Talk. Just talk. If he really wasn't seeing anyone else, that meant he was at least serious. A talk, I could give him that much.
Chapter Fifteen
Roman
She's not coming, I thought for the millionth time. Again. She's not fucking coming. I had been checking the clock since it had hit one. It was almost two now. If she was showing up, she should have by now. There was late and there was this. This was a blow off.
That first day, I understood. After a couple after that, I could still see why she wouldn't show. It was almost a week now, though, and I was getting tired of sitting out on this blanket waiting for someone who wasn't even thinking about showing up. When did it cross the line to just pathetic, waiting for her like this? I wondered. It was one thing if I knew I could count on seeing her, but that hope was dying a little every day.
Did I have to go to her place to talk to her? No. I knew Ron. She wouldn't like feeling like I was backing her into a corner, making her talk to me when she didn't want to or when she was still mad and needed time to cool off. That was why I had given her the option to come to me when she was ready. Question was when the hell would that be? Maybe she wasn't trying to get ready. Maybe talking wasn't even something she was thinking about doing in the first place, so there was nothing she had to get ready for.
I wasn't buying all this food to eat myself, but it was looking like that was what I would be doing again tonight. I sighed, putting all the food back into the basket. Would I be back tomorrow? That was the thing, I could say that I wouldn’t be, but I would. It was getting harder every day and maybe I just wasn't taking a hint, but I would.
A flash of white through the trees caught my eye. I looked, making out a person coming towards me. Nobody had ever come through the trees to the clearing when I had been here. I doubted how many people actually knew about it. I held my breath recognizing the figure coming through the trees. Her dress was white and her hair was down, loose and a little messy around her shoulders. It was her. She came. She hadn't blown me off.
Something told me that I should be standing when she came up to me, so I did. The past year had been good to her. Maybe the image I had had of her in my mind just hadn't been close enough to the real thing, that was why I couldn't look away from her. She looked angelic when she wo
re white. I was so glad that I had gotten back just in time for sundress season.
"Hi," she said softly, coming up to me. I restrained myself from touching her; she probably wouldn't want me to.
"Hey."
"Can I sit?" she asked.
"Please," I said. She sunk down to her knees, sitting on her legs. Her dress rode up so I could see part of her thighs. The movement distracted me a little. It wasn't like I hadn't seen it before, it had just been so long since we had both been here, since that day we had ditched class the week before finals.
"Are you hungry?" I asked, sitting facing her. She said that she was. I pulled the spread out of the basket. Mini quiches I had bought from a bakery and some brownies. She ignored the quiche, going straight for the dessert.
"I didn't think you were coming," I said.
"I didn't either. Sorry for making you wait."
"I'm just glad you showed."
Silence. I wasn't used to this, being awkward around Ron. We had never had that problem, not even when we had just started out dating.
"I haven't been here since..." She stopped herself. I remembered the last time we were together here. Thinking about what we did was probably going to just scare her away. We had to work back up to that.
"Were you busy today?" I asked. She broke a piece off her brownie and ate it.
"I was actually at school," she said.
"Yeah? Why?"
"Library. I took some courses for the summer session."
"That's great."
"Is it? I think it is, but some people think I should be backpacking around Europe, not sitting in class."
"If it's what you want, it's great that you're doing it," I said, shrugging. "Besides, not a lot of people make school their first priority, even when it should be."
"It'll pay off in the end, that's what I keep telling myself," she said, with a small smile. "What about you?"
"What? Class?"
"You always had classes during summer training," she said. I liked that she remembered that. I liked that familiarity we had with each other. We had been a couple, but all that time we spent together, all that time talking, had made us friends, too. It was the kind of friendship I didn't get from Don or anyone else. We were close physically and emotionally – it was everything together.