Page 23 of Into the Mountains
“Honestly, the grumpy dad is okay with that. I have to run to the store later so I can stock the fridge for the week.”
Back it up, I agreed to hang with the kid, not babysit. I’m not good at babysitting. In fact, I’m probably the worst babysitter inexistence and I have the horror stories to prove it. “Um, I don’t—”
“I know. You told me one of the stories on our third date before…well, you know. But Ethan is a pretty laid back kid. He just needs someone to hang with him for a bit.”
“Why doesn’t he just go with you?”
“He usually does, but he insisted he get to stay in the new house and make sure Sable was adjusting okay considering she’s been to two new environments in such a short period of time so I promised him I’d get him a babysitter.” He raises his—my—coffee in a cheers and I have absolutely no regrets. “And now I have.”
He takes a sip and almost chokes on it, before he manages to swallow it down. “What in the actual hell is that?”
He starts digging into his pocket and pulls out a dollar bill. Without even looking away from my coffee, he reaches out his hand to Ethan who is already making his way toward us. He collects the dollar and shoves it into a jar on top of the island.
“That ismytriple espresso hazelnut latte with two extra shots of espresso.”
“How has your heart not actually stopped from drinking that much coffee?”
“It’s not like I drink that much every day. But like I said before, I didn’t get much sleep. I need the extra boost. Especially if I have to spend the whole day in your presence.”
He smirks as I set the drink holder along with his coffee inside on the counter and set my stuff down on the floor. My muscles feel immediate relief from the weight of my bags. Sheesh, if that isn’t a sign to stop turning down Avery’s invitations to the gym, I don’t know what is.
I don’t wait for Elias to give me my coffee, instead taking it from his hand and taking a long sip and savoring the taste of the extra caffeine, mixed with the sweetness from the hazelnut.
Ethan bounds over and takes his peanut butter banana smoothie from the counter. “Thanks for the smoothie, Charlie!”
I do my best not to cringe at the nickname and I think I get away with it until I see Elias lift his eyebrows.
“The last time I called you Charlie, you practically bit my head off. In fact, I think if we lived a different life as animals and I was the prey, you wouldn’t have even hesitated to hunt me down and do exactly that.” He takes a sip of his own coffee this time and lets out a softmmmmsound. “Much better.”
“He gets a pass. Mostly because he’s not an asshole.”
“That’s $10 to the jar, Charlie!” Ethan’s voice echoes from the stairs as he makes his way up, not bothering to turn around.
Elias tilts his head in agreement, not bothering to argue. Which is somewhat surprising. Most men would try to defend their actions. Justify them in some way. He doesn’t do that. He doesn’t deny the way he acted even though we haven’t really discussed it. Ever. Elias accepts it. I don’t even know if he tried to contact me after the one phone call he made that night after the date. Too much had happened in one day, by the end of that night, he was the furthest thing from my mind. Plus, I blocked his number, so even if he did want to contact me, there was no chance he could.
“So, what’s in the bag? The tools you use to sharpen your vampire fangs?” he asks, clearly deflecting. Which is perfectly fine, because I’m not sure I’m ready or even want to talk about what happened between us all those years ago. I just want to get through this project and move on and, well, I don’t know what comes after.
“Well, I’ve been up most of the night brainstorming and—”
“Right, the insomnia.”
I hate that he remembers anything about me. “I stopped by the hardware store and grabbed paint samples.”
“We aren’t really at the painting stage yet.”
I level him with a glare. “You think I don’t know that? I grabbed them to look at color schemes because the color scheme is going to have an impact on everything. The walls, the furniture, the style we decide to go with. If we start with a blank slate and start choosing things, they might not come in the color we want. And if we run into that later into the project that makes everything else that much harder.”
While the interior design aspect of my life is fairly new, I’ve researched and studied it a lot. And I’ve played enough Sims in my teenage years that it could practically qualify me alone to get the job done. In actuality though, I’ve been in classes over the last year since I moved to Blue Grove. I decided that if I wanted to throw myself into this, I may as well go head first into the deep end.
“I’d think starting with the actual building would make more sense. You can’t have colors when we don’t even have a layout.”
“Wasn’t that what you and Jacob were going over the other day?” Jacob had shown me some of their plans for the expansion. Little did I know he had a reason behind why he was showing me.
“It was.”
“Did anything change in those plans?”
His cheek sinks in like he’s biting it in frustration. A small smile tugs at the edge of my lips at the realization that I’m getting under his skin already.
