Calamity

I’m struggling to pull a shirt over my head when I hear a knock at the front door, the sound causing me to furiously yank the piece of clothing onto my shoulders, resulting in my hair becoming a haystack of static. Huffing and grumbling, I comb my fingers through the strands, dab on some lip balm, and then try to remain at a steady, reasonable pace as I head towards the front entrance.

The top of Derek’s head is visible through the high window cut into the door. I take a deep breath to steady myself as I swing it open.

He smiles lightly when he comes in to view. His big hands are shoved down into the pockets of the jeans he wears and I notice that his biceps bulge as he situates his fingers snuggly in the material.

“Hey,” he says.

I clear my throat, run my tongue over my dry lips, and try to pretend like my body wasn’t heating up from merely looking him over. My mind, though, seems to pick up the image of him looking so relaxed and cheerful as he stands on my doorstep, and runs rampant with it. Things that I should not be picturing displays too vividly in the front of my brain and they’re so potent that I become blind to anything else for a split second.

“Hi. Yea, come in,” I mutter, stepping back.

My hand comes up to ruffle my hair as I duck my head in the hope that Derek wouldn’t see the faint blush now clouding up my cheeks. But he’d always been observant and I figure he’d already spotted the red coloring on the skin of my face. I figured that’s why he was fighting a grin when I peek over at him.

But he doesn’t say anything, instead diverting to the topic of my house.

“How long have you lived here?” he asks.

“Uhm… Three years? Yea, three years. I think,” I reply.

This makes him chuckle and me smile, still a little embarrassed.

I motion towards the pale gray sofa sat in the middle of my little living room, trailing behind him when he starts for the couch. We settle beside one another with about half an arm’s length worth of distance resting between our bodies. Derek shifts himself so his burly form is situated at an angle and facing me while I tuck my feet underneath myself.

After we’re comfortable, a silence is draped down over us. I don’t know what to say—or, I can’t think of the proper thing to say in a situation like this.

Derek had offered to come by today, on a Saturday afternoon when I had no papers to grade and no other place to be, to answer any more questions I had and stay for dinner. He said he’d help me cook if I promised to get some of my mother’s Angel Food cake. I’d chuckled at that but agreed.

This is a step I know that we both wanted to take. The last few weeks had been so tumultuous that I knew it’d take more than dinner and a few television sitcoms before Derek and I were back on that even keel we’d navigated on so many years ago. If we didn’t start now, though, then I doubted that he and I would make it. I’ve tried to deny how much that would devastate me because I don’t want to need Derek as much as I did when we’d been younger. But I do and I simply can’t help it.

“Look, Rosie,” Derek starts. The sound of his voice startles me out of my thoughts and my head snaps over, my eyes seeking his. He swallows and glances down to his lap. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. If you don’t want to do this, then I can leave.”

“What? No,” I shake my head, frowning. “I’m not uncomfortable.”

“I can practically smell it,” he counters.

My eyebrows furrow at that. It was a little uncommon to hear that people could smell emotions, and to hear that sentence come from Derek, a man who had only shown one feeling for the past few weeks, was more surprising than weird..

“I—“

“There are still lots of things that you don’t know, Rosie. That’s why I’m here, remember?” he smiles softly.

I nod and watch as his little grin diminishes inch by inch. When it’s completely gone, he clenches his jaw and sighs. There’s a little bit of distress newly etched onto his pretty face as his eyes begin to rake over my living room and I wonder if it’s because he’s realized the same as I: nearly everything we had before is gone. The chemistry he talked about days ago in that loft, though, is hot and boiling just underneath the surface. It’s threatening to push me into him almost constantly and turning my thoughts in a whirlwind of images that don’t help my comfort level or my ability to refrain from acting any of them out.

“So tell me something, then,” I say, a little desperate to think of something else.

Derek looks away from the tiny kitchen shoved into a corner of my house, his eyebrows raising. “What?”

“Tell me a fun fact or something.”

He chuckles, but the slight rigidness I’d noticed beginning to seep into his body was slowly easing out now. His eyes were lighter again and that look of darkness I’d seen nearly overtaking him had vanished.

“My mom was an alpha.”

My eyebrows furrow at this. “What’s an alpha?”

“They’re a leader. My mom was head of our pack—our family,” Derek chuckles.

“Oh. So does that make you one too?” I ask.

Again, my childhood friend laughs, but this time it’s not as light. I can instantly tell that my question has landed us on grounds that are far too shaky for either of us to breach right now. I can’t divert around it, though, because the words have already out of my mouth.

“No,” he murmurs. “No, I’m not an alpha.”

“Oh. Well…” I dig around for a question of my own rather frantically for a few seconds, as if it’s my job to fight the darkness I could see threatening to take over my friend. I remember his remark from a few minutes ago and decide to go with that. “Can you actually smell emotions?”

He fights a grin, but loses when it explodes across his face. Rubbing the stubble littered across his jaw and chin, he clears his throat and tries to swallow down the few chuckles I hear rumble up out of his chest.

“Yea, sort of. It’s more like I get a sense, I guess.”

“A sixth sense kinda thing?” I snicker.

Rolling his eyes, he nods. “Yea, something like that, ‘cept I don’t see dead people.”

“So you could sense that I was nervous?”

A scary realization has dawned on me and I immediately feel my face heating up. I remember all the desire that had been coursing through me nearly every time Derek and I were alone (like right now), how scared I’d felt sometimes and how worried and nervous I’d experienced during other times. And Derek had ‘sensed’ every single one of them.

I try to think back to that afternoon we’d spent in the loft, memories flooding back of all the tense moments that we swapped for across the room. I think there is no way that he hadn’t picked up on the ache I’d felt to kiss him and hug him and take his hand. I know there is definitely no way in hell that he’d missed the fear and uncertainty that had threatened to swallow me whole that day.

Now, I’m mortified. I want to bury my face in the crook of my elbow, but I think that will make everything worse. Derek was tactful (or he used to be), and so I don’t think he’ll mention anything about the arousal I’d felt or the ache for his lips that had rumbled through me a few days ago. I hope he would pretend like the little stutter at the door just now didn’t happen.

The more I think about how much of an aroused, desire, nervous filled person I became whenever I was around him now makes me even more embarrassed. If he really had picked up on every single one of those emotions, than I wouldn’t blame him for laughing or snarling at me. I probably seemed like a hormonal teenager with a mild case of anxiety.

By the time I’m pulled out of my thoughts, I realize that Derek hasn’t answered. My gaze focuses back on his face and I notice that the corners of his mouth are twitching a little while his green eyes are glittering with something that looks like mischief. I recognize that look almost instantly. He wore it a lot when we were young and he was up to something that would usually result in my humiliation.

I let out a groan as he begins to laugh.

“It’s not funny!” I wail.

“I know, it’s not… You’re embarrassed.”

He can sense that too, I suppose. I don’t know how I’m supposed to function with the knowledge that he can feel practically everything I can.

“Don’t you think that’s entirely unfair?” I grumble. I’m trying to redeem myself, albeit childishly. “I mean, you can feel everything I’m feeling, but all I get from you is anger and darkness.”

This sobers him up a little. He resituates himself so he’s a little bit closer than before, clears his throat, and then fixes me with another gaze.

“You use to be able to read me like a book,” he whispers.

“You’re not the same person,” I mumble.

And he’s not. I’ve already come to that conclusion and am trying to feel this new Derek out.

He frowns a little when I say that. “I’m not, am I?”

“After everything, I wouldn’t expect you to be. You’ve been through a lot.”

“So’ve you, and you’re still the same,” he counters, eyebrows raised.

I shake my head. “No, I don’t think I’m the same.”

Again, Derek scoots forward, brushing a piece of hair away from my cheek as a small, easy smile flits onto his pink lips. His eyes search mine for so long that I become lost in the green depths.

“Yea, you’re the same, Rosie. I threatened to kill you and you still wouldn’t leave me for dead in that hallway. A selfless as ever,” he chuckles lightly.

For several seconds, or what feels like minutes, I can’t pull away from the hold his gaze has on me. I’m staring and staring and staring while my heart thuds rapidly up in my throat as if it’s trying to make its way into Derek’s palm. I think I might feel better if it did that.

Derek, though, finally tears his orbs away and down to his knees, allowing me to sink back into the cushions of the couch some. I deflate a little and breathe too heavy.

“You’re definitely not the same,” I mumble without thinking.

It’s just that I wasn’t use to such intense moments between us. Sure, they happened sometimes when were teenagers and cooped up in the landing of the stairs at his house, eating ice cream and talking about relationships. But there were accidents that were played off within a split seconds and nothing ever came from them. Now, though, everything cracks and sizzles between us more and more every time we have a moment like that.

I remember that Laura had told him that I’d been in love with him and I decide that I might’ve been then. I’m not sure if I was now, though. I don’t really know this Derek. He’s calloused and hot tempered and so dark that it’s a little too scary sometimes. Despite all that, it seems the attraction is still there. I think it will always reside between us.

“Things were different then… Our situation was different then,” he murmurs.

I wonder if he’s talking about his relationship with Kate and the boundary it set for us on those nights we spent in the dank lighting of his family home. I think I see it in his eyes, the light, the hope, but clear my throat and look away, to the couch cushions I’m sitting on.

Now isn’t the time for us to push our relationship that far. I was still in the dark about a lot of things and he was still too dark for my taste. We needed time and that’s what tonight was supposed to help us get.

“So, are you gonna help me in the kitchen or what? That was the deal, remember?” I say as I get up.

I head to the kitchen, drawing in a steady breath as I go because I think I’ll turn around and push him down onto the couch if I don’t. He gets up seconds later and I hear as he tosses his leather jacket onto the back of the sofa.

“Yea, but I haven’t seen that cake yet, Rosie. Pay up.”

Laughing, I bend down to the oven and pull out the pretty cake my mother had made especially for him. I’ve been keeping it warm since I brought it home. The whipped cream and blueberries she’d decorate the top with still looks mouthwatering, the blueberries having slid down to the sides.

Derek swipes a finger over a patch of blueberry juice that has dripped down and sticks it in his mouth. He lets out a groan as he sucks on it.

I pretend not to be turned on and go about putting the cake back, deciding that this was going to be a very interesting evening.