Authors: J. L. Berg
After another few minutes, I heard his movements slow and return to a normal pace until he stopped altogether, and I heard him empty a bottle of water in a few chugs.
The broom then began making slow, methodical sweeps across the room, and I figured it might be a safe time to enter.
All that double-time pace must have caused him to work up quite a sweat. When I came into my living room, I was faced with Garrett the God.
Holy shit, that man should warn people before he takes his shirt off.
There were a lot of new additions to the twenty-five-year-old Garrett, starting with a set of eight-pack abs and a chiseled chest that made me think dirty, dirty things. Garrett 2.0 also came with a few tattoos, which I usually wasn’t attracted to. But on him?
Yum
.
I realized about a half a second too late that I’d been caught in my oglefest, and I immediately turned away, trying to hide the blush spreading across my horrified face.
“Um…I can do the sweeping if you want to take a break,” I offered, still unable to turn toward him.
If I looked at him, I would be looking at all of him, and then we’d be back to where we were a few minutes earlier—me swimming in my own drool, thinking of all the various ways I could get him up to my bedroom and the many, many things I could do with him once we were there.
“All right,” he said, holding out the broom just inches from his glistening body.
The pads of my fingers grazed his stomach as I took the broom, and I was pretty sure I’d whimpered as that tiny part of my body came into contact with his. Up until that moment, I’d thought eight-packs were a myth, a legend told by magazine editors and sorority girls, but no, they were real. That eight-pack was no joke.
I felt his eyes on me as I finished sweeping up the mess he’d made, and then he quietly watched me as I bent down and picked up each and every nail that had been strewn around the room.
Sick of feeling like an animal in the zoo, I decided to end the silence. “I thought you worked, like, a billion hours a week? How have you managed to get so much time away from the office?”
He seemed a bit taken aback by my question, but he gave a hint of a smile. His eyes always crinkled in the corners when he smiled. It made him appear younger, more like the boy I remembered.
“Been talking to Leah about me?”
“I mean, she was talking about you. I didn’t ask,” I answered, basically repeating the words he’d said to me days earlier.
“Hmm…well, to answer your question, I don’t have to work a billion hours a week. I just choose to.”
“Why? Why would anyone want to work that much?” I asked.
His eyes flew to mine in a heated glare. “Some people enjoy what they do. Maybe I’m just driven.”
“What do you do?” I asked.
“I’m in pharmaceutical sales.”
“Oh, please!” I said, laughing, “That’s total bullshit! You? In sales? You have to hate it. The Garrett I knew would have cut off his left arm before taking a job like that.”
I could see by his expression that I’d hit home. His eyes lost focus, and he wouldn’t meet mine.
“Yeah, well…I guess we all change, don’t we? The girl I knew would have never become a tight-ass accountant, so I guess we didn’t know each other as well as we thought we did.”
“No, I guess not.”
The rest of the evening was spent in stifling silence as I tried to remember the boy I once knew. I wondered if I would ever understand the man who was standing before me.
Do I deserve to?
~Garrett~
“You look lovely, sweetie,” my mother said over my shoulder.
I gazed into the floor-length mirror wedged in the corner of my parents’ bedroom. I’d snuck in here a few minutes earlier to try and adjust the monstrosity of a bow tie that was currently choking the life out of my windpipes.
“I feel like a penguin,” I muttered. I readjusted the bow tie for the hundredth time.
“A very handsome penguin,” she amended.
She spun me around, which was not an easy task. I was only sixteen, but I was a football player, and I practiced every waking moment. I was a walking, talking muscle machine, not that I was bragging.
“Are you ready for tonight?” she asked.
“Mom, it’s just a dinner.”
A dinner I had to wear a freaking tuxedo for.
“Garrett, Mia’s family is different from ours.”
“I know, Mom. They’re loaded,” I scoffed.
“It’s more than that. They think very highly of themselves and the people they associate with. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Mia would never hurt me,” I said adamantly.
“You really like this girl, don’t you?”
“I love her, Mom.”
Vibrations on the nightstand next to my bed tore me from my dream, bringing me back to reality. My eyes blinked open, and I groggily searched around in the dark for the source of what had awoken me. Palming my phone, I hit a button, hoping it would end the incessant buzzing.
Without bothering to see who the hell was calling me at this unholy hour, I said, “Hello?”
“Garrett? I’m sorry. I didn’t know who else to call.”
“Mia?” All remnants of sleep fell away at the sound of her panicked voice.
“I think someone just tried to break into my house,” she said.
“Did you call the police?” I was already standing, pulling on a pair of jeans over my boxers.
“No, I think they’re gone. A car drove by, and it might have scared them off, but I’m frightened they might come back. I didn’t want to call the cops. What if it was a cat? Or a drunk frat boy? I’m sorry. I’m being stupid…and I woke you up…” she trailed off.
“Look, I’m already dressed.” I paused, throwing a shirt over my head. “I’ll drive over now and check things out for you. Then, you’ll at least be able to go back to sleep.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be there in ten.”
I ended the call, grabbed my keys, and threw on a pair of shoes. I ran toward my front door, and the small mosaic mirror next to it caught my eye. Clare had bought the mirror for me while on her honeymoon a few years ago. I took a quick look at my refection as I undid the lock.
It was two in the morning. My ex-girlfriend—ex-fiancée, if I wanted to get technical—had just called. And what had I done? I had jumped out of bed to be her knight in shining armor.
“What the fuck are you doing, Garrett?”
My reflection had no answers, so I just turned toward the door, opened it, and walked out—toward Mia, which is where I always seemed to go. The irony wasn’t lost on me that in an entire city filled with thousands of people, Mia and I lived less than a few minutes, a few city blocks really, from each other.
The one person I needed to be the farthest away from was basically my neighbor.
In the time it took the radio DJ to run a few commercials, I was knocking on Mia’s door, impatiently waiting for her to answer. My eyes scanned the area, looking around for anything out of the ordinary. I was planning on walking around her house, but first, I needed to make sure she was safe.
The door creaked open, and there was Mia, standing in pink boy shorts and a tank top. My eyes quickly swept down her body, remembering how she’d felt under me, over me—
Fuck.
She’d just been scared out of her mind by an attempted robbery, and here I was, practically drooling at her door like some pervert, trying to figure out if I could see her nipples through her top.
And I could.
My hungry gaze obviously gave away my thoughts because she hastily covered her exposed body with the matching robe that had been hanging open.
Mentally shaking my head to clear away the pornographic thoughts, I asked, “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “Yeah, I haven’t heard anything else. I’m sure it was nothing.” She looked embarrassed and flustered.
“You don’t know whether it was nothing, Mia. Why don’t you go make yourself some coffee or something? I’m going to go check everything out. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
She agreed, and I turned to make my way around her house. I checked her window locks and gate. I found footprints near the entrance of the locked gate at the side of her house. They weren’t mine or hers. Of course, I couldn’t tell if the owner of the footprints had sinister intent, but it was enough to piss me off.
I walked back through her front door and turned to lock it behind me.
“We’re replacing all your locks tomorrow. You’ve got twenty-year-old locks out there, Mia. And you’re getting a dog.”
She was just sitting down with two cups of coffee at the kitchen table as I made my announcement. She turned and gave me a dumbfounded look. “I’m getting a what?”
“Locks. You need new locks.”
“No, the other part,” she said.
“Oh, you’re getting a dog.”
“Says who?” She crossed her arms over her chest.
I’d noticed it was a common trait of hers. The thin robe she was wearing did nothing to cover up her round breasts. Her pouty stance only pushed them higher, making them strain against the thin pink fabric.
“Says me. You are a single woman in the middle of the city, Mia. You need protection.”
“So, rather than being rational and getting something like—oh, I don’t know—a security system, you decide I need a dog?”
“Yes. Security systems are expensive and can be dismantled. Dogs can be trained, and they are good companions.”
Her eyes narrowed, and she threw her hands up in exasperation. “You are exhausting. I am not yours to boss around, Garrett.”
“Oh, I know that, Mia. You made sure of that a long time ago,” I practically spit, venom lacing my words.
I regretted the words the second they had left my mouth. I saw the hurt on her face as she looked ashen and gutted.
“I’ll look into the dog. Thank you for coming over,” she whispered.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I turned away. The coffee she’d made was still sitting on the kitchen table. It was probably now lukewarm from my icy words.
“Hey, why don’t you head upstairs? I’ll make sure everything is locked and secure,” I offered.
She didn’t even argue. She just retreated upstairs. As I listened to the soft sobs echoing down the hall, I took a deep breath and tried to center myself. I didn’t understand her. I couldn’t comprehend why a girl who had left me looked so destroyed.
She left me, damn it.
I should be the one with the right to bleed, not her.
What puzzle piece was I missing here?
After cleaning up the coffee and quickly checking the locks again, I quietly jogged my way up the stairs, and found her bedroom. The stark white walls and dark wood furniture decorating the room looked washed out against the soft light emanating from the small lamp at her bedside.
Curled up with a sheet pulled all the way to her chin, she was staring out the window at the crescent moon.
“Why did you come here, Garrett?” she asked softly, her attention still focused on the window.
Against my better judgment, I walked over to her bed and sat down next to her. I resisted the urge to touch her, to caress her cheek, to bend down and taste her quivering lip, and to tell her everything would be fine.
“I had to be sure you were safe,” I answered honestly.
She didn’t respond. She just continued to stare out the window, like she was searching for an answer from the man on the moon.
“Do you remember that dinner you had me go to?” I asked, remembering my dream from earlier tonight.
“The one at the country club?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I had strappy black heels on. You kept staring at them all night,” she said wistfully.
“They were the fanciest and sexiest damn things I’d ever seen. They made your legs look endless.”
I caught her gaze with mine, but she quickly looked away.
“You weren’t the only one who noticed. My mom caught you staring at my legs several times that night, if I remember correctly.”
I turned away, giving a hint of a laugh. “Your mom never was much of a fan of mine, especially that night. I showed up in my rented tuxedo, which was definitely not designer, and your mom’s nose curled up so fast that I thought she was allergic to me.”
Her eyes finally disengaged from the window, meeting mine, and she gave a small ghost of a laugh. “The only thing my mother was allergic to was being kind, generous, or understanding.”
“You say that like she’s not around anymore.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Her answer was final, so I didn’t push it.
“You were always willing to do anything for me.”
“I would have gone into hell for you,” I said adamantly. “For both of you.”
Chapter Six
~Mia~
“So, then what happened?” Liv asked as we settled in on the couch.
It was Saturday night, and we were slumming it in our yoga pants and hoodies at my house, getting ready to order Thai food and watch a movie on Netflix. I’d managed to push around the couch and old secondhand chair I’d picked up in a way that mimicked an actual living room despite the lack of flooring. It looked pretty depressing now, but I had a vision in my head of something much better, and someday soon, it would be beautiful. Until then, Liv and I would have to settle for sitting on crappy furniture.
On my half-completed floor.