Page 8 of Playing With Fire
“I realize that I’ve been an ass,” I begin and she scoffs.
She’s not going to make this easy for me.
“Just look at me,” I say tugging on her ponytail. She pushes my hand away and turns around, her amber eyes are already narrowed into angry slits.
“Pulling my hair? Really, Satan? Can you at least pretend to be mature?” she asks.
I raise an eyebrow.
“We’re back to Satan?” I ask.
“We never stopped,” she says curtly. Her eyes are pinched and her mouth is downturned in a frown. I remember when she used to give me smiles as bright as the sun. Granted I was 8 the last time she did so but I still remember it.
“Okay, how do we fix this?” I ask, gesturing between the both of us.
“Fix what?” she asks warily.
“Us.”
For some reason, her breath catches at my use of that one word. I see her eyes soften for a second before they harden again.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why now? Who put you up to this? I know you, Ritchie, you don’t care about anyone but yourself. You certainly don’t care about me.”
But I do and that’s always been my biggest problem.
“I’m sorry.”
“You can’t solve this with a measly sorry,” she tells me.
I shrug.
“Then what else do you want me to do?”
She groans.
“For starters, stop being a jerk. I know it’s hard but I also know that somewhere in your cold, dead heart, there’s a part of you that wants to be kind.”
I snort.
“Doubtful.”
She sighs.
“I’ll just leave.”
She starts to walk away and my hand darts out to stop her. I’m surprised by the tingles that shoot up my skin at the touch. The goose bumps on her skin are proof that she felt it too. But we don’t have to acknowledge it. Then and now, she rouses feelings in me I don’t want to have. And then and now, I’m angry at myself for feeling them.
“I’m sorry, okay? For being a jerk. For being selfish and uncaring. I don’t really know how to be any other way but I do want to try to fix us.”
She gives me a look that says I’m going to have to do better than that and I decide then to be a little sincerer for once in my life.
“I’m sorry for pushing you away when we first met, even though I was grateful to you. I was thankful because you helped me, in ways that you can’t understand. You were like sunlight, blotting out the darkness in my life and because of that, despite the hatred and the harsh words traded, I’ve never hated you.”
She sucks in a breath and then she stares into my eyes, scrutinizing and trying to gauge my sincerity.
