This was crazy. This girl, in barely one week’s time, had managed to take the smooth out of my game, the gusto out of my sail, the confidence out of my stride. She’d rendered my bravado useless at exactly the time I needed it. The one time for decades past that I’d needed to show up with every last soldier in my firing squad, I’d shown up to the front lines with a pubescent drummer boy.
Attempting to put a lid on the negative self talk, I reached for the door handle, ready to launch myself inside with all the smooth, suffocating swagger of which I knew I was capable. My fingers hadn’t even wrapped around the handle when the door thrust open, slowing only after it collided with my face. I was pretty sure the sound I emitted sounded anything but smooth. Or manly.
“Patrick?” a familiar, sweetest sound I’d ever heard after being slammed in the face, voice shrieked. “Oh my goodness gracious. Are you all right?” She squeezed up against me, running her hands over my face, knowing something should be broken or gushing. Other than my ego, everything was just as intact as it had been two seconds ago.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I reassured her, taking a step back and smiling with exaggeration so she could see we didn’t need to spend our first date in the waiting room of minor emergency. “However, if you promise to run your hands all over me like a nun who’s fallen off the wagon every time I get hurt, I’ll be faceplanting into every door I pass.”
Her lines of concern drew tighter into an expression of amused accusation. A girl had never looked so beautiful while giving me a pointed look. And pointed, next to swooning, was the majority of looks the female masses sent my way.
“You’re early,” she said at last.
I could have lied as to why, but I didn’t. “I couldn’t wait,” I answered, shrugging.
“And unless you were running away from Ty, you’re early too.”
Shrugging, she mimicked my expression. “I couldn’t wait.”
Yeah, I’m pretty sure that bang I just heard was my heart hitting the floor. “I wasn’t sure if you were going to show. Especially since the warmest interaction I had with you this week was the cold shoulder,” I said in a teasing tone, although I wasn’t really.
Ty made it to class Wednesday and Friday and, with his presence, caused Emma’s absence. She was there physically, but not in spirit, I guess you could say. She hadn’t said a word to me, nor replied to any of my best attempts at making conversation. In fact, she hadn’t even acknowledged me. It was a dark form of torture.
I wanted to ask her if this shell of Emma had been created because of something I’d done or because of something Ty had done, but since she wouldn’t even spare a sideways glance my way, I lulled myself to sleep analyzing the hell out of that puzzle.
But here she was, smiling at me like I was one of her favorite people on the planet.
“Yeah, about that,” she said, her eyes drifting to the side. “I’m sorry I ignored you all week. It’s not that I wanted to, but Ty—” she caught herself, but I didn’t need her to elaborate. The question mark that was Ty was a one word answer. “It’s just that . . . it’s, it’s . . . it’s complicated,” she finished, looking like she’d just had a molar removed without Novacain.
“Really?” I said with sarcasm, feeling bad for her. Emma didn’t strike me as the girl to stutter over her words—whatever Ty had said, bribed, or threatened her with must have been convincing. “Uncomplicate it then,” I said, once her eyes drifted back to mine and I was able to talk. The force of tongue-tying was strong with this one.
She laughed. “Now why didn’t I think of that? Because uncomplicating the complicated is the easiest thing in the world.”
Leaning in, I said, “Want some advice as to where you should start with your uncomplicating endeavor?”
“Why not?” she said through a sigh.
I leaned in closer still, so close I could feel the beat pulsing in her neck. “It’s exceedingly uncomplicated over here. So why don’t you dump the baggage and come fly the friendly, uncomplicated skies?”
Leaning back from me, her eyebrows flew the friendly skies. “It’s anything but uncomplicated there,” she said, doing a full body scan as her face fell. “And I’m just now realizing how uncomplicated you’re making this for me.” Her hands pointed at me, flapping around in accusation. “Not only am I underdressed, I’m embarrassingly underdressed,” she said, looking down at her jeans and sweater combo like it had betrayed her.
“Ah-hah,” I said, balancing the box in one hand as I motioned with my head she should open it. “I’m so five steps ahead of you.”
Eyeing me like she knew I was up to trouble, she slid the lid off.
“I didn’t take you for the roses and flashy red dress kind of girl,” I said, handing her the so-large-it-was-almost-obscene bouquet of orchids.
She gave me a look while she fingered the watery silk gown in the box.
I chuckled, sending a silent thanks to Cora for being such a fashion goddess. A dress this smokin’ should be illegal in all fifty states. “But this is my date, and I’m a rubber necking red dress kind of guy.”
Her eyes rolled, but it was softened by a smile as she clutched the box against her chest. “Give me five minutes and I’ll be right back. Adorned in a dress that could only be conceived, designed, and selected by a man.”
“Guilty on all counts,” I said, feeling my chest pulling tight as she turned to head back into the building, away from me, like she was taking a vital organ with her.
“Oh, and thanks for the flowers,” she said, stopping abruptly like she’d forgotten something important. “I’ve never had a guy bring me flowers before.” She glanced down at the bouquet spilling out of her arms and a smile that was too personal to be interpreted spread.
“You’re kidding me, right?” I said, not able to comprehend that Ty was an even bigger loser than I’d thought.
She shook her head. “Nope, you’re the first. Besides, they’re ridiculously overpriced, an awful cliché, and their short lifespan is cut in half whenever they wind up in my care.”
“Hold up,” I cut her off, raising my hands. “I’m familiar with this act. Seen it a billion times, delivered a million different ways. You’re playing the part of the girl who’s saying only what she thinks we guys want to hear. Am I right?” I asked needlessly. They didn’t call me the female BS detector for nothing.
Her inability to make eye contact confirmed my assertion. “That’s what I thought. Come on, you girls were made to love flowers. You were made to sigh when your man arrives with them in hand, you were made to fret over arranging them, you were made to smell them every time you walk by them, and you were made to turn them upside down and dry them when they wilt.” I was getting a little too touchy-feely for my own good, so I did something out of character and clamped my mouth shut.
“Two words,” she said, her eyes lighter than normal. “Soap. Box.” It was followed with a yawn.
Emma Scarlett could throw it back at me as fast as I could toss it. Yes, that was me just falling harder.
“Hey, I’m just an honest guy. Brutally honest,” I said, because I couldn’t think of anything more severe than brutal. “You can get a reference from any one of my three sisters-in-law if you don’t believe me.” I suddenly realized that this was the first time I’d referenced, or even thought about, Bryn in days. And it was only in a round about, inclusive, sister-in-law kind of way. The Bryn bus was finally leaving the station. Wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles. “I’m not going to tell you what I think you want to hear, so please don’t do that to me. Sound simple enough?”
She looked a little shell-shocked from my additions to my soap box. “Sounds anything but simple,” she answered, staring at me like she didn’t know what to do or say to me. This was a predicament I was happy to help her with.
“I’m wrong then,” I said, reaching for the bouquet. “I’ll just take these filthy things off your hands and deposit them into the nearest trashcan.”
I’d never se
en a girl grip flowers like she had a ninja hold on them, but that was what Emma did. “Mine,” she said, spinning away from me and charging through the door.
I smiled from her excitement over a simple bouquet of flowers. If she reacted this way to flowers, she was going to bust something when she experienced what I had planned for the night.
“You know, I really do love flowers,” she announced, tilting her head back my way as she stopped mid-stride. “I was always secretly jealous of those girls who would get flowers delivered to them in the middle of class. There’s something incredibly sexy about a man who doesn’t give a flying fart what anyone thinks about his romantic notions.”
I choked back the laughter right before it burst. “Mental note posted,” I said, glad I’d put the local florist on speed dial earlier today. Better make it a favorite contact too.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, jogging down the hallway, the orchids and her hair bouncing to the beat of her stride.
And I was mesmerized. Completely stupefied until she disappeared around the corner. I didn’t need an official diagnosis to know I was crossing into the land of a heartbreak that was unrecoverable.
Shaking my head, I turned around to find Mr. D-bag of the Decade all but lunging up the walkway at me.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve showing up on a fake date with my girlfriend with flowers that cost more than the first bill you’ll get from the emergency room after I teach your disrespecting ass a lesson.” Ty’s face was bursting with angry veins, like he was ready to erupt any second.
I wasn’t worried that I’d have any problems taking him, but I didn’t want to wrinkle my tux and, in my experience, brawling with a no brains and some brawn grizzly bear like Ty was more wrinkle inducing than I cared to entertain tonight.
“Whoa there, big guy,” I said calmly, hinting with my hands he should take it down a notch or twelve. “Put the anger monkeys back in their cage and give them a tranquilizer while you’re at it.”
His nostrils started flaring. Not in the way you mean to when you show off to your friends, but in the anger spilling over way.
“Listen, I just thought since I was her boyfriend for the quarter and you’re her boyfriend for real,” I pricked my muscles to life, realizing this next comment was going to earn me a swing, “that one of us should get her flowers.”
I was right. The swing came at me fast and like he didn’t care if he nailed me so hard he went to prison for manslaughter. However, I had speed, countless battles fought and won to anticipate every move my enemy was about to make, decades of experience as a legendary (and no, I don’t mind saying so) strength instructor, and this one other little thing—Immortality.
His fist caught nothing but air as I ducked. The ungrounded power sent him toppling forward—as expected, of course—and I was there waiting for him. I rose from my crouched position just as he was falling over me so he could experience this virtue I had very little knowledge of—humility—a bit more extensively.
My shoulder ramming into his gut sent him somersaulting over me, falling to the ground with such force it shook the proverbial rafters. You would have thought I’d just launched a steel ox like Nathanial over my back instead of some adrenaline and testosterone driven Mortal.
“That’s your freebie,” I said, my voice just as calm as it had been pre-punch. “You come at me a second time, it’s open season on hot-headed assholes.” I glared down at him, wanting to squash him out like a smoldering cigarette. And I could have done it.
What Emma saw in this pond feeder was beyond me, but the only thing that kept me from making sure he spent the rest of his days sipping his meals from a straw was her. Whatever it was, she was with him. She wanted him.
It made me sick acknowledging it, but it made me even sicker to think about the pain I’d cause her if I did what instinct instructed me to do with Ty. I forced myself to take a step back and then one more just to be safe.
“You catch my drift, cowboy?” I asked, staring unblinkingly at him. I wanted him to catch the message, along with the threat, beyond a shadow of a doubt. “I won’t start it with you, but I will happily end it with you if you take another cheap shot at me.”
“That’s awfully tough talk for some metro in a pretty, shiny suit,” Ty said, his jaw clenching around the words. He lifted himself from the ground, holding my stare the entire way up. “And here’s a little quid pro quo for you. Keep your eyes and hands off my girl. You got that? Because if I even sense your thoughts turning in a heated direction, I won’t hesitate to show you the consequences of your actions.” His mouth twisted up, overdone so it was more comical than it was threatening.
I had to work really hard on not smiling so as not to beg another raw swing to the surface from him. “No offense to your superior school yard fighting tactics,”—I made a purposeful look down his body—“but I think I can take you. Actually, correction,” I said, raising my index finger, “I know I can obliterate you.”
This time when his smile formed, he got it in just the right spot to depict chilling. So much so it made my imaginary hackles stand on end. “That may be, but there are more ways than smashing your face in that I can think of to get a message across.”
“And those ways are?” I asked, crossing my arms, hoping Emma wouldn’t choose this moment to charge through the doors. I didn’t want her anywhere near this monster and his chilling to the core expressions or his vague threats.
“To be revealed,” Ty said, his eyebrows wagging as he turned and began lumbering into the night. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you, pretty boy. You try to take my girl, I’ll get you where it hurts.” He laughed to himself, the kind that wasn’t meant to be heard by average ears, but since mine weren’t, I heard every last note of his private laugh.
“Cryptic much?” I said under my breath, wondering if his threat was all bluff or if Ty really had an idea of what could hurt me. One thing I did know was that I didn’t want to find out, but I also knew given our situation, I’d probably be finding out just how proficient a bluffer he was sooner rather than later.
I didn’t even have one hot minute before the door opened and a flash of red confirmed who was approaching. I forced myself to calm down and push the Ty incident aside. I wouldn’t let him ruin another second of this night.
Turning towards the red flashing my way, my mouth opened to say something or drop to the concrete—I wasn’t sure—but it was the kind of predicament I wouldn’t mind finding myself in mouth deep again. Soon.
“Speechless. That’s a first,” Emma said, her hands fretting over the corset boning of the gown like she could make it disappear if she rubbed it hard enough. “However, I’m not certain if that’s speechless in a good way”—her fingers pulled next at the neckline, but neck-line was a stretch. The top of the dress covered nowhere near her neck—“or in a bad way.” She snuck a glance my way, no doubt as stupefied by my silence as I was. “Care to elaborate, or is this going to be one of those silent dates?”
I could have gawked at all the wrong places (or right places if you’re a being of the XY chromosome) or stared at the aforementioned areas long enough to get slapped, but the moment my eyes connected with hers, there was nowhere else I wanted to look. And I’m saying that with a woman who has the body of a 1940’s Hollywood starlet in front of me. Curves—God I missed a woman’s body. I curse the day starvation became a commonly accepted diet for women.
Shaking my head and giving each of my cheeks a slap, I answered, “That was speechless in a hot-damn-woman-there-are-hearts-breaking-around-the-world-tonight good kind of way.”
She laughed, doing a quick spin. “You have such a way with words, fake boyfriend.”
“Fake boyfriend?” I repeated, twirling my finger for an encore twirl. As expected, she didn’t cooperate.
“You’re not exactly my real boyfriend, but you’re not an ex-boyfriend either, so what else is there? Forced boyfriend, maybe. Do you like that better?” From the tilt of her brows, I knew she was
n’t expecting me to answer.
“Fake has such a negative connotation, though. And as far as this project entails, we’re to act as real as it gets.”
Her mouth opened, her eyes already objecting, when I stuck my arm out for her. “So, real girlfriend, are you ready to get this date on the road?”
Anticipating another objection was at the ready, I said, “I’ve got a night planned that I can guarantee you’ll be gushing to your girlfriends about on Monday.”
“Would it matter if I answered ‘no’?” she asked, flicking an eyebrow.
“Of course not.” I smirked, wagging the arm she’d left hanging.
She did the girl look of which I’d seen my fair share. The what am I going to do with you half eye roll, full head shake, look. This was the first time I’d seen that look without getting nauseated.
She sighed as she wrapped her elbow around my arm. I stood measurably taller. “We aren’t in Kansas anymore,” she breathed, running her eyes down her five figure gown before scanning my one figure less tux.
That was a first, too. Not buying a woman a gown. I’d bought hundreds, thousands probably. The first was caring so much about someone that nothing but the best would do, nothing substandard, mediocre, or even expensive would work. This little thing called selflessness was trying to crawl its way into my heart.
“Stay close, Dorothy,” I said, leading her down the walkway. I felt like the night was ours, the world was ours. “My land of Oz is as paved with landmines as it is with yellow bricks.”
“Don’t let my girl next door innocence fool you,” she said, glancing over at me. “I love a good adrenaline stimulating adventure as much as the next daredevil.”