My Everything - Seth & Amber (22 page)

He knew she was giving him a hard time. He
shook his head at her; her smile just got bigger.

“Well,” she said looking around once more,
“it’s not cluttered, that’s for sure.”

His smile grew even wider. He had to admit,
he found her very sexy when she was being a smart ass.

“What’s he doing? Hmmm...well, currently,
he’s sitting across from me eating pizza. And if my mind reading
skills are up to par, then I would say he desperately wants to call
me a smart ass right now.”

Seth lifted his water bottle and nodded his
head indicating she was correct.

“Okay, I will. Thanks for checking on me.
Love you, too. Bye.” Amber hung up the phone and set it on the
table.

She and Seth sat in silence; staring at each
other.

“Did you ever imagine we would be here,
sitting in your apartment, eating pizza?”

“No,” he answered honestly.

“Me either.” Then she lifted her finger,
pointing as if she just remembered something. “Well, actually
that’s not true. I imagined us in all kinds of situations. I think,
if I recall correctly, one of them
was
actually eating
pizza. Although you had a fireplace in my version.” She brought her
water bottle to her mouth.

He wasn’t sure if she was kidding. “Did you
really think about me? About us?”

She sputtered a little, almost choking on her
water. Then she looked at him as if he was a couple of cards short
of a full deck before asking, “Are you kidding?”

“No.”

“I thought you knew about the whole Mystery
Man thing.” Her face still filled with disbelief.

“Jason said something about it, but I didn’t
ask what he meant.”

“I see. Umm, so...yeah. You could definitely
say that I thought about you,” she said as she stood and cleared
the paper plates.

“A lot?” he asked even though he knew he
really shouldn’t be going down this line of questioning.

“Depends on how you define a lot.”

“Every day.”

“Oh, well, by that definition then, yes. A
lot.” She dropped the plates in the trash and came back over to the
table. After seeing the look on his face she asked, “Does that
really surprise you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you left.” Even to himself, he
sounded like a broken record. A childish broken record, at that. He
really needed to let it go. Amber was dealing with enough without
him adding his shit on top of it. “Never mind.”

She sat back down at the table, pinning him
with her stare. “Do you know why I was in DC that night?”

“No.”

She swallowed hard and he saw her eyes were
filling up with tears.

“Amber, stop. It doesn’t matt-”

“No. It does matter. I want to tell you.” Her
voice was a little shaky but her eyes looked determined. “I was
there to receive a purple heart on behalf of my brother, Aaron, who
had been killed ten months before in Afghanistan. He was more than
just my brother, he was my best friend.”

Tears began falling down her face. “He was
the only sibling I had, and growing up it was just my mom, Aaron,
and me. My mom took his death even harder than I did. She started
drinking. Heavily. By the time we went to DC, she had already been
through one rehab stint. At the ceremony, she made a big scene. It
was a nightmare. I had finally gotten her back to her room and into
bed when I came down to the bar that night.

“When you sat down, honestly, I had never had
that kind of an immediate reaction to someone. I couldn’t even look
at you. Then you stepped in and took care of that asshole, which
just magnified it. We went up to your room and...well, honestly it
was just so much to process.
Too
much, after the year I had
just had. I don’t handle emotional things well, and I know it was
just a one night stand, but - ”

“It was more than that,” Seth interrupted. He
wanted to hear what she had to say but watching her sit across from
him with tears streaming down her cheeks was breaking his
heart.

“Right, yes. But you know what I mean. I
think I panicked because the connection I felt with you was
so…”

“Intense,” he offered.

“Yes. Intense.” She nodded her head. “I woke
up in your bed and started thinking about what the possible
outcomes would be when you woke up. I didn’t know what to expect or
how I was supposed to act. I know this sounds ridiculously cliché
and you don’t have to believe me, but I don’t have one night
stands.”

“I believe you. Neither do I.”

She nodded, looking pleased that he had said
that. “And I was young. I was only twenty-two.”

“What?” Seth asked in shock. Then he realized
that he was only twenty six at the time, and that made him feel
better.

“Yeah. That’s young, right? It shocked me too
when I was talking to the girls about it after your homecoming
party. My point in saying all of this is not to make excuses, but
just to explain to you why I left. I want you to know that night
was one of the
best
nights of my life. It just happened to
occur in the middle of the
worst
time in my life.”

Amber felt like a weight had been lifted off
of her shoulders. She didn’t know if anything, other than
friendship, would ever happen with her and Seth. She did know,
however, that she felt better having explained her behavior.

“Do you know why I was in DC that night?”
Seth asked, a darkness falling over his gaze.

“No.” Amber’s heart jumped. Seth had never
opened up to her in any way before. She realized she was holding
her breath in anticipation of what he would say.

--- ~ ---

Seth felt his heart pounding and his palms
were sweaty as he sat in front of Amber. He knew what he wanted to
tell her, but he wasn’t sure where to start.

“I don’t know how much you know about my mom.
She suffered from bi-polar disorder. She got sick, the first time,
right after Jason was born. I was four then. She left when I was
ten. By the time she moved out, most of her days were spent in bed,
crying. But, there were a few occasions in those last few months
that she had ‘happy’ days.

“One of those times was when I was on a field
trip to Washington DC. She wasn't scheduled to chaperone, but on
the spur of the moment, she flew out there anyway. We were all
supposed to be going to see the Washington Monument, but she pulled
me away from the group. She said that sightseeing with the class
was boring and she wanted us to go off on our own.

“I knew that I shouldn’t leave, but she was
so happy. I just wanted her to
stay
happy. So I went with
her. She took me all over the city that day. I have no idea how
long we walked. I just remember her smiling the whole day. Even
though my mom was sick, she was still my mom. With four little
brothers in the house, I didn’t get a lot of one-on-one time with
her. That day was the best day, and the last day, I spent with
her.

“We ended up at The Four Seasons having
dinner. She was telling me all about what her dreams had been when
she was growing up. How she had wanted to be a model and live in
New York. I saw a completely new side of her that I had never seen
before. I had never seen her as a real person with ambitions and
dreams. She was just my mom.”

Seth paused. He hated thinking about this
next part. “After we had been there probably three hours she
excused herself to go to the bathroom. She didn’t come back. Some
of the hotel staff eventually called the police to report an
abandoned kid.

“The police had been looking for me all day
since my teacher had reported me missing. I don’t remember how long
I sat there waiting for my mom to come back, but after what felt
like a long time, a policeman came to the table and took me down to
the station. They found my mom passed out, drunk, in an alley
nearby. I went home with my class and my mom moved out right after
that.

“I went back to the hotel that night because
August 14, 2005 would have been my mom’s fiftieth birthday and I
just wanted to remember the last time we spent together.”

Tears started falling down Amber’s face again
and she reached out to hold Seth’s hand. As soon as he felt the
pads of her fingers brush against him, awareness spread through him
like a wildfire.

“I’m so sorry, Seth,” she sniffed.

Seth looked down at their hands. Amber’s was
so delicate. She had such beautiful, thin fingers and they were
such a stark contrast to his. He wrapped his large hand around
hers.

He heard her suck in an audible breath but he
didn’t look up at her. He watched as he brushed his thumb across
her wrist over her bracelet. He could feel her pulse racing as he
rubbed her silky soft skin.

Every time they touched, it was like an
explosion of desire detonated inside of him. There was no slow
build to it. It was instantaneous. It was powerful. It was
consuming.

He wanted so badly to tug her arm and pull
her to him. He wanted to touch her. To hold her. To lose himself in
her.

But that wouldn’t be fair to her. He couldn’t
be what she needed. He was too messed up. There was just too much
darkness in him. She needed a good man. He was not a good man.

Somehow, he was able to reach deep down into
the depths of his being and find a well of self-control that, until
this very moment, he hadn't even known he possessed. He slowly
pulled his hand away from hers. He immediately missed the
contact.

“We'd better get some sleep,” he rasped, even
though he knew that with Amber just a wall away, sleep would be
impossible.

He looked up when she didn’t answer. He saw
that her cheeks were flushed and her eyes looked a little glazed
over.

“Amber.”

“What?” she said, sounding as if she was
coming out of a fog.

“I would offer you the bedroom, but since
there’s no bed in there, I think you'd be more comfortable on the
couch.”

“You don’t have a bed?” she asked, her brow
furrowing in confusion.

“No.”

“Then what are you going to sleep on?”

“The floor.”

“You can’t sleep on the floor,” she stated as
if the idea was completely ludicrous.

“I’ve slept on worse. Believe me.”

“This is ridiculous. You are not going to
sleep on the floor. I can just go home or to a hotel or stay at -
”

“Amber. I want you to stay,” his tone came
out sounding harsher than he had intended it to.

“Okay,” she answered immediately.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

It felt so right, having her there. He didn’t
want her to be anywhere but here with him, even though he wasn’t
sure he could afford what her presence would cost him. She had only
been there an hour and he had already decided that he could
probably never enjoy a pizza there again...without her.

--- ~ ---

Amber held pins between her lips as she
pulled the side of Chelle’s dress tighter. She couldn’t believe how
much weight Chelle had dropped in the last few weeks. Amber was
going to need to do some serious alterations on Chelle’s dress. The
wedding was still a week away, and if Chelle continued to drop
weight at this pace, Amber was going to be altering it the day
of.

“You look ah-may-zing!” Katie exclaimed as
she bounced baby Mya in her arms.

“Thanks,” Chelle said. “It’s the
breastfeeding. At least that’s what people keep telling me.”

Amber pulled a pin from her mouth. “That
might be part of it, but I think that it has to do with genetics,
too. Gotta have good genes.”

“Speaking of good genes, how’s Seth?”

“Seriously Katie. How is that segue
justified?” Amber shook her head at her friend.

Chelle and Amber had been at Bella for an
entire twenty minutes and neither of them had mentioned anything
about her new roommate until now. Amber was shocked it had taken
this long to bring him up.

“Seth is a Sloan. Are you
seriously
going to argue that those men don’t have good genes?” Katie said,
sounding extremely proud of her rejoinder.

“Good point. I concede. That was actually an
excellent segue, Katie. What it lacked in subtlety it made up for
in creativity,” Amber said as she began pinning the bottom of
Chelle’s dress.

“Thank you. Now spill,” Katie said, her voice
high as she cooed the baby while simultaneously grilling Amber.
Katie was a great multi-tasker.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but there is
nothing to spill,” Amber said.

“Oh, come on. You’ve been there a week and
you're going to tell me
nothing
has happened?”

“Yes,” Amber said, and she heard the
frustration bleeding into her voice. “The first night I was there,
we had dinner. After dinner, there was a moment where I
thought...you know...
maybe
. But that moment passed, and has
not come around again. I know he’s keeping his distance from me, I
just don’t know why.”

“Have you asked him?” Chelle asked.

“No. What am I supposed to say? Hey Seth,
thanks for letting me stay with you. You have been such an amazing
friend. Ummm, quick question, do you wanna have sex?”

Katie's face lit with excitement. “I will
give you one hundred dollars if you say that to him.”

"Never gonna happen," Amber said flatly.

Katie burst out laughing. Chelle and Amber
exchanged a look to see if the other knew what was so funny.

Through her laughter Katie explained, "Sorry,
I just keep picturing Seth’s face if you actually said that to
him.”

As the picture of Seth's shocked face flashed
in Amber's mind she looked up at Chelle and they all burst out
laughing.

Regaining her composure, Amber finished
pinning the dress and Chelle stepped into the dressing room.

Katie asked “So you guys still haven’t talked
about…stuff?”

Amber reached out to hold baby Mya. Katie
begrudgingly handed over the baby. “We did. The first night I was
there. We cleared the air while we were eating pizza. Since then,
though, Seth just inhales his dinner, says he’s tired and he goes
to his room. I have no idea what he’s doing in there, though. He
doesn’t have a TV or even a bed in there.”