“You alright, Ellie?” Fin was looking back at me from over his shoulder, his hand stilled on the intercom to let the pizza guy up.
I was standing in the middle of his living room biting a hole through my bottom lip.
Ugh.
“Fine,” I squeaked. Cleared my throat. And tried again, “I’m fine, just hungry. Faint with hunger almost. I mean, man cannot live off Ramen Noodles alone, right?”What was I saying???I cleared my throat again. “What I’m trying to say is let the pizza guy-“
The loud buzzer blaring through the apartment cut off my command, but somehow I could still clearly hear Fin’s laughter.
I did eventually escape to the bathroom, where I had a stare down with myself in the bathroom mirror. Like the rest of the apartment, Fin’s bathroom was even cool. It was huge and spacious and by all the amenities in the glassed in tile shower, I guessed he didn’t have an en suite in the master. There was an actual claw foot bathtub completely separate from the shower, though when I looked inside it was kind of dusty so I was guessing Fin wasn’t the type of guy to take relaxing bubble baths. The mix of modern and cozy antique was completed with a detached sink that boasted an open faucet and a burnished gilded mirror. In the long vanity there were so many cabinets to open and snoop through, but I kept my attention firmly on my own reflection.
We needed to have a talk.
Me, myself and I.
Fin was completely off limits. Not only was he probably the farthest thing from interested in me, but my brothers would go ballistic. Seriously, lose their minds over this. It wasn’t just the rumors I heard from other people on campus, it was rumors I heard directly from them.
While they themselves might live debauched, womanizing lives, they would never condone it in another man, especially one their sister was interested in.
And really, is that what I was looking for anyway?
Was I trying to get a membership into the fan clubs I utterly hated?
No, I wasn’t.
I didn’t even want to be here in the first place. This was a debt, a debt that wasn’t even mine. So why on earth was I making things harder for me?
Game plan: pizza, finish “orientation,” get lost.
Easy.
I turned the water on and washed my hands in icy cold water, trying to bring back every last piece of common sense I had lost out in Fin’s office. Eventually, I opened the door and reentered the living room. Fin was busy, standing over the open pizza box, divvying it up on two real plates.
Not even paper.
Even Lennox, in his ultra-sweet bachelor pad still used paper plates. Although he claimed it was because he was too busy to do dishes. Uh-huh.
I wandered over to the counter, trying to ignore the way my cheeks were still heated. Fin looked up at me with a self-conscious smile of his own and I had to assume his embarrassment extended to me. Ugh, why did I have to be like every other girl and drool over him?
“Smells really good,” I broke the silence, determined to put all of this behind us without having an incredibly awkward conversation about it.
“Yep,” he replied simply.Awkwardly.
He lifted a plate to hand me a slice of pizza and I couldn’t stop the eye roll. “Seriously?” I grunted while taking the plate from him. I scooped up two more pieces on my plate and after thinking about it, grabbed one more just to be safe. Four and four, splitting it down the middle seemed fair. And besides, if I didn’t grab all I could now, there probably wouldn’t be any left later. I knew how boys operated.
“So you were being serious about the Ramen Noodle thing, huh?” he asked with wide eyes.
“I told you, my weight has nothing to do with impressing boys. Besides I just got out of a long term relationship. Why would I care about what I ate?” I asked, gladly steering any weirdness between us back to just my disappointing social life.
“Well, I thought maybe because he cheated on you….” he trailed off like I should understand that kind of reasoning. I gave him a blank look. “I wondered if your weight loss was a recent thing. If maybe you blamed yourself for his stupidity?”
I snorted at that, actually snorted. “Colton cheated because he’s a douche bag. And by the way, I never say that word. That’s how strongly I think it. And I’m skinny because, whatever you want to believe about my family, I’m poor and seven thousand dollars in debt apparently and don’t have money to splurge on pizza every night of the week.”
He winced at that. Good, he should feel bad!
“Ellie, if I could give you an extension I would. But Ineedthe money. And also, it’smymoney.”
“We don’t have to keep going over this.” I waved him away and then turned around so he wouldn’t be disgusted by the huge bite I just shoveled into my mouth.
