Trouble in Sudden Falls: A Sudden Falls Romance (29 page)

He’d taken out the rings in his eyebrow, nose and lips and switched out all of the rings and bars in his ears for one simple silver stud in each earlobe.

He looked so frickin’ preppy he belonged in an Abercrombie and Fitch ad. Hopefully, preppy enough that Amy’s mom would let her out of the house for the dance, at least.

He looked down at the corsage in the clear florist’s box in his left hand. It rattled with the strength of his nerves.

Answer the door.

He checked his watch. He had the right time, didn’t he?

Peering in, the house looked dark. Maybe she was upstairs getting ready and hadn’t heard the bell. He rang it again.

Their car wasn’t parked in the driveway, but there was a garage, so it could be in there. He knocked, in case the doorbell didn’t work.

Amy wouldn’t have blown him off, would she?

He shook his head. After all the trouble she went to to get him to ask her out, he couldn’t imagine that she’d do that.

Maybe they’d gotten their wires crossed. What if she expected to meet him at the dance? He was pretty sure he’d told her he’d pick her up at home… but maybe…? After another couple of minutes of waiting, he got back in his car and headed to the school.

He refused to make any contingency plans for what he’d do if she weren’t at the school.

Eli needed to pull himself out of the raging sulk in which he’d spent the evening. It wasn’t manly and it annoyed the hell out of him that he’d wasted the entire night, sitting in front of the TV, trying to figure out how Maddie had so misinterpreted his conversation with Lisbet.

Maybe it would help to recall the conversation, moment by moment—not that he hadn’t already done so several times—to figure out what set Maddie off.

Lisbet had come up to him on his trip through the store to the condom aisle. He remembered feeling grateful that she caught him
before
he got there and not a few moments later. She’d been looking better than he’d seen her in years. For once, looking a like she cared about her appearance. Knowing she expected it, Eli did an obvious double-take and complimented her.

She reached out and grabbed him with her new talons and made him an offer she didn’t expect him to refuse. He shuddered at the thought. While Maddie’s actions toward Lisbet had been fairly horrific, Lisbet was no angel and he hadn’t even considered seeing her in a romantic light since their Junior year in high school—much to Lisbet’s obvious despair.

Not wanting to publicly humiliate her, he’d leaned forward to turn down her offer, which gave her an opportunity to claw at his chest.

He’d extracted himself with great haste, made his purchase, then searched a bit for Maddie before noticing her waiting for him outside. Thinking of nothing more than taking Maddie home to see how much of a dent they could make in an econo-sized box of condoms during the course of a lunch hour, he’d totally forgotten about the run-in with Lisbet. There had been so many of them before that day that it wasn’t much of a memorable event, particularly in light of what good things he had to focus on.

Good things that never came to pass, thanks to Maddie’s meltdown. How could she have misinterpreted that? And more importantly, why didn’t she trust him yet? More than anything else, that’s what stabbed him in the heart. It was obvious, she
still
didn’t trust him any farther than she could throw him. She didn’t believe in him and she clearly didn’t know him.

His whole body ached at the loss. It was Saturday night—a night that he and Maddie normally spent together. He missed her. And not only the fact that she usually spent the night on the weekend—before sneaking out early the next morning to avoid detection by Rogan. He missed having her sit next to him and watch movies on TV. He missed quoting old movies back and forth. He missed the warmth of her smile and the way she made him feel relaxed and secure. He missed the way she’d seemingly believed in him as a father, putting many of his fears to rest. Her faith in his abilities as a father clearly didn’t extend to her faith in him as a lover and friend.

The doorbell rang and he had a momentary hope that it would be Maddie. He shook off even the idea before he got his hopes up. No sense in causing extra pain for himself.

He levered himself from the couch and made his way to the front of the house and opened the door. Through the screen, he saw an arm holding a small, gift-wrapped box. The arm’s body was out of sight, but he recognized it immediately as belonging to his next-door neighbor. He opened the door far enough that he could stick his head out.

“Hi.” He moved cautiously, unable to keep the hope from his voice or his head.

“Peace offering.” She offered him the box.

Eli didn’t move, unsure of what to do or say.

“Or a bribe, if it means you let me in.”

“You’re offering me a bribe. What you have just done is illegal and in this state, if convicted, you could be fined up to five thousand dollars or spend six months in a correction facility.”

The corner of her lips twitched slightly. “Jim Carrey,
The Cable Guy.
”

He nodded and stepped back, letting her come in the house.

“If I’m going to jail, you might as well at least take the bribe.” Maddie handed him the package.

It was a small cube, maybe three inches on each side, wrapped in gold and red striped foil paper. He was so happy to see her, it didn’t matter what gifts she came bearing, her presence more than enough.

Eli shut the door behind her. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said quietly, hoping beyond hope that she was here to work things out and not for some awful reason like she was moving back to D.C. or that she never wanted to speak to him again.

He wanted to simply pull her into his arms, but the hesitant way she stood, with her hands in her pockets and fidgeting back and forth from one foot to another, made him hesitate.

“Come in to the living room?”

She nodded and followed when he turned to leave the foyer. Maddie sat on the edge of the couch, her hands clasped in front of her. He longed for the previous ease of their greetings. Could it only have been a couple of days?

Eli perched on the coffee table in order to be directly across from her. Sliding one finger under the tape at the end of the package, he peeled the paper from a white lidded box. Lifting the lid, he discovered a small, stylized black-lacquered elephant.

He lifted his eyes to hers in question.

She cleared her throat. “I thought it was time to let the elephant out.”

Hope tightened his throat and choked off his breath. He plucked the elephant from the box and held it in his palm, running his thumb over the smooth surface.

“I’ve been a coward. I’ve let my experiences with Darren cloud my judgment with you. I keep expecting you to hurt me and instead, I hurt you.”

“What happened at the pharmacy?”

Maddie paused for a long moment, chewing her lower lip. Eli reached out and brushed his thumb over it, causing her teeth to release it.

“I saw you with Lisbet and I assumed the worst.”

“What you saw was her hitting on me and me telling her that my heart was otherwise spoken for.”

Her expression was doubtful. “You said that?”

“In so many words.” Eli sighed. “Why are you so quick to assume the worst with me? I would never
never
cheat on you. You have to believe that.”

“I try to… and then I’m confronted by your track record and I get… confused.”

“Maddie, this thing that we have going here… it’s been a lot of years in the making. I’m serious about you. This isn’t a short term fling or a distraction for me. I’m hoping, one day when you kick your internal intimacy prevention squad to the curb, that you’ll feel the same way. Maybe make it…” He cleared his throat, expecting the words to be more difficult to say than they actually were. “…permanent. I want you to marry me.”

Tears spilled over Maddie’s lashes, and he could have left it at that, but there was one final thing he needed to say. “I love you, Maddie.”

She launched herself at him and he caught her easily. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to join his lips to hers, to pull her into his body and to hold her tight.

He moved them to the couch for comfort, pulling her down onto his lap. He pulled back, brushing the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. Eli waited for her response, praying that she’d return his words. Instead, she nestled her face into his neck and held him tight.

It wasn’t what he’d hoped for, but it beat living next door and never speaking.
One day,
he promised himself,
she will come around.

Rogan arrived at the dance with a bad feeling in his stomach. He’d spent the drive over convincing himself that Amy hadn’t stood him up, but reality had been too much a part of his life that he wasn’t really very good at denial.

The school gymnasium no longer looked like a basketball court. The baskets had been raised, the bleachers folded up and silver, pink and black balloons made an archway through which the students had to pass to get into the dance.

Rogan looked around the darkened gym, using the questionable illumination of the strobe lights to search for Amy. Of course, he didn’t see her. His eyes did make contact with Darlene, however.

He walked over to her, feeling like an idiot for asking a girl’s best friend if she’d stood him up. It wasn’t like him to beg for humiliation and rejection. Usually it was good enough at searching him out on its own.

Darlene was dressed in a bright peach frothy number that went clear to the ground, but didn’t have much up top. Her hair was in some sort of complicated mess on top of her head and she looked every inch the head of the cute-and-adorable crowd that she was.

And she moved him not-at-all.

“Oh. My. God! You look… amazing! I love your hair! Where’s Amy?”

“That’s what I wanted to ask you.”

“Weren’t you supposed to pick her up?”

“I rang the doorbell and pounded on the door for ten minutes. No one ever answered and the house looked dark. Do you think… that is, maybe did she… change her mind?”

Darlene patted his forearm in a manner he suspected was supposed to reassure. Kind of like she was patting a puppy. “I promise you, Amy wouldn’t have changed her mind. Were you on time?”

“I was exactly one minute early.” He felt like a dweeb that he’d deliberately timed it so carefully.

“Maybe her Mom took a powder and brought her here. Let’s look around.”

Darlene near-dragged him from clique to clique looking for Amy. They ended up outside along the edge of the gym where the doors had been propped open to allow some fresh air in. A group of jocks lounged against the wall. The bad feeling Rogan had been sporting all evening headed even farther south.

The head of the jocks, an idiot he generally referred to as “Meathead” because he didn’t—and didn’t want to—remember his name, narrowed his eyes as Rogan and Darlene approached.

He heard his buddy say under his breath, “Look, the freak tried to go normal.” Rogan could smell alcohol. Someone spiked the punch, and it appeared from the Dixie cups in each of their hands that all the jocks were indulging.

“Hey guys, have you seen Amy Goodman?” Darlene asked.

“Yeah, she’s waiting for me in my hotel room,” Meathead said.

“And then you woke up,” Rogan replied.
Amy would give you the time of day only in your dreams.
At least that was something he was certain of—even if he wasn’t certain about how she felt about him.

“That little slut’s probably out back givin’ it to the basketball team.”

Darlene gasped as Rogan quickly closed the distance between them and pushed Meathead up against the wall with a hand around his throat. “You may want to take that back.” He gave Meathead his darkest glare.

Rogan’s miscalculation came in underestimating the power of drunk idiots in a group. He could easily handle Meathead with a narrowed look and a quietly voiced threat, as the guy was a big coward.

Unfortunately, Meathead’s friends weren’t as easily intimidated… at least not in bulk. Meathead B grabbed him by the collar and yanked hard. Meathead C punched him in the side and Rogan kicked out making brief contact with Meathead B. D or E biffed him in the face and the other punched him in the gut.