether to protect him, pee on him, or make a break for it. Obviously, we know what choice he made.”
I glanced down at her cat, sitting next to me, looking up at me with hungry eyes. Rory shook her head. “That’s just amazing. Really, thank you so much. My house can finally be normal again. I’ve missed my cat so much. I know to other people it’s strange that I would have that much attachment to him, but he’s been in my life for years. It’s almost like having him back was the final step of getting over this whole breakup. It’s obvious that I don’t have feelings for him anymore, but I couldn’t shake the depression from it. But now that he’s here, everything seems perfect.”
It was so awesome seeing her that happy. Everything in me wanted to scoop her into my arms and kiss her. But I always felt like that when I was around her. I wanted to make her happy, calm, and settled. I didn’t want anything bad happening to her. I wanted all of her emotions to be positive, as if I could even control that myself. But I was satisfied with how my meeting with her ex went. I got the cat, I made her laugh by knocking him out, and I got a really amazing meal out of the deal.
I pointed at the plate. “This is probably the best meal I’ve ever had. I don’t know why you just own a bakery. You should own a full-on restaurant.”
She chuckled, picking up her glass of wine and taking a sip. “Running a restaurant is way more stressful than running a bakery. I knew that if I started a bakery and I only had myself to run it because everyone quit one day, business would go on as usual. If I owned a full-on restaurant, and my cook quit or my chef quit or my entire waitstaff quit, I wouldn’t be able to run that on my own. I wanted to make sure that I was always covered and that I was able to do what I loved. Don’t get me wrong, I loved cooking this meal, it’s been a long time since I had anyone to cook for, but my true heart lies with baking. Maybe it’s my sweet tooth, but it really brings me satisfaction when I pull that perfect batch of cookies out of the oven, or finish icing that amazing wedding cake.”
I nodded my head, knowing exactly how she felt. “I think I get it. When I’m writing something, and pushing through it, and I’m struggling and I just want to stop and watch TV or do something else that’s more exciting, one of those moments where I’m just tired of being a writer, but I finally finish a project, that’s an amazing feeling. Then sit back and think about how hard it was for me to get through it at times, but find this beautiful story at the end. And it’s not that I don’t like writing the stories, but sometimes I just get really frustrated and that takes the fun out of it. But when it’s done, that’s an amazing feeling.”
We sat across the table in silence for a moment, but it wasn’t an awkward silence. We enjoyed a sip of our drinks, looked at each other with care, and just felt comfortable with our full bellies and warm bodies. I wasn’t sure what it was but I had never felt that comfortable before. It was almost as if we were supposed to be that way. The pictures of my main character flashed through my mind and I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the table. “You want to know a little inside information about my inspiration for the characters in my book?”
She gripped her glass of wine in both hands and wiggled her brow. “Of course, I do. That kind of information I would pay for, but I’m not going to… just so you know.”
I laughed. “You just did, with this amazing meal, and the ability to knock out your ex-boyfriend. That is priceless.”
She nodded her head regally. “You are welcome.”
With a grin, I thought about what I was going to say for moment and decided that instead of giving the typical interview answer, I would tell her the truth. “During one of my interviews I told them that I got the idea for my characters from just people I had met on the street or people I knew in my life. And that’s true for some of them, but not my main character. My main character, the woman that you have pictures of in your living room, she was molded in my mind after my idea of who would be the perfect wife for me. Who would be the person that I could fall in love with and never get tired of? I created her with all of her flaws and her attributes to be basically a real person. I didn’t want her to be some perfect idea of a woman.”
When I looked up, after saying what I had to say, I found Rory staring down at her wine glass. Her brow was pulled together, and she looked deep in thought. “Are you okay?”
Her eyes shifted up at me almost as if I had startled her. She nodded her head biting her bottom lip. “Yeah, sorry. My mind went somewhere else. Actually, if you don’t mind, I probably need to get to bed. I’m gonna work in the morning and it’s past my bedtime already. I think I just want to cuddle up with my cat and sleep.”
I jumped slightly as she pushed back her chair with haste and stood up. I set my glass down and did the same, making slow movements as to not frighten or startle her any more than she already seemed to be. I followed her through the house as she collected my jacket and stood by the front door.
She smiled as she handed it over to me. “Do you need me to drive you back to your bed-and-breakfast?”
I shook my head, wanting to say something, wanting to point out that she was suddenly doing it again, but I didn’t even have the words. She opened the front door and I stepped out, staring at her. “Well, thanks for everything again. Be safe walking home.”
It was that moment, that moment of truth in my life that I knew that if I didn’t act right then, if I didn’t just go for it, I would never know. Every time I was around her, she would shift, going from this perfect little bubble that we made to pushing me away. I didn’t want her to push me away anymore.
As she shut the door, I put my hand up catching it. She slowly opened it back up, looking at me curiously. I reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her onto the steps and close to me. I held my hand at her lower back and looked deep into her eyes. I could see the vulnerability in her, the way her eyes glistened in worry as she looked up at me. I kept my hand loose just in case she wanted to pull away. She didn’t though, so leaning down, I kissed her lips feeling the explosion of fireworks between us.
We lingered there for several moments, until slowly I pulled back watching for her expression. She kept her eyes closed for another several seconds an
d whispered my main character’s name. I shook my head, thrown off. “What?”
She opened her eyes and looked at me, a realization on her face, but what of? I had no idea. She said the character’s name again and shook her head stepping back toward the door. She opened her mouth to say something, but she closed the door instead. There I stood, alone on her stoop, completely confused. I started to think about everything, her connection to my movies, her connection to my books, and why in the world she would say the main character’s name after I kissed her. I kept my hands against my thighs for a moment and then turned, beginning to jog down the steps. However, as I reached the bottom one, I slowed to a stop.
My eyes shifted up at the sparkling night sky, I listened to the sound of the breeze whipping around me, and I watched as my breath floated up into the air. Suddenly, that situation became very familiar. There was an obvious reason as to why she had whispered the main character’s name, and it wasn’t that she was crazy or obsessed. The way our first kiss happened, was so similar to that exact moment between my main character and her love interest in the book, that it was almost scary. I had felt all of the emotions I had described in that chapter of the book. Even the place, standing on the stoop underneath the night stars. If it freaked me out, then I knew it freaked her out even more. We were replaying my books, and Rory was the main character.
That wasn’t good enough for me though, no matter how similar it was to the love story I had created. Rory was not her, and she didn’t have the same fate as the character of my book. I didn’t want it to be a replay of the love story I had already written, I wanted it to be a new love story, our love story. Turning back toward the door, I knocked hard. It was obvious she hadn’t made it far either because the door opened almost immediately. Before she could say a word, I pulled her back out onto the stoop again pulling her up into my arms. She looked deep in my eyes. “It was just like the book.”
Promise Me Forever Page 8