19. Chapter 18
Chapter 18
James
T he music is loud.
So loud I can barely think straight. Not that I partially want to right now. Dad has been a dick and I walked out tonight after an argument. Sometimes I really think he does hate me. I sometimes think he thinks this is all my fault.
It’s times like these I wish I drank. It’s stupid probably and Maddie has told me more than once that drinking now and again won't make me like my dad but some deep part of my brain tells me that it will. Some part of me seems to think that if I start I’ll never be able to stop, I won't be able to control myself like him. He’s not drunk all the time, he’s not a “wake up with a beer in his hand” kind of alcoholic. He’s the type that once he’s had one it can never just be one, or two, it has to be twenty. And I guess I’m scared I’ll be just like him, angry, bitter and lonely.
The other bad thing is, I’m the first of my actual friends to get here. The guys are running late and I’m never surprised when Maddie’s late.
I heard her saying something about inviting Katherine and I honestly can only hope that Maddie decided not to or that Katherine chose to stay home tonight. I’m in a mood and if I’m not careful, I’ll end up taking it out on her or breaking my own promise of not kissing her again. Honestly it’s a coin toss .
Because I want a distraction, I want something else to think about right now and she’s the thing that seems to do that. When we kissed, everything else seemed to fall away.
She’s gotten under my skin far more than I care to let on or admit.
Do I think she’s beautiful? Yes. Do I look at her too much when we have to work together? Also yes. Do I want to kiss her again? God, yes.
But there’s so much I just don’t understand about her. The look she gets in her eyes sometimes, like panic passing through them. I’ll never understand why she’s so determined to find her soulmate now. I can’t understand the way she looks at me or the way she kissed me back.
But what I truly don’t understand is why I want to understand all of that, I need to understand it. What I should want is to forget all about the little airy breaths she takes when I get too close or forget the way her nails dug into my hair when we kissed. The only thing I do know is that I can’t work any of it out.
We won’t even talk about the date incidents, even with me trying to rationalise. I’m completely sure I was having a stroke through the whole thinking process of that. Date one was a coincidence I just happened to be in the same coffee shop that day but the next one was not. I can’t say what came over me when I drove there after I heard her talking to Maddie about it.
I managed to make sure I was working on the third. She was stood up. What an idiot. God, I wish I’d been there to rescue her again.
The fourth was me looking out for her. Dom is a friend—and I use that term loosely—from school, and when I saw him talking to Katherine on the beach, I knew I had to step in. He’s a total player and I didn’t want her to have to deal with that. So I conveniently happened to be in the bar with some other friends.
Someone tell me what’s wrong with me .
It’s because you like her , my internal voice tells me and if it was possible to slap it I would. I don’t, just to make that clear, I one hundred percent do not like her in that way. I just think about her a lot, and look at her a lot and wonder what it would be like to have her in my arms again. But I don’t like her.
It’s infuriating and I need to get a grip of myself. She’s here for that bloody soulmate shit and it makes me angry. Not that she cares about me or what I think about it, she’s made that clear and I guess I’m not surprised. I guess I shouldn’t actually be angry at her, it's my mum I’m angry at. She’s the one who ruined the whole soulmate thing for me, long before I even had a chance to decide if it was something I wanted or not. A long time before I knew a girl like Katherine even existed.
There’s just this feeling I get when I’m with her where a part of me wants to not hate her but then something happens and I do. I want to be near her and also a million miles away. I want to talk to her and I also want to never see her again.
God, I sound like a bloody idiot.
As I make my way back through the kitchen, I catch the front door opening again from the corner of my eye. I smile and wave as I see Ava and Sam walk through the door happy to finally have someone worth talking to here and then Maddie following close behind them and then I see it. Someone linked to her arm and as my eyes travel up they lock with hers.
There she is.
Dressed in all red, in something that doesn’t seem like her at all, it seems odd. Her cheeks are as red as the top she’s wearing and her eyes don’t stay on mine for long before they start darting around the room. It’s like she’s scooping the place out or assessing the situations like she’s walked into somewhere dangerous.
I’ve never seen her react like that to a situation before. My eye brows knit together as I wonder why she feels like that. I wonder if it has something to do with the way her eyes look every time she’s thinking something over a thousand times.
I try not to look at her too much as they all walk towards where I am, but god she makes it hard. She’s wearing more makeup than usual but she’s beautiful all the same; her hair is bright and half is down in curls and they bounce as she moves towards me with the group. Jesus, who let her wear those shoes? Her legs look so long and sexy, it’s not as if I haven’t seen her legs before of course, but what is it about her in this moment?
Parts of me come alive that I would much rather stay very dead, and those very parts think about her legs wrapped around my waist as I push her up against the wall with her lips on mine.
“Hey!’’ Maddie says dropping Katherine’s arm and bringing me in for a hug, she doesn’t stay there long as she spots the beer behind me. “Oh, thank god. Kat, beer?” Katherine nods her head but says nothing.
I’m confused and a little shocked, she never misses an opportunity to throw something my way. It makes me feel weird, almost hurt, like maybe she can’t be bothered with me anymore. It definitely shouldn’t bother me, I should be happy about it because finally we’ll have the distance we so desperately need, or I need, and yet, it does. It bothers me in a way I don’t like.
In a house with like fifty people in it, the place feels quiet; because she’s being quiet. Even with Ava, Maddie and Sam talking around me as they get drinks, I can’t look away from her. I’m waiting for her to say something to add to our never ending battle of words.
But she doesn’t.
She doesn’t even look up at me.
And I feel tiny. Unseen and unimportant to her all of a sudden. Like she’s bored with all of this now. Why is this more annoying than when we’re talking ?
An uncomfortable feeling crawls up my throat, one I haven’t felt in years, one I try not to think about for too long.
“James, it's been forever. What you been up to?” Sam asks as he claps a hand on my shoulder coming back around to stand in front of me.
I watch from the corner of my eye as Maddie hands Katherine a drink, she eyes it suspiciously but drinks from it anyway.
“You know, this and that.”
“A man of many words, as always. Maddie, how do you get a word in with this chatterbox?” Ava jokes as she wraps an arm around Sam.
Then another weird feeling is in the pit of my stomach, and somehow I’m jealous. Jealous of the way they are together, the way they look at each other, the way he makes her laugh as he whispers something to her. My eyes shift to Katherine, and my eyes travel down to her month.
Her eyes snap to mine and she frowns at me. “Should we move this party to the lounge?” Sam asks, nodding his head behind him, he turns Ava and they move ahead of me, Maddie behind them.
But I pause catching Katherine's hand before she can follow them. We look over each other's faces, I notice how her freckles seem to have multiplied since I was this close to her last time, and I watch as her eyes flow along the line of my lips. “Are you okay?” I ask, her eyes move to meet mine and just for a second like we’ve done before I seem to forget everything, because those eyes are sad.
“What?” she says, but hasn’t pulled away from me yet, and I like a little too much how well her hand fits in mine.
“You’re just quieter than you normally are.”
And just like that it’s gone, her eyes realise mine and she pulls her hand from mine taking a whole step back. “I’m fine.” She says it with all the believability of most women who say that. “And even if I wasn’t, it wouldn’t be you who I’d talk to.”
I let out a sigh because I’m just not up for this tonight, whatever this is. “Fine,” I say walking away from her.