Page 38 of Whenever You Call

“It has its good days and bad.”

Her eyes filled with sympathy. “It’s you guys who should own homes like this, you know. Not us. Not people who sing and dance and perform for a living, but those who fight what you have to fight and then head home knowing they lose sometimes.”

I wanted to curl up in a ball and fucking die at her feet. The guilt of everything ate away at me, starting at the tips of my toes and rising up like a slow, soul-eating poison that turned everything black in its wake. But I couldn’t react—not with her looking at me like I was some kind of fucking god she admired when the reality was that she’d eventually come to hate me one day.

“Everything’s the way it is for a reason,” I said, picking up the empty paper bag to fold it over on the countertop. “People like me might be there for the life-or-death situations, but I think a lot of us forget that it’s the stuff in between that the artists are there for. Music, books, film, television… it’s those things we turn to when we’re stuck in between living and dying. It’s those things we rely on to get us through. And you know what they say…”

“What?”

“The journey is always harder than the destination. The arts get us through the journey. The destination, well, it’s shorter.”

I chanced a glance up at her to see her smiling, her arms folded across her chest.

She was beautiful, and I couldn’t deny it for a moment longer—not that I ever had. Especially not when she looked at me as though I was the one who lit up the room instead of her. I’d screwed many women, and I had a lot of tales to tell of one-night stands that I’d fucked over by being so indifferent, but in Hannah’s company, I became a damn child. A lost boy who didn’t know how to function. One filled with lust and guilt and longing and self-loathing.

A total contradiction of everything Ishouldhave been for her.

She shook her head, her smile growing wider. “You really do know how to make me smile.”

Despite my desperate need to tell her the truth about everything, the only thing I could do was smile right back.

If I could be the guy to give her a moment of peace during her mourning, I’d let her take it. Even if it ruined me in the end.

We cooked togetherside by side, making small talk as we figured out how to make something good with both of us being so bad, but once we had the main ingredients laid out, and with the help of Google, we soon found our rhythm, working together as a team. Too many times, we’d reached for the same ingredient or the same utensil, and our fingers brushed past each other’s, making me pull back and look away as I tried to control my reactions to her.

I had to keep this platonic.

I couldn’t go there in my head—couldn’t allow myself to feel any more attracted than I already was. Not with everything she didn’t know hanging between us. I was there to be a friend, not stare into her eyes and imagine things I wasn’t supposed to imagine.

An hour later, we sat in the backyard under a thick canopy that overlooked the pool. The patio furniture was probably more expensive than my entire condo, and the same went for the low, slate table with an inbuilt fire pit in the middle.

Hannah saw me glancing around in some kind of muted awe, and she pulled her bowl into her lap, dipping her fork into the naked vegan burrito bowl we’d made together. She smirked before lifting her fork to her mouth and wrapping her lips around her food. Her eyes closed, and a small moan of appreciation rumbled in the back of her throat, making the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

Jesus.

I quickly copied her to distract myself, taking a fork-full from my own bowl and pushing it into my mouth.

Damn. It really did taste good.

“This is unbelievable,” Hannah muttered. “Did we really make this ourselves?”

“We did.”

“Holy shit!”

“Although, I can’t take too much credit. You did do the majority of the work, after all.”

“Only because you read the instructions so eloquently,” she said, lifting her eyes to meet mine, forcing me to look away again.

We ate in silence for a while, neither one of us uncomfortable, which was weird in itself, like we’d known each other a lifetime already. When Hannah finished eating, she pushed her almost-empty bowl away and fell back in her seat, her eyes drifting toward the pool. I studied her profile for a second too long, causing her to look my way and hold my gaze.

I wanted to look away again, but I couldn’t.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Yep.” I nodded and pushed my empty bowl away before sitting back in my seat, an elbow resting on the chair arm and hands resting over my stomach. “You?”

“I’m thinking…”

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