Chevelle's Story

chapter 23

It was about a week later when Abel showed up at Chevelle's doorstep.

She was shocked to see him there. She'd forgotten that somewhere in their whirlwind of a romance, she had told him where she lived. Back when he had joked about finding himself in her city one day. Back when the idea of losing him had been just that: an idea. A fear that she told herself she was crazy for nursing because they were just so perfect for each other. How could anything go wrong? How could he ever walk away from her?

Even with the distance, she'd been convinced they would survive. She hadn't wanted to admit it aloud because she was scared that being overconfident would hex their relationship, but it was true. She had a deep comfort when it came to her relationship with Abel. She'd felt so secure. The way he looked at her...it made her feel like she was absolutely everything, and he was so convincing that she herself started to believe it. She believed that she was his everything. That, in a week, they'd built what most people couldn't build in years.

Chevelle believed she'd become everything to Abel, and all it had taken was a two-minute phone call to send him running back to his ex. It didn't get much lower than that. She'd been humiliated and humbled all in one fell swoop, and if nothing else, at least she had learned an important lesson about following the rules she'd made for herself.

Chevelle had broken all her rules for Abel. Her rules about sex, her rules about intimacy, her rules about what to share with people she barely knew. She'd thought that just this once, she could listen to her heart. Let it lead her. That maybe it would be nice to cast aside fear and move from love for once in her life, and look where it had gotten her. She had forgotten that she had created her rules for a reason. Because she had tried it the other way and ended up with gonorrhea. Ended up with a dead boyfriend. Ended up in a coma, at risk of her family being deported.

There was a reason she'd created rules for herself. A reason she needed to be careful when it came to her heart and giving her love. Because she had so much love to give, and she'd learned only too late in life that there were people who would take and take and take that love until it no longer served them, and then they would cast her aside. And just as most of the other men in her life had cast her aside, so had Abel. It was to be expected, but for some reason, it still hurt more. There was a part of her that still didn't want to believe he had done what he had done. That he had chosen someone else.

After leaving his city, Chevelle thought she was never going to see Abel again. She wanted to believe he would come after her, but as the reality set in with each passing day, she started making her peace with it.

It was strange. Seeing him standing outside her apartment, wide-eyed and a little breathless. His lips slightly parted, like he was ready to plead were she to try slam the door in his face. It was strange seeing him in this setting. Away from that city. Away from his plant-filled house. Here. In her space. It made everything more real for some reason.

It was strange, seeing him every day for almost two weeks, and then not seeing him at all for the next two. Having him pop up all of a sudden with a beard much fuller than it had been when she'd left him. His hair a little longer than before. His eyes exactly the same. Just as brown and piercing and bottomless as she remembered them being. Just as easy to get lost in. As easy to find herself in.

Chevelle didn't like the way his presence still made her knees weak. Still knocked the breath out of her chest.

"What's this?" she asked, and her voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.

She didn't step outside fully, but she also didn't invite him in. Until she knew what he'd come here for, she wanted to be ready to put some distance between them.