Twitterpated (24 page)
Chapter 39
I
STOOD THERE MOTIONLESS.
E
VEN
when Ben pushed off from the car and walked toward me, my only thought was, “My sweats are so ugly.” With him now strolling my way, hands in pockets, I could see Sandy sitting in the driver’s seat with a huge grin on her face. Her gentle wardrobe coaxing this morning made more sense.
I watched, mesmerized, until he stopped about four feet away.
Cocking his head to the side, he said, “Hi.”
Dazed, I answered, “I love you too.”
A crooked grin teased his lips.
I shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “I meant, hi. And also, I love you.” Then I stared, having no idea what was going on.
He pulled an apple from his pocket and held it out to me. “Sandy said I might need to feed you before we could talk this morning. This was the only breakfast type thing in the airport vending machine.”
I took the apple from his hand and pulled it toward me in slow motion. I stared at it, perplexed, then tossed it over my shoulder and threw myself into his arms.
Laughing, he caught me and swung me around, but I couldn’t get any dizzier than his presence had already made me.
Setting me down, he leaned back far enough to ask, “You’re not mad?”
I stared at him, mute, and shook my head.
“Good. Then you probably won’t smack me for doing this.” And he lowered his lips to mine for a long kiss. A loud series of honks from my car broke it up.
I shifted to glare over his shoulder at my roommate banging on the horn. She stuck her head out the car window and grinned again. “Yuck!” she yelled.
“I’m going to kill her,” I said.
“Go easy on her,” he said. “She’s the one who helped me engineer this whole thing.”
“Come to think of it, how did you get here?”
He turned to wave at Sandy, who leaned the driver’s seat back as far as it would go and made herself comfortable. He slid his hand down to mine and took it in his own, tugging me back down toward the sand.
“I panicked when I couldn’t get you to return my phone calls,” he said. “I went by your place yesterday morning to see if I could catch you before church and see if you’d talk to me in person. When I got there, I found a note on the door from Sandy, telling me to call her.”
That explained her detour upstairs while my mom and I had waited for her so we could leave for church yesterday.
“So I called,” he continued, “and she told me where you guys were. I think she took pity on me because when I asked her what I had to do to get you to listen, she said to get on a plane because you couldn’t ignore me if I flew down to find you.”
“So you did. Just like that?”
“I called Sandy with the details yesterday afternoon and took the first flight out this morning. She said she’d pick me up and then beat you into submission if you didn’t listen. I guess I don’t need to call her over though?” There was a question in his voice.
“No, I guess not.” I smiled.
His face grew serious again. “Jessie, Carie came to—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I listened to the messages. All of them.”
He winced. “Yeah, there were a lot.”
“That’s good. I should have given you the benefit of the doubt.”
“I know it looked bad,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting her until this week, and I meant to tell you on Saturday night that she was coming and why.”
“And what else were you going to tell me?” I asked, fishing shamelessly.
“That I love you.” He grinned. He leaned over for another kiss, which was interrupted after a few seconds by another honk.
I rolled my eyes. “She’s taking her chaperone duties too seriously,” I said.
“Do you forgive me for being an idiot?” he asked.
“It’s not your fault Carie surprised you,” I said.
“No, I mean about more than that. For being a jerk about your hours and not calling you or just accepting the time you could give.”
“I didn’t like it,” I admitted. “But it’s probably the only way you could have made your point. I can be hardheaded.”
“You?” he gasped.
I butted him playfully with my shoulder. “I cut my hours back, you know.”
“You did? For me?”
I shook my head. “No. For me. It was the only way to get what I wanted.”
“Which is?”
“You,” I smiled. “I wish I would have known you were leaving Seattle so soon. How do you feel about packing the next four weeks with craziness?” I asked.
He took a deep breath. “What would you think about me picking up a permanent contract in Seattle?”
I turned to look him in the eye. “I think that sounds exactly right.”
“Good,” he smiled, “because I don’t think I could fit enough ‘I love yous’ into a month.”
And this time the horn went off for a long time.
About the Author
Melanie Jacobson is from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she grew up in a rich tradition of storytellers. After graduating from Brigham Young University, she enjoyed a career in fashion retail before pursuing her true passion: teaching literature and writing. Realizing she was still missing something, Melanie tried Internet dating for a few years. She now considers herself a retired Internet dating expert after searching the World Wide Web to find her husband, who only lived forty-five minutes away. They live with their three children in Orange County, California.
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