Page 27 of Beautifully Used
A knock on the bedroom door yanked me from my thoughts. I opened it to find Brodie holding a bag of ice in his outstretched hand for me and another pressed against his own mouth.
“You should come out; sit and hold this to your face for a while. I can put on a movie.”
I rubbed my hand gently over the spot where Jeff had punched me. I took the ice and touched it gently to my mouth. “Thanks, but I should probably go to sleep.” I turned back toward my bed, leaving him standing in the doorway. With one knee on the edge of the mattress ready to climb in, I stopped. Who was I kidding? I was being stupid. There was no way I’d be able to fall asleep, so I stood back up and turned to face him. “On second thought, I don’t think I could sleep much anyway.” I followed him to the living room and took one corner of the sofa, tucking my legs up next to me.
“Here, take these.” He held out a bottle of water and two round, red pills.
“What’s this?”
“Ibuprofen. It should help with any swelling, and ease the pain a bit.” Brodie took up the spot at the opposite end of the sofa with the remote in one hand and the bag of ice pressed to his chin in the other. “Any preference?”
“Anything non-violent.”
“Hmmm… that might be tough. There’s violence of some sort in just about everything these days.”
“True. I don’t care. Anything you want, then.”
“Let’s see. How about a comedy? Woody Allen or Mel Brooks?”
I shrugged. They weren’t my favorites, but I was willing to watch anything that might take my mind off what had happened tonight. Maybe if I got bored with something I’d fall asleep. Otherwise, I feared I might be awake most of the night. As Brodie scrolled through countless titles on the screen, the trees blowing in the wind outside the window caught my eye. I studied them as they swayed, the way they withstood the abuse from the wind was amazing. I wanted to be like the trees. Able to stand tall the next day after being slammed by something I had no control over; only dropping a few fragments of my self-esteem the way the trees only lost a few of their leaves.
“Wait, I got it.” Brodie smiled and flipped the TV over to the Internet and downloaded Zoolander. Perfect! I thought and curled up into myself, leaning my elbow on the arm of the sofa and my mouth against the cold compress I held in my hand.
Chapter 21
Brodie
* * *
I woke to the sounds of gunfire. Loud and obnoxious. I squinted at the TV. Some sort of battle was going on with robots, and I realized it was right in the middle of one of the Transformer movies, though which one I had no clue. I picked up the remote and clicked the TV off. Gabrielle was all curled up and sound asleep on the other end of the sofa, the toes of my feet just inches from her calf. I pulled my feet closer to me, swung them off the couch and stood. A nice, welcomed, cool morning breeze flowed in through the window I’d left open, so I grabbed a light blanket and covered Gabrielle before going to the kitchen to make some coffee.
I’m fairly certain we both fell asleep right toward the end of the movie. I don’t know where we’d gotten the energy to stay awake, but the movie had kept us laughing and not thinking about what had happened earlier in the night. My ultimate goal. I enjoyed hearing Gabrielle laugh throughout most of the silly movie.
I was surprised we’d stayed on the sofa all night. No, I wasn’t surprised I had, but I was surprised Gabrielle had slept there. I was glad she’d agreed to stay the night. I was also glad she seemed to be okay. No long-term emotional effects, but then I suppose things would have been different if Jeff had managed to get any further.
I finished filling the carafe with water and turned to pour it into the machine when Gabrielle came walking into the kitchen, rubbing her hands over her eyes. “Good morning,” she said through a yawn.
“Morning to you,” I said, reaching into the cupboard for a couple of mugs.
She smiled at me. That was a good sign.
“Coffee will be ready in a minute. Want something to eat?”
She shook her head. “Just coffee for now.” She sat at the table, elbow on the edge, her chin propped against her knuckles as she watched me.
I filled two cups with coffee and placed one in front of her before sitting down across from her. Silence ensued as I sipped my coffee and tried not to stare at her, but it was impossible. The way the sunlight trickled in through the window and caught the red highlights in her hair gave her an ethereal appearance. She didn’t have any makeup on, just like last night after her shower. She was pretty with makeup, but she was beautiful without it. Even with a busted up lip. Damn, fucking Jeff. Her lip wasn’t too bad though, no worse than my own. I still wanted to kill him for giving it to her.
“We must look a sight,” she said, breaking the silence.
I stared at her in amazement. “Are you psychic?”
“No. Not that I’m aware. Why?”
“I was just thinking about how you … we looked.”
And we both stared at each other, and in unison, quoted Ben Stiller from Zoolander, “Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good-looking?” It cracked us both up to the point of her getting a side ache.
It was good to laugh. God knew we needed to. Gabrielle sipped her coffee and stared at the wall. I was about to say something, when all of a sudden she whispered, “Too bad good looks don’t convey what type of person someone is.” She looked at me. “Can’t judge a book by its cover, right?”
