Текст книги "Something True"
Автор книги: Jessica Roe
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Текущая страница: 5 (всего у книги 7 страниц)
Chapter 9
Ibbie
I TRY TO get on with my life over the next couple of days but everything I do feels robotic, forced. My evening with Walt replays over and over in my mind to the point where concentrating on anything else proves to be impossible. The kiss, the different side to him, the dance, the kiss. Oh man, the kiss.
Sabrina notices – probably because I accidentally turned all of her white shirts pink when it was my turn to do the laundry.
“I love you, but if you don't get a grip on whatever's got your panties in a twist then I will have to kill you,” she informs me firmly. “God, what are the guys at work gonna say when I show up in pink?”
People at work notice too, because I fluffed my lines up on two consecutive nights and normally I'm one hundred percent on form.
Blair also notices, and out of everyone she's the one who'll let me get away with it the least. “You're quieter than usual,” she observes. It's one of my rare days off, and instead of sleeping in and watching TV in my sloppy jammies like I should be doing, she's dragged me out to Lake George so we can hike Prospect Mountain. It's actually a lot of fun, but since I complained pretty much the entire four hour drive out here, I definitely won't be admitting that. She claimed it was because she wanted to get some photos, but though she's brought her camera, I know it's just a ruse. She just wanted to get me away so she could find out what my deal is. “It's freaking me out. Quiet Ibbie is wrong. Just wrong.”
“God, am I really that talkative that it weirds people out when I have nothing to say?” I wonder out loud. “Cringe attack.”
“So. . ?”
“Maybe I've just decided to transform into a quiet person.”
She eyes me doubtfully, then we both fall about in laughter, unable to keep straight faces. We come across a large boulder and sit down for a couple minutes of rest.
“How's the wedding planning going?” I ask to change the subject, because if you brought up an upcoming wedding to most brides then it would be a surefire way to distract them for at least, like, five hours. Unfortunately, Blair is not most women.
“Haven't even started,” she replies. “Now spill.”
I actually do want to spill and I'm not sure why I didn't the second Walt dropped me off the other night, so with a relived sigh I tell her everything. Blair is the best friend ever, because when I tell her about Alex ignoring my calls her eyes narrow angrily on my behalf, and when I tell her how nice Walt was and how he drove me out to his grandparents' house, she keeps shtum even though I know she wants to ask me a million questions, and then when I tell her about Fauna and about Aleix's reaction to seeing me, she stands up and balls her little fists and threatens to hunt him down and pulverize his nuts. I'm tempted and all, but I make the tiny spitfire sit her ass back down because I'm not finished. I tell her about Walt kissing me in his old bedroom and about the windmill and the dancing and the second kiss. And when I tell her about Walt admitting that he wants to be with me it's such a weight off my chest that I can't figure out why I didn't tell her sooner. Usually I love to gossip. Walt's got me in such a frigging tizzy!
She takes it all in, nodding her head up and down and not being at all surprised and shocked like I expected her to be. I mean, a little awe and outrage might be nice. Jeez. “So Walt's into you?”
“I guess so.”
“Totally called that one.”
“You did not.”
“Did so. When he first started texting you.” She sticks her tongue out triumphantly when I realize she's right. “So how do you feel about him?”
“I don't know. Confused, mainly.”
“Do you think you might wanna try dating him?”
“I don't know,” I repeat, getting frustrated – mostly with myself, but I'm fully prepared to take it out on her. That's how I know Blair really is my BFF, because we can give each other a hard time and still love each other after.
“You must know,” she continues, not willing to give me a break. “Deep down. Do you want to be with him, yes or no?”
“I. Don't. Know!” I protest. We're both getting annoyed now. “It's complicated.”
“No it's not. Yes or no, Ibbie? Yes or no?”
“I don't-”
“Yes or no?”
“Blair-”
“Yes or no?”
“Yes!” I yell, and then I freeze when I realize what she was doing. She was pulling an answer from me because she knew I'd never be able to come to a decision on my own. Damn it, she's a sneaky son of a gun!
Her grin is triumphant. “Ha!”
“No,” I say. “I don't mean. . . How can I want to be with him just because he was nice to me for one night? It doesn't make up for an entire year of him being awful.”
She scoffs, arching one of those perfect eyebrows at me. Girl's got some strong eyebrow game going on. “Yeah, because you were so innocent. You remember the time you put that stuff in his drink to turn his pee blue?”
I smile at the memory of him leaving the bathroom looking seriously freaked out. “Oh yeah, that was a good one. But he totally started this whole thing. I tried to be nice to him when we first met.”
“Well I think the two of you have had sexual tension the whole time. That's all it is. Sometimes people just can't express when they like each other. I remember back when I was falling for Silver I used to make fun of him all the time. Mostly just to get his attention, I think.”
“You still do that.”
She grins. “I still want his attention.”
I pink her cheek. “You're so friggin' cute.”
Slapping my hand away, she asks, “So what are you gonna do about Walt?”
“Do?” I blink. “Nothing!”
“Don't you think you should at least talk to him?”
“Um, no. He said he was going to give me a month, therefore I have a month to hide out in my apartment and do nothing.”
“Seriously, you're just gonna wait? And stew? And get all up in your head about everything when you could just confront him?”
“You waited when Silver left you for three months.”
She rolls her eyes at my sullen pettiness. “Because I was still in high school and he was still a teacher. But you and I, Ibbs, we're not high school kids anymore. We don't have to sit around waiting for life to happen to us. We can just live it.”
I stand up, throwing my hands in the air and refusing to admit that she's making sense. Mostly because I don't want to admit it. “You're so annoying! Why are you being so pushy?”
Her arms fold across her chest and she glares at me. “Because I know you like him. And I just want to see you happy. Because I love you to bits!”
“Yeah well. . .I love you to bits and pieces. AND PIECES!”
We continue to scowl at each other for almost a whole minute before we finally lose steam, both realizing that as far as arguments go, this one was pretty lame. Neither of us are good at fighting each other.
Blair is the first to cave and smile at how dumb we are. “That was fun.”
I sit back next to her. “Yeah, we should argue more often.”
She nudges me with her shoulder. “You need to talk to him.”
“I know.” I nod, because she's right. Even if it's just to get answers to the squillion gazillion questions zooming around in my brain, I really do have to talk to Walt. “So seriously, it's been over a month and you haven't even made one teeny, tiny little wedding plan yet?”
A long sigh escapes her as she shrugs. “It's just that. . .I want to be married to him more than anything, but I don't know if I can deal with the stress of a big wedding. I'm not that kind of girl, you know? If I could, I'd just drag him away to some hot beach and do it right there in our swimwear.”
That actually sounds like it would be perfect for Silver and Blair, but, “Felicia would kill you.”
“Yeah. Sometimes I feel like the wedding day stops being about the bride and groom and becomes more about everyone else.” Her face brightens. “Oh hey, maid of honor, right?”
That's my Blair. Even when asking something as huge as this she still manages to sound cool and casual. I squeal happily, throwing my arms around her shoulders and squeezing the eff out of her even though I'd totally known it was coming – because if she hadn't picked me I would have had to end her. “You know I will! I'm so excited!”
“Good. Hey, you wanna start heading back? I'm starving.”
“Me too. I'm so fungry I could eat a horse. If we make our way back down now we could find a diner or something in time for dunch.”
Her eyes roll skyward for a second. “Lunch dinner?” she guesses after a moment.
I wrap my arm around her shoulders as we begin the hike back down to where we left the car. “Naw, you know me so well.”
Chapter 10
Walt
“SO WHEN DOES Jem move in?” I ask Reid as we grab a beer in McCaulley's, an old pub style bar we used to hang out a lot in before Jemma came into our lives and we all somehow migrated towards fucking Kandy's. Yeah, that was before Jemma brought around Ibbie and turned my whole damned world upside down.
Who am I kidding? I wouldn't change a thing. I'm even admittedly fond of Jem these days, and we definitely had a rocky start.
“Not 'till January,” he grumbles. “Dahlia's new room mate can't move in 'till then and Jem doesn't wanna leave her in the lurch.”
“You sure you've thought this through?” I joke, because getting Jemma to move in with him has been the only thing the guy's been able to talk about for goddamned months when she hasn't been around.
“You know it. When you get a girl like Jemma, you do everything you can to hold onto her. Trust me.” He gets a text on his phone, eyes me for a second, then speedily replies. I'm about to question him when we're interrupted.
“Hey guys,” Christen greets as he and Fábia join us in the booth. Tonight it's the original gang, just like old times. Not going to admit it to these fuckers, but I kind of miss the others.
Fábia smirks. She's always smirking about something. “Oh good, the annoying kids aren't hanging around tonight.”
“Be nice,” Christen chides playfully, because you can never take anything Fábia says seriously. That girl likes to be a bitch just for the sake of being a bitch. “Besides, you like 'em all really.”
She rolls her eyes at him, but she doesn't deny it. Aside from Blair, who seems to have had a worse upbringing than most of us, Jemma and her friends were never the kind of people we'd thought we'd end up being friends with. They're more the kind of people we'd have sat back and made fun of. Truth is, they've all grown on us.
“Anyway,” I lift an eyebrow at Fábia. “don't think we don't know what's been going on between you and Dahlia.”
Christen almost spits out his drink. “You and Dahlia? I didn't know you swing that way.”
She shrugs. “It's the twenty first century, Christen. I can swing whichever damn way I want.”
The next thirty minutes is filled with Christen trying to persuade her to share the details, and me and Reid laughing our asses off when she reaches forwards and twists his nipples so hard he screeches like a little bitch.
“HEY YOU!” We all turn in surprise at the sound of the loud, angry voice and I almost fall out of my seat when I see Ibbie storming towards us across the room. She's got just about every male eye in the bar on her, and not just because she looks so out of place here in that little floral dress. No, she's got every male eye on her because she looks fucking glorious when she's all furious and revved up like she is right now. Even I can appreciate that, and all that anger is focused right on me. I resist the urge to stand up and start yelling at all those sleaze bags to get their eyes off my woman.
I check my watch, realizing that she must have come here right after her show tonight. My stomach flips just at the sight of her. I've damn near obsessed about her these last few days; obsessed over the feel of her body, the taste of her lips, that startled look in her eyes when I finally came clean about wanting to be with her. I've been tearing myself apart, half of me desperate to skip the month I promised her and just go do my best to win her, and the other half regretting being so forward with her. I've been acting chicken shit about the whole situation, I'm not gonna lie.
She comes to a stop before me and I stand automatically, opening my mouth to shoot off something shitty like I've grown accustomed to but finding that I've lost my voice. I thought I had a month to figure this shit out, to figure out what I was going to say to her!
“Hey, Ibbie,” Reid calls, giving her a little wave.
Ibbie smiles back at him, but her expression morphs into a snarl when she turns back to me.
“Miss me already?” I drawl when I finally remember how to talk. “How'd you find me?”
“Reid told me.”
He shrugs when I turn to him. “Sorry,” he says, obviously not sorry.
“I can't even. . . Ugh!” Ibbie pokes my chest hard, not caring that we're in a bar full of people and our friends are watching on in amusement. “What the frigging hell is your deal, you big. . .you big. . .jerk?! You can't just say all those things to me and then not say anything at all! Who even does that? You do that. This is such a you thing to do. I'll bet this is just an elaborate scheme to mess with me, right? That's your deal, you're messing with me.”
My heart yells at me to tell her my deal is that I'm crazily, uncontrollably in love with her, but my brain points out that it's probably a little too soon for those kind of declarations. She's not ready to hear me say that. So instead I give her a small smile, deciding that if she doesn't care about airing this out in front of everyone then neither do I. “I like you, Ibbie,” I admit. “This isn't a game.”
This time when those two pink dots that I love so much appear on her cheeks, it's not because I've pissed her off. “Yeah, well I got that when you stuck your tongue in my mouth the other night.”
Fábia, Christen and Reid all visibly perk up, watching our interaction with shit eating smirks on their faces. I hadn't told anyone about what had happened.
I said I didn't care, but I start to become uncomfortable under the scrutiny of our audience. Stepping closer to Ibbie, I lower my voice and ask, “Can we maybe do this somewhere else?”
“A million percent nope.” I should have known she'd be difficult.
Letting out a long, hard done to sigh, I decide to just man up and get this out there. “I don't just mean that I like you physically. I mean that I fucking like you. All of you.”
She starts poking my chest again. It hurts, but it's so damned adorable that it's impossible to keep the grin off my face. This only serves to enrage her further. “You're so frigging ignorant, that's what you are. You're frignorant! How can you say that?! How can you say that you like me when all you've ever done is hate me?”
I shrug, masking my desperation with amusement. “Well obviously I'm just not great at showing it.”
“You're not even funny, Walt. Stop trying to be.” The finger assault stops and she takes a step back from me, pouting. If she wasn't so serious right now, I'd kiss that pout right off her face. “How can I even believe you really like me when you've been so horrible to me? You've called me names, harassed me with texts, pulled stupid pranks on me-”
“So have you,” I point out.
“-and you've never even been to my show, not once.”
“Actually I've seen it like, five times,” I admit, and then I really do get embarrassed when she looks at me like I've gone bat shit crazy.
“No you didn't. When? I never saw you.”
“I sat at the back.” God, I'm a pussy.
“Wow.” She raises her eyebrows, looking almost impressed for a moment. “You must really like Pride & Prejudice.”
I roll my eyes at that. “I like YOU, idiot.”
“This is getting really boring,” Fábia complains. “I thought there was gonna be more fighting or somethin'. Scratch his eyes out, Ibbie. It'll be funny.”
“Fábia, leave 'em alone,” Reid complains, though it's a halfhearted effort. The girl's never going to learn to play nice.
I glare at my friends, because they're really not fucking helping. It occurs to me that none of this is coming as a surprise to them, the kiss aside, like the fact that I'm mad about Ibbie isn't news to them at all. I guess I haven't been as good at hiding my feelings as I'd thought. From everyone except Ibbie, that is.
“Why didn't you just say so?” Ibbie demands, ignoring Fábia. She's still clinging onto that last little shred of anger, but it seems to have faded some now. “How do you expect me to just know when all you ever do is act like a butt head?”
Overwhelmed by the need to touch her, I reach out to grab her hand. She doesn't pull away. “Can we please just go somewhere private to talk now?”
She glances over at the others watching us, then down at our clasped hands in surprise. When she looks back up at me with those big, blue eyes, I can no longer find any trace of anger in them. “Okay.”
+++
WITH AN UNSPOKEN agreement, we make our way back to Ibbie's apartment in Hell's Kitchen. In fact, we don't speak at all the entire journey home. Not walking down the street, not on the subway, not in the elevator in her building. We do hold hands though. . .the entire time. That gives me more hope than anything ever has.
Her cousin, Sabrina, is sitting on the sofa when Ibbie lets us in. Her blonde hair is piled haphazardly up on her head and a pair of glasses have slipped down to the end of her nose as she studies a pile of papers scattered around her. Even at such a later hour, she's still working away. She arches a shocked eyebrow when she sees me standing next to Ibbie, our hands entwined. “I thought he wasn't allowed back here after the underwear incident?” she says to Ibbie. “You said if I let him in again you'd snap all the heels off my Louis Vuitton's.”
“He's. . .” Ibbie sighs, sneaking a peek at me and blushing. “He's the reason for the pink shirts.”
This makes no fucking sense to me whatsoever – though not much does when it comes to women – but clarity suddenly dawns on Sabrina's face. Her eyes widen knowingly. “Ohh. Really? Him? Never saw that one coming.”
Ibbie gives her a tiny smile. “Me neither.”
Sabrina gathers all her papers up and stands. “Well then. Guess I'll be in my room. Holler if you need me. But try not to need me.”
We watch her go, then turn to face each other in silence. For the first time all evening, Ibbie lets go of my hand. My fist clenches, missing her contact. The main lights are off, but Sabrina had a couple of lamps on and they cast a warm, low light around the room. In the background something is flashing on the TV, but the volume is turned down so low that I can barely even hear it.
“You okay?” I ask her doubtfully.
“Just ducky.”
She opens her mouth to say something else, but I interrupt before she can. I need to get this out there. “When I met you, you threw me for a loop. You drove me crazy,” I confess. “and I didn't handle it well – which you probably noticed. When I'm unsure about something, I usually just act like a dick.”
“Yeah, might've noticed that,” she replies, a sparkle in her eyes.
“You made me feel things I'd never felt before. When I realized that I liked you, I. . . Fuck, I didn't know how to act around you so I just kept being an ass. I fucked up. I'm sorry, Ibbie.”
“That might be the first time you've ever apologized to me.” She smiles impishly. “I'm sorry too. I'm not exactly faultless either. Though you totally had it coming.”
I chuckle. “Yeah, no one's ever given me my shit right back like you have.”
“How long?” she asks suddenly, surprising me.
“How long what?”
“Have you liked me? How long?”
Blowing out a puff of air, I rock back and forth on my heels. “A while. A really long while. I just had know idea what to do with it.”
She takes a deep breath then, psyching herself up, and steps closer until we're toe to toe. When she looks up into my eyes from beneath those long lashes, my heart skips a beat. “Well maybe you shoulda tried something like this.”
And then she leans up on her tiptoes and kisses me softly, sweetly. Almost innocently. No part of our bodies touch except our lips, though every inch of me feels like it's ablaze. I'm scared to move, scared to hope.
When she pulls back, those pink dots are back on her cheeks.
“Ibbie. . .” I swallow. “Don't. . .if you don't. . .'cause I can't. . .if you don't really mean it then. . .”
“I mean it. I mean, I'm not really sure what I'm doing right now,” she professes, reaching out for my hands. “But I know that you've been on my mind ever since you kissed me. Well, you've been on my mind every day for the past year – but this time for good reasons.” We both laugh at that. “But I really like the Walt I met the other night. So I mean it. I really mean it.”
I close my eyes, tugging her closer so I can rest my forehead against hers. “So what now?”
“Well right now I just want to explore this further,” she tells me. “I can't think about anything beyond that, not yet. Let's just. . .get to know each other. Can that be enough?”
Letting go of her hands, I grab a hold of her hips and pull her against me. Can that be enough? It's more than I ever fucking dreamed I'd get with her. So much more. And the rest of it, the falling in love with me part, it'll come later. I'll make damned sure of it.
“That sounds incredible,” I assure her, and then I press my lips against hers.
