Page 64 of Not Mine To Love

I opened the door, hoping I wasn’t making a huge mistake.

He came in quietly and took off the baseball cap he was wearing. It seemed like he had gotten dress in a hurry. He was wearing sweatpants and a hoodie.

“I’ve been texting you, calling you; what’s going on?”

I sat down wearily. “I just don’t know how I feel about us anymore.”

He sat heavily across from me and removed his hoodie. His hair was sticking up all over his head, and it looked like he hadn’t shaved in a while.

“Are you sick or something?” I asked, concerned.

“Do I look that bad?” he asked, looking up and rubbing his beard. “I’m not sick. I was just worried about you when you wouldn’t answer my calls.”

“Gosh, now you sound like Claire.”

“You talked to Claire?”

“She stopped by upset that Ana isn’t talking to her. yelling that she was missing.”

“Ana isn’t missing, I just saw her.”

Silence settled between us.

“Is she okay?”

“She’s fine. She just needs some space. Standing up to her mom really drained her. She’s never done it before.”

“She did a great job.”

“She did. I was proud of her.”

“Me too.”

“So why haven’t you returned my calls?”

“I just felt bad—really bad—about what happened between us.”

“Why would you feel bad about that?”

“She set us up, Julius, and we fell for it; who wouldn’t feel bad about that? She assumed the worst of us, and we proved her to be right.”

He shook his head. “So she orchestrated us meeting, and she counted on us being attracted to each other. Claire is calculating and mean, but she’s also perceptive. She noticed what was between us and capitalized on it.”

“Exactly.”

“But we fell for each other on our own terms. She didn’t manipulate that.”

He had a point, but I wasn’t interested in logic. I was upset still. I didn’t plan to let myself off the hook that easily. For some reason, it seemed that I wanted to be angry.

“Why are you still angry with me?”

“I don’t know. I’m just confused. I don’t know how to feel. I’m just a complicated mess.”

“Love isn’t complicated,” he said, standing then coming to sit next to me. “You either want to be with me or you don’t. Claire has nothing to do with how I feel about you, Becca. I love you.”

Everything he said made sense. All of it. I knew that I loved Julius, but I was also afraid. He was right. Claire had nothing to do with this.

And as I found myself climbing into his lap, Claire and her nonsense were the furthest things on my mind. We made love on the couch and after we were both spent, he told me that he loved me again.