Chapter Eight
~Delilah~
“I DEFINITELY DID not come over here expecting to attack you.” Ashley and I are lying on the couch beneath a blanket she grabbed from her bedroom. There’s a breeze whisking over our damp skin. We’re facing each other, and I’m glad she’s got an arm around me, holding my body against hers, because I’m so relaxed that my limbs feel like spaghetti.
Ashley smiles and kisses the tip of my nose. I love lying in her arms. It feels so right.
“I thought I was the one who attacked you. I was about to apologize.”
“Oh good. Then it was a mutual mauling.”
We both laugh.
The music is still playing, and as our pulses calm, she brushes my hair from my shoulder and presses her lips to mine.
“I’m glad you came over.” She kisses me again. “I missed you today.”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, either. I was so worried that you’d wake up this morning and decide I wasn’t worth the headache.”
Her eyes narrow, and as a breeze sails through the room, she pulls the blanket up over my arm.
“You’re worth waiting for, Delilah. But I’m not good at keeping my emotions hidden, and I’ve already had to hide them for the past two months.” She sits up, and the energy between us shifts and cools. “Let’s get dressed and sit on the balcony.”
As we retrieve our clothes from the floor, I watch her carefully, unsure if I’ve said something that caused her to separate so quickly. She steps into her shorts and smiles over at me, but it feels forced.
“Did I just say something that upset you?”
She walks slowly toward me as she pulls her shirt over her head. Then she gathers me in her arms and touches her forehead to mine.
“No, you didn’t upset me. It’s hard for me, Dee. But I can deal with it. I just want to talk for a while, make sure we’re both in the same place.”
She rubs her hands down my arms, warming me from the breeze. “Let me get you a sweatshirt.” She presses her lips to mine, then disappears into her bedroom while I retrieve my shorts from the foyer.
I like being in Ashley’s apartment because it’s hers. I can feel her presence in every room through her taste in furniture—comfortable and not showy, with pastel colors and wooden accents. She painted several of the pictures hanging on the walls. I recognize the one of the pier that she painted during the first few weeks after we met. On the wall outside her kitchen there are three small paintings. A scene of the shoreline, a painting of a boat, and another of the dunes. The one of the dunes wasn’t there last week when we were here watching movies.
She hands me a sweatshirt.
“Thank you.” I inhale as I pull it over my head. It smells like her, and I’m already planning to take it home with me. I watch her as she walks into the kitchen, evaluating every step, every glance, and hoping she’s not going to change her mind about me being worth waiting for.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“Sure. Hot chocolate?”
“I love that you’re not a big drinker.” She pulls me closer by the pockets of the sweatshirt and kisses me again. “I like you way too much, Delilah Armstrong.”
Delilah Armstrong.
She makes my name sound special, and she probably has no clue that she’s just helped alleviate my worry.
“I’m going to take that as a golden nugget, and when you get mad at me for something, I’m going to pull it out and say, Remember that day you said you liked me way too much?”
She laughs as she heats up the water.
“When did you paint this picture of the dunes?”
She shrugs. “I’ve been working on it the mornings that we don’t meet and sometimes in the evenings. Do you like it?”
“I love it. It amazes me that you can make every blade of grass look as though it’s moving with the wind.”
“You do the same thing with hair when you sketch,” she points out as she fixes our hot chocolate.
“Yeah, but that’s not using a paintbrush. I have much more control with a pencil.”
“Come on, let’s sit outside and argue about control.” She takes my hand and squeezes it with the tease, then leads me onto the balcony, where we sit on mismatched chairs and listen to the sounds of the ocean, the noises of people in the distance.
The mugs we’re drinking from are made of pottery, and they don’t match, either. I like that Ashley’s taste is eclectic more than conservative. My beach house was decorated by my parents, and I think it would be nice to have my own place. I love living with Wyatt and Cassidy, and Tristan and Brandon, but I’ve never lived on my own, and I think that I should.