Chevelle's Story

chapter 18.1

Abel answered his phone on the first ring. A love language.

Chevelle didn't bother sugarcoating her situation. She told him that she needed to get away from her house as soon as possible—that she wanted to see him. He didn't waste time asking any questions; he could hear in her voice that she wasn't okay.

Abel pulled up to Chevelle's house twenty minutes later and she slipped out the front door, unsure if anyone saw her but not bothering to look around and find out. She saw Abel's blue car sitting by the curb and jogged over to it, already feeling her spirits lift with each step she took away from that house.

"Good morning," she chirped, smiling when she caught sight of Abel's bedhead that was in full effect. It was clear that she'd woken him up with her phone call, but he looked so happy to see her that she couldn't even bring herself to feel guilty about it.

"Morning," Abel said, smiling back at her. "How'd you sleep?"

She hadn't slept very well last night, but it was no fault of Abel's. It was her own fault. He had asked her to spend the night with him last night, but she had refused.

Chevelle was weird about sleeping over at boys' houses (or having them sleep over at hers). The only guys she had ever spent the night with before were Jared and Wilson, and even then, it hadn't happened immediately. Spending the night with someone felt like a really intimate thing to Chevelle—maybe even more intimate than the sex itself. To fall asleep in someone's arms and hold each other as you dream...to wake up beside each other, as crusty and unkempt as you'll ever be... For her, it took a certain level of trust. But the weird thing about it was that she did trust Abel.

When he'd dropped her off last night, she hadn't wanted to get out of the car. She hadn't wanted to leave him, but she did. Not because it was what she felt moved to do in the moment, but because it was what she had always done. Leaving was one of the things Chevelle was best at, and she felt stupid for wanting to change her mind at the very last moment.

She couldn't extend herself the same grace that, deep down, she knew Abel would have given her.

This was uncharted territory for Chevelle. Even with the few men she had dated unseriously, she had never spent the night with any of them. And usually, she didn't want to spend the night with people, so it wasn't much of a problem. It was an easy decision to make. Yesterday though, it had been painful to leave. It felt like she was tearing herself away—forcing herself to leave him for reasons that she couldn't even remember anymore. And now that they were meeting up so early in the morning anyway, it felt quite pointless.

Last night, all Chevelle could think about as she laid awake in her bed was how peaceful it had been inside Abel's embrace. How she would sleep like a baby every night if only she could feel his skin on her skin. His heartbeat by her heartbeat.

"Uhm...I slept okay, I guess," she finally said, not sure how to explain the truth in a way that didn't sound crazy. "You?"

Abel shrugged. "I slept alright," he said. "Would've been better if you were there, but hey."

Chevelle smiled. "Yeah," she agreed. "I'm glad you're here now though. Thanks for coming to get me."

"Anytime. Although, I didn't have much of a choice," he said, chuckling softly. "On the phone, you sounded...not okay."

Chevelle rolled her eyes. "Yeah...rough morning," she muttered.

"What happened?"

"Honestly nothing," she said, shaking her head. "Sorry, I don't really want to talk about it."

She was still getting to know Abel, and she didn't want to scare him away by admitting that she sometimes had raging violent impulses such as the one she'd had that morning. Granted, most of the time they happened, it was in response to Jared and his fuckery, but still. She would keep this information on a need-to-know basis.