“Oh my god, you’re crying,” I point out. I know it’s kind of an obnoxious thing to say, but I’ve only seen her cry once and that was right after she and James broke up and she was drowning in guilt.
She turns her face away from me and frantically starts wiping away the tears with the heel of her palm. “I’m not.”
“You so are.” I can’t help but grin. “You are so fucking cute,” I exclaim and reach over, grabbing her by the arms and pulling her down on top of me.
“Stop it,” she says, half laughing, half crying as she props herself up on my chest. I find myself wiping away the remaining tears, both my thumbs gliding softly across her cheeks. “That was sad,” she mumbles, afraid to meet my eyes. She’s both embarrassed and shy, around me of all people.
I don’t say anything to that. I only stare at her. She looks so damn vulnerable, it’s doing something to my chest now, not just my dick.
“Well it was,” she goes on, frowning slightly as if she’s not quite sure why I’m still staring at her. “The little old man lost his wife and now he has nothing.”
“Aye,” I say but it barely comes out more than a whisper. I’m not thinking about the movie at all.
Her eyes are so blue and wide, like the morning sky, her mouth so perfectly full. I contemplate running my thumb over her lips before I kiss the salt off of them.
I should just do it. I should just fucking do it.
I swallow hard, my throat feeling closed up but I know it’s not from my cold. It’s from want and it’s from fear.
“What are you staring at?” she asks me and her voice warbles slightly.
Just fucking kiss her.
“I’m seeing double,” I whisper. It destroys the spell.
She almost looks relieved. “Oh,” she says. “You’re high as a kite.”
I give her a disappointed smile. “Nyquil.”
She straightens up and gets off of me, settling back on the end of the couch. “Well, if you pass out, I’ll leave you be.”
I’d rather you didn’t, but I don’t voice that to her. I lean back into the pillows as the movie plays on at a happier note. Soon she’s giggling and it’s doing more things to my heart. I wish I had more drugs to bury these feelings but it’s not long before I find myself dozing off anyway.
Two more years.
But a lot can change in two years.
CHAPTER FOUR
29
STEPHANIE
I did it. I finally did it.
Fog & Cloth is finally alive.
It’s literally taken me a week to come to terms with the fact that the doors have been opened, people have come in, and they have bought stuff, fucking bought stuff. From me!
I actually fucking did it. I own and operate my own god damn clothing store.
And it was done just in time.
At least, that’s what it felt like. I somehow timed the opening to coincide with my twenty-ninth birthday, albeit a week before it. For the last year it’s like I had a fire up under my ass and I was finally putting things in motion. If it hadn’t been for Linden’s badgering, I don’t know if it would have happened or not.
I think part of the push was the fact that he kept offering money to help me out with the business. Money wasn’t the entire problem. I had saved a lot over the years and my father had given me a large chunk when I finished high school, thinking I would go onto an expensive college degree. Instead I went to art school for only a year and put the rest away.
But Linden’s offers were extremely sincere and heartfelt. At times it was like he was the only one who reminded me to chase my dreams, I guess because he chased his dreams so hard. It was nice to have someone you wanted to make proud. My family had different dreams for me, the ones that they had wanted for my brother. They seem to forget sometimes that those were his dreams and his dreams alone, and they died with him.
A clothing store was never part of that agenda. But it’s what I wanted, even if they didn’t. And ever since Linden started harping on me about it, I decided to go at it full-on, tits out, and all that jazz. I wanted to show him that I could do it, without his money but with his support.
I wanted to show my parents that I was still alive, still here, and doing something worthwhile.
And I did. It was hard. I worked full-time at All Saints as I usually did and my evenings were filled with research and planning and saving. I rarely went out. I became an anti-social hermit most nights and when I wasn’t, I was schmoozing with people in the industry – buyers, designers, merchandisers, fabricators, models. I was filling every spare minute of my life with things and people that could be of service in the end.
Somehow though, the days of hard work turned into weeks of hard work turned into months of hard work.