Page 117 of Between the Blue
I press my lips together. “I was avoiding you.”
“Exactly,” he nods, bracing himself against my treadmill. “I don’t want to see you. You don’t want to see me. So, why don’t you do us both a favor and take one for the team?”
I look back and forth between his dark eyes, smoothing out my pony tail. “Well, because you asked…”
Ben’s lips pull up at the corners, and he steps back, starting to turn away.
“No,” I finish.
He spins back to face me, and I crank up the speed on the treadmill, taking off in a jog.
I watch as Ben’s face settles into a hard grimace, and I can see the conflict in his eyes between arguing with me further or not.
Clearly, he decides it’s not worth his time, because he grabs the dumbbells he was originally looking at and heads back to his bench at the back of the room.
Ben spends the rest of his workout on edge. Or at least it sounds like he does. I make it a point to not look at him in the mirror as I jog, but I can hear him slamming weights around and loudly dropping them when he’s finished with his sets.
I have no desire to be here with him right now, but I have even less of a desire to back down from him. To show him that he has any effect on me. That I’ll allow him to bother me. So I deal with it. And when my thirty minutes are up, I hit stop on the treadmill, planning to slip out of the gym door without a glance in Ben’s direction. But as soon as I hop off of the machine and start walking, I find myself staring at Ben’s back as he walks out of the door right before me.
I follow him down the short hallway to get to the elevators, only because I have to, and he seems to realize I’m behind him just as we make it to them. We both reach out at the same time to hit the up button, our fingers overlapping as we do so. We both yank our hands back, reacting as if we somehow burned each other with our touches.
I would never admit out loud that the feeling wasn’t that far off. Or that, despite how irritated I am with Ben, the simple brush of his fingers still sent an unwanted shot of electricity down my spine.
There are four total elevators and, somehow, by the grace of some higher being, two come at the exact same time that are set to go up. Ben and I each take our own, and I feel like I can finally relax for the first time in half an hour the moment my doors close.
Within a few seconds, the elevator dings, letting me know I’ve reached the eighth floor. I slip my room key out from the pocket of my leggings, already feeling the steaming hot bubble bath I’m about to take.
As I exit the elevator, I remember that I never texted Nana this afternoon to let her know I got here alright. I pull out my phone and start to type out a message to her as I turn down the hall towards my room.
I notice motion ahead of me and shift to the side of the hall that my room door is on to let them pass, but, after a couple of seconds, I realize that they never do. My feet slow as I lift my head, and then I become very confused.
My gaze shifts to the side, confirming that this is, in fact, my room. And then back to the space before me, just in front of my door.
To the place where Ben is standing.
“Why–” we both start to say at the same time, and then stop.
“So, are you avoiding me, or not?” I ask.
Ben’s brows pull together. “I never said I was avoiding you.”
I tilt my head.
“I said I didn’t want to see you.”
My face falls. “Right. Semantics.” I roll my eyes. “This game is reallysofun, but I don’t care to play it with you any more tonight. I’m just trying to get to my room.”
“So am I.”
I glance behind me, starting to wonder if I’m going insane. “Then why are you at my room?”
Ben’s forehead creases, and then he lets out a scoff, stepping closer to me. “Do you like fucking with me?”
“What?” I rear back.
“It’s been a long day, Cherry. And I’ve practiced a lot of patience–”
“Patience?” I laugh. “I’m sorry, have you picked up a dictionary in the last thirty years–”
