Fragile Little Things ✓

11 unlovable

Indigo

I DON’T THINK I’VE suffered a bigger wave of embarrassment than when I walk out of Jeremiah Valentine’s apartment. I’m halfway down the steps to his apartment, huffing and still not one hundred percent sober, when I sense someone behind me. I turn, but it’s not the buzzcut and inked arms that I’m met with, but dark hair. It’s his roommate.

“Hey,” he says, still in a Superman pyjama shirt and plaid pants. “Wait up.”

Sighing, I slow my steps so he could catch up with me. “I’m sorry about that.”

I shake my head. “It’s alright.”

“I’ll walk you home,” he says.

I lift my gaze to meet his. He isn’t as tall as Jem, but he still has a few inches on me. I want to gently turn down his offer, because I don’t have very far to walk, and honestly, I’d prefer to wallow in my mortification alone.

“You really don’t have to,” I say, “I’m only three blocks away.”

“Exactly,” he says, “All the more reason to walk you home. Plus…” He stops for a beat. “Mae will have my ass if I don’t.”

I narrow my eyes, a bit confused. Eli catches on, a little dent forming between his brows. “Mae didn’t tell you about me?”

Still confused, I slowly shake my head. “Um…no.”

He sighs. “We went to the same high school. I ­used to have the biggest cr—” Then he pauses, as if catching himself. “I haven’t seen her in a while, but we’re friends. She made me promise to watch over you. Or else.”

My mind replays the exact moment Eli had barged in the door, the moment Jem had pinned my body under his, his mouth was so close to mine all I could breathe was him. The sweet taste of the marshmallow he’d popped between my lips is still fresh on the tip of my tongue. I would’ve gone through it. I would’ve gone through more. Controlling my breathing, I shoot Eli a glare. “So you did it on purpose?”

“Cockblocked? Oh yeah.” He grins. “Definitely on purpose.”

“I really don’t know whether I’m supposed to like you or hate you right now,” I murmur under my breath, not thinking he’d catch it.

But the light in his eyes tells me he does. “Love me, duh.”

I scoff, making a mental note to rip Mae a new one. We walk in silence for a while before Eli starts talking again. “J never brings girls home.”

There’s a pause in my step as I offer him a slow, sidelong glance. “Am I supposed to feel special?”

He lifts his shoulders. “Do you?”

“No,” I admit, honestly, “I practically jumped him and left him with no choice but to take me to his place.”

“I don’t think so,” Eli says. “I know my guy. He’s weird about who he lets in.”

I lift a questioning brow. “What do you mean?”

“It means,” Eli says, as we round the corner of my block, “You don’t enter his space unless he wants you there.”

I half nod, my throat dry. When I thank him for walking me, he says I shouldn’t mention it before striding back in the direction we’d come from. I’m outside my door, fiddling around for my keys, when my phone vibrates in my pocket. I pull it out, expecting to chew Mae out for leaving me alone (even if she’d left me in the care of her high school friend), but the notification on my screens shines bright with someone else’s name altogether.