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And yet—it seems that ithasto. I’m not going to make Chelsea move in with her mom. Few things feel as defeating as moving back in with a parent after graduating college.
Ask me how I know.
I certainly don’t have a back-up plan. But living here together for six months? No. This is … impossible.
Once again, I consider creative ways I can make my best friend suffer for surprising us both with this ridiculous living situation. While hecouldbe doing this out of the goodness of his heart, wanting to offer us both a rent-free option, it feels more like a test of some kind.
One I’m bound to fail.
Careful not to brush her body with mine, I move past Chelsea to the kitchen and grab the cordless vacuum John keeps inside the pantry. When I return, Chelsea is standing in the same place, watching me with an expression I can’t pinpoint.
“What?” I ask, pausing by the biggest pile of broken ornament pieces.
“Nothing.”
Her look is definitely not nothing, but I can’t tell what she’s thinking. In most areas of her life, she’s a wide-open book. You can read how she feels if she doesn’t outright tell you.
But when it comes to me, I feel like she’s written in a different language. Or some code I don’t have the cipher for.
“Okay, fine,” she says with a small laugh. “I just like how domestic you look with a vacuum cleaner.”
“Thank you?” I say with a chuckle. “I think. If that’s a good thing.”
“Oh, it’s cute. It’s—” She interrupts herself to gasp, her eyes flying open wide. “Wait—what time is it?”
“It was almost six when I came in.”
“No,” she breathes, and then, in a flurry of motion, she leaps over the back of the couch, barely avoiding the mess of ornaments. She stuffs clothes back in her duffle bag with frenzied motion.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
Chelsea freezes, bent over with a fistful of clothing. She stays that way for a solid five seconds before returning to her frenzied repacking.
“Chels?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“It’s clearly not nothing.”
She finishes with the bag, though the zipper has no hope of closing now. I’m not sure how she got everything in there to begin with.
Chelsea turns to me, and with a weak smile, she says, “I have a date in fifteen minutes.”
* * *
I’ve always hated the term falling in love. It sounds so sudden, so accidental. And maybe in some cases, it is.
But not for me. As I sit in my car, parked outside a restaurant where I have a perfect view of Chelsea inside with some guy, I can’t help but think that for me, it was more a slow tumble. Onesoslow, in fact, that I have no idea when or where it began.
I only know that now, I’m lying in a heap at the bottom of a hill, wondering how I’ll ever climb back up.
And yes, I know it might seem creepy to watch Chelsea on a date. I’m very aware. But when she said she’d never met the guy and didn’t actually know the person who set up this date, it kicked up all my overprotective instincts. I just didn’t feel right about letting her go alone. The need to keep her safe outweighed the need to not be borderline creepy.
Trust me—the last place I want to be is watching Chelsea on a date with someone else.
She laughs at something the guys says, and he smiles back at her. The tightness banding around my chest makes it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard tosee.
I want to be that man. The one Chelsea’s laughing with. The one she’s on a date with. Jealousy is so thick in the air I can practically taste it.
