Awkward Meet Normal

Chapter Fifty:

Dash:

She was doing it on her own. MarketingGirl was going to be a success.

"How many accounts do you have now?" I asked her after getting home. She seemed frazzled. She was sitting at her desk in her own office. I had made a call to have the room across from my office turned into an office for her. She had been using it constantly, at all hours. Items were strewn about everywhere.

Annabelle, in her creative zone, was a site to be held.

"Eight clients." She rolled her shoulders and pushed back from the desk. "Eight small clients."

"Eight clients" I smiled at her. "Is eight clients."

She rolled her shoulders back. "I used to have thirty-plus clients; why do eight clients seem so hard to me now?"

"Because they matter more now."

She gawks at me. "They mattered before."

"I know they did, but having it be your company makes it more stressful."

She lays back on the floor, staring up at me. I rarely found her at her actual desk; it was either on the couch that the interior designer brought in or on the floor, barefoot.

My house went from feeling empty to lively once she moved in. I never wanted to think of it without her in it.

"Shit," Annabelle said, looking at her phone.

"What is it?" I asked.

"I missed the weekly pick-up game." Her face fell; she had not made it to one for weeks. Her brother was not going to be happy. "I told Benny I was going to go; Ryan wasn't going to be at it this week."

I didn't want to ask, but I did. "Have you talked to Ryan?"

She shakes her head. "No. I believe there is no fixing what he broke there. Sydney deserves better. She texted the other day and said they started marriage counseling."

Tonight was the first time I had heard Annabelle bring up the word marriage. Ever since I had said it on the phone with Kyle, she had seemed to be avoiding the word. Slow. She wanted slow even though she had moved in with me, and it felt like we had been living together for months.

"Good," I said.

There was a pounding on the front door a couple of minutes later.

"I'll come," Annabelle said, standing slowly. I wondered how long she had been in her office without a break. She had on the same pair of sweats I had seen her lounging in the day before. Her hair was in a messy high bun, and her blue light glasses were on the top of her head now.

"Benny," Annabelle said, opening the front door.

"Bell," he said, stepping in and pushing the door open. "You promised you would come. You said I quote I "ll make sure to get my scrawny ass there so you can beat me at basketball and feel like a real man."

"I didn't say that," Annabelle gawked at her brother.

"I know. But yet here I am on the opposite side of town."

She rolls her eyes at him. "Benny, you live a couple of neighborhoods away."

He turns, smiling at me. "I do."

"Impressive. Would you care for a drink?"

"Eh, why not."

"No. He would not." Annabelle said, giving me the eye.

"Oh, come on, little Bella," Benny said, putting her in a fake headlock. "One drink will not kill ya."

He lets her go, and she rolls her eyes. "I have so much to get done before tomorrow," she says under her breath. She was going to burn herself out.