Page 6 of Unexpectedly Wanted
Sigh.
I shoved myself back into reality, but only continued to stare at the door. I still hadn’t made any steps closer.
Seconds later, the door actually opened, and there Remy stood, looking a little nervous.
“Hey,” he said, but it sounded hesitant. There was something about the way he was filling up the doorway, looking as if he had been waiting for me to get home, that caused something to spark in my brain. Clearly, this situation was too much for me to handle. “Do you want to make sure it looks good enough? I tried not to move your stuff too much.”
He sent me a lopsided smile. One that showed how unsure he was right now.
And me? I stood there blinking at him as I wondered if I’d just stepped into some alternate universe and hadn’t even realized it.
“My parents are going to be here soon,” I said, as if he didn’t already know that. He’d been there when my mother stated what time I needed to be home because she didn’t want to wait in the Georgia heat for me to get there.
This wasn’t my life. It couldn’t have been. I tried to replay the day, reminding myself of what my real life was like. Remind myself of who I was.
My head started to pound. But I didn’t have a moment to think about the headache that was on the horizon because Remy was all but pulling me inside.
I tuned him out as he walked me through my own house. It mostly looked the same, but it didn’t feel like mine anymore. My stuff was still there, pretty much everything where I’d already had it. Maybe a few things had been slid an inch or two to the left or right. But other than that, it was the same. However, the pictures of Remy in his army fatigues, arms slung around his fellow soldier brothers, were out of place. I wanted to study them closer, but felt strange about it.
“I figured that would have to do since there’s no time to get some of the two of us,” he said, and I felt a sour expression take over my face. He chuckled quietly at me. “It’s not that repulsive of an idea, is it? Come on, we could be friends if you didn’t—”
“Dislike you so much? If you didn’t get on my nerves and try to outdo me all the damn time?” Did I sound bitter?
There were some books that weren’t mine on the shelf next to the TV. I wanted to read their titles, but was too distracted and overwhelmed to move closer to them so I could. I jerked my gaze away, because otherwise, I’d become obsessed with it. There was a game console now sitting on one of the lower shelves of my TV stand. White and black, and looked like a reverse ice cream sandwich that someone was pinching at one end. I hadn’t played on a console in a long time, but I knew a PS5 when I saw one. A matching white and black controller sat next to the system, but what caused my eye to twitch was the mismatched red one behind it. Why not get two controllers that were the same? I didn’t understand.
My eyes continued to scan the room as my brain pointed out all the things that were out of place.
Then I saw it.
Sitting neatly on the end table beside the couch.
A wooden hand-carved puzzle box.
A David Berkham puzzle box, to be more precise.
Rare and hard to get your hands on.
I’d spent quite a pretty penny on mine. Which became worth it the moment I had solved it and had that box open in my hands. It was now perfectly put back together, sitting behind a pane of glass in the room that, for lack of a better word, I called my home office. Though it was mostly a shrine to all things nerd. It was my happy place.
The one sitting next to the couch wasn’t mine, but it was similar. I could tell by looking at the outside that it was one of the extremely hard ones.
I itched to solve it. And I was dying to know if Remy had, since I knew it had to be his.
“I got the feeling you didn’t cook a lot, so I brought most of my kitchen stuff,” he said before I could take everything in.
“Huh?” I said, dumbly. My attention was still on the puzzle box. I didn’t like that we had something like that in common. I also didn’t like all the questions it brought to the front of my mind.He said something about cooking,I reminded myself. “Uh, no. That is not a skill that I excel at.”
I mumbled something under my breath about how, of course, he could cook too. I knew he’d heard me by the way his brows drew together tightly as he stared at me, and this lingering silence caused some kind of pinch in my chest. If I didn’t know any better, I would have said I’d hurt his feelings with my comment. And the idea of that was making me feel funny. Almost as if I was sorry about it for the first time ever.
All that was quickly forgotten as I remembered the important thing I needed to take care of. Not another word was said as I quickly turned on my heel and darted up the stairs to my bedroom. I didn’t even stop to notice what had changed in it— what Remy had placed to make it less mine and more his. I snatched the navy-blue weighted blanket off of the bed and began folding it up frantically, but neatly. I hadn’t realized how heavy the thing actually was folded up in a two-by-two foot square as I lifted it with a grunt. I rushed to the closet in the corner of the room and pushed open the door. My eyes scanned the tidy space, gaze catching on every little thing that wasn’t mine. All of them mixed with my stuff, and if I hadn’t known any better, I would have thought everything looked natural… like those things belonged there.
Ignoring the intrusion— though, neat as it was— to my closet, I scooted to the back and tucked the weighted blanket under a pile of sheets on a shelf above my head. It was hidden as best as it could be. I’d hoped my mother wouldn’t go snooping that much to find the offensive comfort item. I’d never hear the end of it if she did.
She’d first point out that I had it, then ask me why I did. But it wouldn’t really be a question, and so I wouldn’t answer. Then she’d ask me if I was having “problems again.” I could practically hear the condescending tone she would use. Just the thought made me feel less about myself.
“Milo?” Remy asked from what sounded right behind me. I jumped, having forgotten he was here. I didn’t know how, seeing as his soft tees that were hanging right there happened to be brushing against my arm at the moment. “Hey? What’s going on?”
“I had to put this away,” I said, shifting the folded sheets in a way so it hid the blanket a little.
