Page 79 of Drawn Together
“Thanks for tonight, Flora. It was possibly the most selfish I’ve gotten to be in a while.”
With that, he leaves me alone on my front porch, freshly kissed and touched and held for the second time. And when he gets to his building, he waits for me to go in mine before he slips into his.
Lucky was the only word Fletcher could think of when it came to Flora Anderson.
How lucky he was to find her when he did. How lucky that she didn’t absolutely hate him. How lucky that a man who had the perfect shot at the most beautiful woman he’d ever had the pleasure of knowing screwed it up so colossally that he left a door wide open for Fletcher to slip into. He thought of his luck the whole way back to his empty apartment and through his nighttime routine, until he was tucked into his own bed, waiting for her light to turn off.
And when the worn, rough edges of the world began to fall to a close and the cool evening slid into the dark of night, Fletcher would lie there awake, listening to the sounds of the city and hoping she was listening with him across the street.
Twenty-four
Wordoftheday:Mired
Definition:to become involved in a difficult situation from which it is hard to escape
Somehow, I manage to avoid being completely alone with Fletcher for the next two days.
After our kiss the other night—when I inevitably reached the apartment in my hazed mind—Stephan and Lennon sat in the kitchen with the widest, most knowing grins I had ever seen.
“Hi.” If the pink in my cheeks wasn’t hint enough that my night was just that excellent, then the shake of my voice was.
“Hi,” Lennon mocks, drawing the one syllable out to four. “Care to share some details here?”
“Mmm, about what?”
Stephan looks between the two of us and nods. “Well, it’s getting late, so I’m just going to…” He slips out the kitchen door, and I swear I hear him giggle on the way.
So, once it was just the two of us, everything slipped out like melted butter on a warm Backside pancake. The only withhelddetails being the privacy of Fletcher’s secrets of his past with Ryan—which were not my business to spread—but, everything else was all hers.
I told her about the date—the food, the boat, the dessert, and the slow walk home. I told her about the kiss, which she apparently had a clear shot of from the bay window, and I quote ‘could see tongues,’ so let that be whatever it’s meant to be.
She squeals and giggles and claps her hands at the end of my story, like we’re at the theater or on a plane that just landed after some rough turbulence. It’s a mystery how I’ve gone so long without a girlfriend in my life—without someone to eat popcorn with and talk about your recent dates and wonder together where it’s going next.
And when I slip off into my room, Lennon croaks out, “Flora?”
I turn on my heel.
“Be careful with him, okay?” She smiles up at me, blonde bangs dangling across her right eye. “I know he seems solid, but this last year was hard on all of us and…he’s mine and Stephan’s best friend, so we just… Well, you know.”
I nod with a smile, but something in me recoils—tightens like a spring snapping into place. The reminder of the closeness in their friendship feels like a bucket of ice dousing my body.
It was just a kiss.
But even as I think it, I feel the lie echo in my chest. It wasn’t just a kiss. It had been slow and electric and frighteningly easy. The kind of kiss that shifts the axis of your whole inner world without your permission.
And now I was free-falling.
Because I knew what came next, didn’t I? I’d seen this movie before; I’d read this story a hundred times. The girl kisses the boy she shouldn’t. She lets herself believe, just for a second, that maybe it could work—that this could be the beginning of something beautiful. And then?
Then comes the fallout.
I sit on the edge of my bed, arms wrapped tightly around myself. My skin still tingles from everywhere Fletcher’s hands had held me—anchored me.
What if he regrets it?
What if I do?
What if I let myself want him—really want him—and I’m too much for someone again? What if I’ve just repeated history by falling into this situation with the first friend I’ve made since Austin, and I’ll have to watch everything implode? What if this little corner of joy I’ve built crumbles quietly around me, and I’m left alone to clean it all up?
