“Is everything okay?” She asked the question, though she wasn’t sure she wanted the answer.
Jenna looked down at her feet. “I had a really good time with you last night.”
Okay, whew. Sawyer ventured a small smile. “Me too.”
“But I have to be honest and tell you, I had a bit of a…” She seemed to search for the right words before settling on, “A bit of a triggering moment around you leaving me a sticky note this morning and not being there when I woke up.”
Sawyer blinked at her. “Oh. Okay. I mean, I’m sorry. You looked so peaceful and we’d been up so late, I just wanted to let you sleep.”
To Sawyer’s horror, Jenna’s eyes welled up. She heard her swallow. “I just…okay. Just…let me work through a few things, okay? Just let me do that?”
“Sure. Of course.” Sawyer’s own eyes were wide. She could feel the cold air on them. She watched as Jenna seemed to escape the porch and went inside, closing the door quietly behind her.
“Fuck.” Sawyer whispered the curse and stood there for another moment before going back inside. “What the hell was that?”
Upstairs, she changed into cozier clothes. In the kitchen, she emptied a can of tomato soup into a pot to heat up while she made a grilled cheese sandwich—the one thing she was good at cooking. Then she took it all into the living room and sat on her beautiful, uncomfortable couch, clicked on her very nice television, and ate her solitary dinner.
The state of her stomach left much to be desired, but she made herself eat as much as she could, having skipped out on lunch. Sawyer was one of those people whose brain and stomach were connected, and when her brain was working overtime—like today—her stomach checked out to give all the energy to her head.
It wasn’t the best way to handle stress.
She ate half the soup and about three-quarters of the sandwich and tapped out. Her dishes shoved away from the edge of the table, she lay back on her couch, wondering how she’d ever expected to get comfortable on something with so many sharp angles. Lasting about seven minutes, she sat back up and got her laptop.
Back on the couch—sitting this time, because leaning back was just ridiculously uncomfortable—she opened upBetween the Lines, skipped all the comments and messages, and began a new entry.
I have said many times that romance novels are unrealistic…that they tell their readers they can attain things that are mostly unattainable. Once in a while…
She stopped. Sighed. Shook her head in utter disgust at herself. This was a terrible idea. She signed out of the blog without posting anything, opened her journal in Word, and began to type.
She spent the next hour venting. Spilling her worries out onto the screen. Jenna clearly had an issue, and they clearly should talk about it, but she’d been shut out for the time being, and that didn’t sit well. She got it all out of her head and down through her fingertips, then finally closed the laptop. She wasn’t sure if she felt better, and part of her thought about stomping right across the porch, taking those six steps that somehow felt like an abyss between them, and pounding on Jenna’s door until she let her in.
But she’d asked for some time, and Sawyer was not an asshole, so she’d give it to her. Even if it had her mildly panicking that the spectacular night they’d shared might never happen again.
Upstairs, she went through her nightly routine and settled into bed. Through the shared wall of the house, she could vaguely hear the sound of Jenna’s television in her bedroom. She pictured her, wondered what she wore to bed when she was alone. Did she have actual pajamas? Did she sleep in underwear and a T-shirt or tank?Oh, God, does she sleep naked?Those questions rolled around in her head as she clicked her own light off and slid down under the covers.
Sleep claimed her quickly, but it was restless, and she dreamed of her entire life taking place on sticky notes.
Chapter Fourteen
Today was not a good day.
Between the freezing cold weather, the fact that she hadn’t slept well and when she had, she’d had weird dreams, and the way she couldn’t seem to get Sawyer out of her head, despite the anger and disappointment she felt about their whole situation, Jenna was wondering if there was a way she could simply remove her own head and set it off in a corner by itself so it would stop bothering her.
“That should be a thing,” she whispered to the shelves as she lined up some new books. “Why isn’t it?”
Keeping busy was the best she could do, so she focused on that. Shane was there as well, and the two of them worked well together. His regaling her with stories of his kids helped a lot, kept her from drifting off into the weird mix tape of feelings playing on a loop in her head over Sawyer Hall—who she wished had never left her a sticky note to send her spiraling, and who she also wished would walk in the door right now and literally sweep her off her feet.
At the front desk were several boxes, deliveries dropped off by the UPS guy, and Jenna carefully sliced them open—she’d learned the hard way that you can’t get too exuberant with an X-Acto knife when the box you’re cutting open contains books…made ofpaper—while Shane leaned forward on his forearms, reading something on the computer.
“Oh, this is a nice cover,” she said, holding up a new book.
Shane glanced over at the romantasy in her hands. It was deep dark blue with a dragon in the background trimmed in silver and a woman with a flowing purple gown in the front. “I wondered if the computer version would translate to print. Totally does.”
“I’ll skim through it later,” Jenna said. “I’ve heard mixed reviews.”
She pulled out another book, and the model on the cover looked so much like Sawyer, Jenna felt like she’d been punched. Weird because it wasn’t even a photograph, it was illustrated. A cartoon woman with dark hair and glasses, and Jenna was turning her into Sawyer.
“What the fuck is wrong with me?” she whispered as her eyes filled with tears. She made a quick excuse to Shane and hurried back to her office, where she closed the door and dropped into her chair and waited for the emotion to pass.
