Blazed(17)

"Of course it bothers me. What kind of person would I be if I was cool with someone I cared about being in such a bad place that they felt like hurting themselves was the only option? But if you're asking me if I can accept it, of course I can. As long I'm not the person that's causing that kind of self-loathing."

He turned his gaze onto me, that same scorchingly intense gaze he'd hit me with before he left my flat. All of the blood in my body rushed to my face and the deepest depths of my stomach knotted and contorted, much like the way I felt in a crowded room— claustrophobic, out of breath and horribly self-conscious. The smallest of smiles kissed the corners of his mouth when I mouthed an apology and sagged back warily. What was I doing so wrong? How could he say he cared for me knowing that I was, for want of a better word, a slut?

He excused himself and slunk over to the bar, turning every woman's and some men's heads as he travelled the distance. That kind of spellbinding effect seemed to be universal and for that I was grateful. I had no desire to become that girl who mooned after a man because she'd bumped uglies with him. It wasn't my style.

Esme leaned over to grip my chin and pull my eyes away from what looked like a dangerously serious conversation between Chris and Blaze. "Why did you apologise just then?"

"I just felt like I had to. Didn't you see the incomparable fury in his eyes? Jesus, not even Hunter looked at me like that when they sectioned me."

"Incomparable fu— ... My god, you can't see the forest for the trees, can you? Open your eyes, Emmy. That man up there is the forest." I shook my head at her blankly and received a raised eyebrow in return. "Get used to his face because you're going to be seeing a lot of it."



WHAT concerned me is why that statement didn't concern me. When I pictured night after night of drinking in Blaze's company, taking him home and falling asleep next to him, I didn't feel sieged like I should have. I felt... indifferent. It already seemed like normality when this was really only the first night of what was forecast to be many. He was too close but I couldn't bring myself to hate it. A crazy little piece of me thought that he might just be the person who broke the curse of unrequited affection Hunter had hung over my head.

"Cupcake?"

"Hmm?" The sudden blast of giggles around me alerted me to the stupid mistake I'd just made. "Oh! Oh god..."

"Might catch on." Blaze slid onto the seat next to me, one leg up on the velvet between us, and held out a dainty cupcake iced in pale pink butter-cream and a white sugarcraft rose. "But I was asking if you wanted this. They're good, maybe the second best thing I've tasted today." He bit down on his lip and flared his eyes at me, sending a delicious shudder right through my veins. I knew he was thinking about what else he'd tasted that day and just the memory made me want to claw at the cushioned seat next to me.

"I'll lick butter-cream off anything, you know." I narrowed my eyes at him, trying not to break the seductive ruse with a squeak. "Call it an indulgence."

"Miss White, you're incorrigible."

"Surely you mean 'encourage-able'? And I'm almost certain that if you save that cupcake for later when I'm far drunker, you'll have a few choice words of encouragement for my greedy mouth."

"Cheque, please." His eyes twinkled brightly in the soft light of the candles I'd learned to keep a safe difference from when he was around. The barely containable urge to reach up and stroke his face made my fingers twitch with unfamiliar adoration. After only eight days, he'd come to mean so much to me and left a heavy footprint on my life. If I never saw him again after that night, I'd never be able to forget him and his smile, or his laugh, or his frown. I suspected that his memory would haunt me just as Hunter did, and that alone told me enough to know that I'd come out of this hurting. It might not be today, maybe not tomorrow, but at some point I'd have to face the repercussions of trying to touch an untouchable man.

I glanced sideways at the table and caught my miserable, distorted reflection in my glass. Daniel pushed it out of my line of vision when he realised how furiously I was staring at it.

"She's not here, Emmy. Not anymore."

"Who?" My eyes looked up to meet Blaze's though my head didn't move. Yet again, I prayed for a distraction.

"Just a small ghost from the past. An unwelcome face who tells her lies."

"Lies?"

"Truths." I closed my eyes and resigned myself to confessing to the hallucination. Better it came from me. If he stuck around, he'd find out sooner or later. Sooner meant the inevitable hole he left behind might be smaller. "The shadow of my teenage self telling me that I'll always be—"

"A little bit ugly, a little bit frumpy, a little bit socially stunted, a little bit fat and a whole lot boring." Esme, Daniel and Jonathan recited the prose in unison, having heard it themselves a thousand times before.

"Lies then." Like I hadn't heard that platitude often enough for it to be meaningless. Blaze ignored my muttered 'whatever' and squared himself to the table, effectively turning away from me. That was it then... He understood what had been chasing me all afternoon and it was just too neurotic for him. "I happen to find you quite fascinating and easy on the eyes, and I think we... hammered out the fat, frumpy thing this afternoon." Did he really think it was that easy?

"You still think I'm socially stunted though?"

"Yes." He tutted mockingly. "Not so much as a thank you."

"For the lunch I didn't want, the clothes I didn't ask for, or the entirely too public 'hammering'?" I saw his eyebrow raise and cheeks lift into a sly smirk. "I'll thank you with butter-cream."

"Phew!" Jonathan fanned himself theatrically with a cork drinks coaster and swooned against Daniel's shoulder. "It's like watching my parents all over again and I heard how hot it was in their bedroom!"

"Is that what turned you towards the frilly paisley pink side?"

"It helped. What did you say to Chris anyway?" At once, we all turned our attention to the unusually empty seat next to me, then to the sullen figure slumped over a whiskey on the rocks at the bar. "It's not like him to prop up the bar. Especially when we're all spitting feathers over here."

Blaze shrugged and raised his glass to his lips, pausing to speak. "I told him that I enjoy the scenery of the Deep White South too much to stay away. That I'm planning on renting a log cabin there to concrete my intentions of visiting frequently until such a time when both a permanent place of residency becomes available and I'm in a more comfortable position to retire there." He took a small sip of his drink. "More or less."

"Well was it the more or the less?" I blurted my words out in a rush, feeling my face return to the shade of red it seemed to visit far to often around Blaze. It sounded suspiciously like he'd told the most protective of my friends that he was going to hang around until our complications stopped obstructing the way to what? A happily ever after? He'd be waiting a long time.

"Less," he laughed, ignoring the three anxious faces sat across from us, "but less is more. At least I know how you feel about the matter now. Don't worry." He dipped down to my ear so his lips brushed the lobe. It was the closest he'd been since he'd arrived to light up my dark evening and reminded me just how lost I felt around him. "I have a guarantor."

Esme, Daniel and Jonathan collectively sighed with relief when the comment made me laugh and inexplicably comforted me in a way it probably shouldn't have. Rather than respond to the threatened intrusion with a dramatic breakdown or a swift sprint down the path leading to the hills, I rolled my eyes at him with a smile on my face and made lustful eyes at the cupcake I didn't want to save for later. Just the fact that he said he planned to stick around for the long haul made me feel good— special. I may well have been the worst woman for the job, but nobody else could say that they'd been offered the chance, and I would have been crazy to not be grateful for the opportunity to hang on to a man like him. I might have even dared to say like I felt like a concubine to a prolific king, my purposes singular, indecent and terminable, but I'd been picked from many as the best. I doubted that he felt the same way.

Chris did eventually rejoin us, still looking downtrodden but forced enough polite conversation to make it obvious that he was putting himself out to be civil for my sake. I loved him for it. To our surprise, we learned that Blaze was somewhat well versed in our nerdy persuasion, owning an extensive comic book and graphic novel collection that would have made Stan Lee weep. He even carried some street cred destroying pictures of said collection on his phone, and pinpointed exactly where Syncretic Sciences now took residence. Naturally, everything was ordered alphabetically, then by year, issue and language— comics and novels separately stored. My mother would have loved him and his anally retentive organisational habits.