Page 59 of Drawn Together
“Did you love him?” He asks, quietly.
I hesitate in my answer, because I don’t think I’d want to know his answer if these roles were reversed. Regardless, Fletcher takes the opportunity to respond for me. “Of course you loved him. You love everyone, regardless of if they deserve it or not.”
My smile is sad—a little pathetic, and a lot reminiscent.
“When you see some jerk of a guy cheat on his girlfriend, it’s never too shocking because they seem like the type. But Austin was never that kind of guy. He was sweet. He bought me flowers and candy and would sing me to sleep, even though he had a horrible voice. I think that’s why it hurt so much. I never expected it.”
Fletcher nods. “Ahh. I think I get it.”
“It’s like it would be so easy in life if we could just add up all the good on one side and all the bad on the other and find out which way the scale tips. But instead, we just have to use our judgment and understand that good people do good things and good people do bad things. And bad people do good things and bad people do bad things. I don’t think there’s one right answer to what is right or wrong.”
“Yeah,” Fletcher hums close to my ear. “I agree with you, but I still think he’s an asshole.”
I smile and open my mouth to answer just as my phone lights up in my lap, the entire room bursting in blues and yellows. Sloane is trying to Facetime, and the thought of her seeing me locked in a closet with a man right now is a less than appealing thought for tomorrow, so I decline it.
“Is that her?” Fletcher points at the contact picture spread on the screen. “Your sister?”
I smile and turn the device for him to see better. “It is.”
“You have the same eyes.”
“That’s about all we share beyond blood relativity.”
“I see some similarities. Tiny nose. That little curve of your lips is the same at the top. How it’s like two mountain peaks side by side.”
He’s noticed my lips?
“What do your parents look like?”
I unlock my phone and pull out my family photos to let him scroll through. He smiles at the picture of Sloane on my shoulders in the kitchen as she tried to turn off the smoke alarm after baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies gone wrong. There’s another of my dad and I on the boat—it was technically Austin’s family boat, but it felt like ours, too. He’s holding up a massive fish, and I am plugging my nose, asking him to throw it back. More of Mom and I when I was a toddler, always in her arms no matter where we were. Dad always says it took me forever to start walking, because Mom would never put me down, just toting me along everywhere she went.
“I can see them both in you.” He pauses on a family portrait right after Sloane was born. We’re in a field of daisies, on a checkered blanket—summer dresses and a blue polo shirt and smiles happily worn by everyone, even Sloane.
“You can?”
He types something out, and before I can ask what, he tosses the phone back to me. “Pretty.”
My entire face is burning hot.
Fletcher’s…really, really nice to look at right now. My eyes can’t stop trailing his, all dark brown with little flecks of green and honey hazel—like sunlight pouring over a deep forest. I work my way around his face: his nose—strong and a little crooked holding his glasses just right—the sharp curve of his jaw that flexes and moves every time he talks, the slightly uneven eyebrows, and the unruly mop of hair on his head and the way I long for nothing more than to run my fingers through it.
Has he always looked this…Fletcher? Slim and lean and veiny, all Adam’s Apple and big hands. Everything about him just swallows me whole—the way his legs bend in this closet, his jeans. The button on his jeans. The belt buckle that I caught a glimpse of when he first sat down and that I have been avoiding eye contact with ever since. The smell of him, like he just walked a mile in the rain to get to me. Every piece of this man is encompassing my senses, and the strange part is, I don’t think it’s the first time this has happened.
The blanket on the park's ground. The way his hands wrap around a mug when we get coffee. The horrible bike riding and the way he makes me laugh, and even the way he frustrated me from the day we met. Fletcher’s always taken up space in my mind, but maybe this is the first time I’ve allowed him to stay there.
“Flora?”
“Hm?” I am locked in on the way his abdomen is folding, stomach clenched in, and shoulders slumped over.
“You’re staring.”
I glance up and he’s staring, too. My eyes, my ears, the column of my throat down the round cut of my sweater. The tiny holes in it that reveal what I wore under his shirt earlier tonight. His eyesare bouncing, just like mine, and maybe it’s not the first time for him, either.
“So are you.”
“Yeah,” he nods, “I am.”
I open my mouth and shut it. What do I say to that? Look away? Have your fill, young mage? Look at me and stare and gawk, because that’s all I want to do to you right now? I am bubbly and giddy and warmer than I’ve been since moving here, and I want nothing more than to just keep looking.
