I look down when I feel Will’s hand gently splay across my knee. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“You didn’t,” I say quickly, swallowing my feelings and looking up at him with the best smile I can muster. He nods slowly and turns his eyes to his laptop, opening it once again. This time I let him.
Without looking at me, he adds, “Tell you what, Annie. We’ll get you your committed relationship and your white picket fence, and if for some reason it doesn’t feel right and you want that adventure after all—” He looks at me. “Call me and I’ll come hold your hand on the flight.”
His words wrap around my heart and squeeze. And it’s in this moment that I realize BuzzFeed wasn’t able to capture the most wonderful expression I’ve seen from Will yet—tenderness.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Will
“As much as I appreciate it, you didn’t have to repair the siding, you know? Would’ve had Darell come back and fix it,” says Mabel. She’s hovering behind me in her pink pullover gown, steaming cup of coffee in hand.
“Believe me, I did.” There was no way I was going to make her pay to have something replaced that I intentionally broke. I didn’t even intend for Mabel to know I was the one who fixed it （or plans to fix it）。 But about five minutes ago she heard me as I attempted to fit the siding back onto the house and came marching out in her gown to ask what the hell I was doing out here at the crack of dawn. It’s around eight in the morning. Hardly dawn. But sometimes I forget that the rest of the world doesn’t share my same early morning rhythm of waking up at five and going for a jog.
Today it was raining when I woke up so I tried to stay in bed later. But then my thoughts took over and dove down every avenue I try to avoid. Like Ethan getting married to someone he barely knows, and wondering how I’m going to respond to the text he sent me before bed last night: Please don’t freeze me out. I need you during all of this.
I honestly don’t know what to say, though. I’m not ready to welcome his new fiancée with open arms, and I’m starting to realize it might not have anything to do with Ethan or Hannah. Last night as I listened to Annie talk about the kind of future she wanted, I felt that relentless tug in my chest again. Not because I want the harvest-parties and soccer-games life she mentioned, but because I want the ability to dream of a life with someone like Annie where my immediate thought isn’t: But how is it going to fail? Ethan seems to have unlocked some new part of himself that can just move past what we went through, and I think I’m wildly jealous of him for it. Maybe even a little bitter. Because the only difference in our upbringing is that he had someone older to take care of him—to make sure he was loved and hugged regularly.
I had no one.
Even now I have no one, but the difference is I’ve stopped waiting for someone to fill that role, and I’m better for it.
After I pushed thoughts of Ethan out, new ones—equally unwelcome ones—took their place. Ones that starred Annie Walker. The feel of her hands under mine. The way she smelled during my demonstration. Ugh. That damn demonstration. Before she showed up, I had promised myself to behave. Keep things buttoned up and businesslike. But of course Annie had to be Annie and throw me a curveball and make me act irrationally.
Now I’m stuck with the memory of her soft skin and parted lips and dilated pupils. She wanted me to kiss her. Badly. And I wanted to kiss her just as much. Probably more. And the worst part is, I’m not just physically attracted to her. I can’t get enough of hearing her talk, and I want to read every book she has stashed away, and I want more than anything to take her on an adventure she’ll never forget.
At least we finally got a real plan in place for these lessons. It was not an easy task, though, because I told Annie we should get her signed up for online dating—to which Annie spent a good portion of the time explaining how she in no way wanted to be sent pickle pictures. I told her to call them dick pics like the rest of the world, but she only grimaced and refused, saying that she didn’t even have any selfies to upload for a dating profile. That made me irrationally upset. Why doesn’t she have photos of herself? Because no one takes photos of her or because she’s not comfortable enough to be in them? I made a silent promise after that to take photos of Annie while I’m in town. And we vetoed the online dating completely. Instead, I’m going to take her out in a few days so I can officially see what sort of a “bad date” I’m dealing with, and we’ll continue from there.