Page 5 of Fragile Kiss (Fragile 2)
For the rest of the afternoon she did her best to try to distract herself. She’d been doing it a lot lately, she realized. It probably wasn’t healthy, but she needed to do it right now. It felt like the right thing to do: just ignore it until she got over it. It seemed like a good enough strategy.
The yard work sounds continued for hours with no signs of giving up. They went from morning until mid-afternoon with no lunch break. She wished she couldn’t hear them, but his yard was terribly close to her house and she was ultra-sensitive to any sound he made. She jammed her earbuds in and turned up her music and tried to read, but she couldn’t focus on reading with the music, so she took them right back out again. Every tiny noise seemed to boom in her ears. Overwhelmed, she slouched deep into the reading chair and stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, past the point of thinking any sort of thought at all.
“I want to see him.” The whisper coming from her mouth surprised her. She felt her body float out of the chair and drift down the hall into the bathroom, where she stood on the edge of the tub and peeked out the window.
There he was. Shirtless. Dripping sweat. He’d gotten even more muscular since he’d been in L.A. The sweat was getting lost in the crevices of his abs and carving a wet path down the V-shaped ridge from his hips to his groin.
Lillian, as much as it pained her mentally, felt her body start to grow weak.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. He was much too perfect-looking. How is he even real? She thought incredulously. Guys like this only existed in heavily airbrushed magazines, right?
Obviously not, because here was a real live one only a few yards away from her, furiously trimming his bushes with meticulous care.
“I can’t go out,” she told herself firmly. “I can’t go out. I can’t see him. I can’t touch him. I can’t feel him. I can’t do any of those things.”
She made a mental list of reasons why she shouldn’t go out and tackle him to the ground. They had broken up. She had broken up with him. They were both sad and trying to get over each other, and acting like nothing had happened wouldn’t help the situation. The list continued, and nothing seemed to give her a solid enough reason to stay inside the house, alone, without him. She desperately groped at the last excuse she could think of: it was Sunday, and she shouldn’t do that on a Sunday.
Like that’s ever stopped you before, sneered the little demon voice inside her.
“He’s leaving soon. He said he was only going to be here for the weekend. I can’t just have a fling with him before he goes. It’s wrong.”
Who said anything about a fling? Why not just a little reunion?
Lillian swore and stepped down from the tub. “Dammit.” She felt herself slowly lose control of her body again. Her mind faded into numbness, and her normally over-analytical self didn’t care at all. She knew what she was doing, but made no effort to stop.
She found herself at the front door. Opening it gently. Stepping out onto the porch. Descending the steps. Walking towards him. He had earbuds in also, and his back was turned.
Then she was standing directly behind him. Smelling the musk of his skin mixed with sweat and fresh grass.
She tapped his back.
Quickly he turned and faced her, as stone-faced as he was when he had knocked on her door a couple of days ago.
“Hi,” she murmured.
He took out an earbud. “Sorry?”
“I said hi.”
He stared. “Hi.”
“You’ve been working all day.”
“I thought you stopped paying attention to my yardwork schedule.”
“Why would I have?”
“Because we broke up, remember?” The bitter edge to his voice stabbed pain in her heart.
I didn’t break up with you in my heart yet, she wanted to say, but just looked around at the work he had done. She clenched her hand into a fist, trying to make small talk. “It all looks really nice.”
“Thanks. It makes me feel so much better.”
“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
“Why did you come out here, then?”
Shit, he’s ticked. He’s really heartbroken. As much as I am, she realized. She suspected it, but now it was undeniable. For a moment, she wondered what she should do and why she was even out here to begin with.
