Inside Out - Lauren Dane [8]
“Thank you, Andrew.” He smiled at the use of his given name. “It means a lot to me to hear that.” She nodded and smiled at a customer who’d come through the door, and he felt like a toddler, aching to get her attention back.
“And what about you?” she asked when she got free again. “How are things? How’s your life? Work?”
He sipped and watched, took a leisurely detour around the curves of her cheeks, noting each freckle. He also noted she sidestepped the graduation comment. “We need to catch up, you’re right. What are you doing after you get off today?”
Surprise showed on her face. Luckily, it seemed to be the good kind of surprise. “I have to go by work—my other work—for a few hours. I have a paper due next week, so I need to work on that when I get home.”
“I guess two jobs and school sort of cuts into your social life. No time for a pizza then? We can be quick. I realize we haven’t talked in a while, and I want to know more. You know, about the program you’re in.” Not so much with the smooth. She set him off balance in a way no one else ever could. Shook him up so that he couldn’t even connect with his inner cool right then. He just wanted to touch her.
Her blush was back, and he ached to brush his fingertips against the swell of her cheek, to feel the heat of that soft skin.
“I wish. Pizza sounds good. But this paper is due next week, and with Erin getting closer to her due date, I want to get it out of the way.” She hesitated. “You’ll be in here though, still, right? You know, coming by time and again to get lunch and some coffee? We can talk then.”
“Couldn’t keep me away.” He’d have to find a way to get her to go out with him soon. If he didn’t snap out of this, he’d be trying to get her to ride with him to Brody and Elise’s wedding in two months. And he didn’t want to wait two months.
He loved the way her eyes widened with pleasure for just a brief moment before she spoke again. “Good. I don’t get out much to see my friends. I’m greedy for it I suppose.”
Like he was greedy for her. Maybe, just maybe, it was time to do something about it. To feed that need he had.
2
Ella pulled down the street toward her parents’ house. Wariness was a heavy weight in her belly at the twice-monthly dinner she was expected to attend. The weight of their disapproval and lack of understanding of her choices had put strain on their previously close relationship. There lived a wedge between them, and for a long time, Ella didn’t have the energy to deal with it, so she’d pulled away emotionally.
It hadn’t always been so. Her parents, especially her mother, had supported her through the time she was in the hospital and had even gone to court with her and Erin when Bill had been put on trial.
That had changed though.
She pulled up at the curb before taking a bracing breath. Before leaving home earlier, she’d stood at her open medicine cabinet, looking at the bottle of pills her doctor had given her to deal with the anxiety from the attack. It would have been so easy to give in to the lure of the chemical calm they brought her, easier to keep her emotions tucked away and protected.
She’d realized she was finally strong enough to open herself to her parents in hopes that they could find their way back to each other again and recapture that closeness they’d had before.
She knew they loved her. They just didn’t understand why she hadn’t moved back home. Her insistence at being independent and getting her degree had been perceived as a rejection of them and their attempts to help. They’d wanted to give her money, but it would have dented their savings, and they needed it now that her father had retired after an injury he suffered on the job. They’d wanted her to live at home while finishing school so she wouldn’t have the pressure of paying rent and having to work at the café.
How could she explain that paying her rent, having a job, finishing school, making her own choices to make her way in her life gave her the sense of control she needed after having none for so long? They didn’t understand it when she