Borrowed Time

Chapter Thirty Four

Esme was twenty minutes late, which was starting to stress Juliette out because she knew that Esme had left her house forty minutes ago and it was only a ten maybe fifteen minutes... so where was she for the other twenty?  What if she'd gotten in an accident?  What if she was dead?  God, Juliette could feel her heart racing at the thought of that... It'd really suck to lose her before everyone knew that she was hers...

There must have been something about graphically imagining her funeral that got through to Esme, because her bedroom door was thrown open a moment later, revealing Esme with a wide smile, beautiful and very much alive.  Thank fucking God.

"Hey baby!" Esme leaned down, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek before she set down her backpack and crawled onto the bed on the opposite end of her... She looked so fucking pretty today, Juliette's heart was racing just looking at her. "I'm so sorry I'm late, I got caught up in something and it took a little longer than planned."  She sighed, and Juliette nodded.  She understood that, she lost track of time constantly... but now they had way less time together before Esme had to sneak out so she could avoid Samantha.

"That's okay, we just have... twenty minutes instead of forty."  She said, and Esme nodded, reaching over to squeeze her hand before she started digging through her bag for something.

"Don't worry, I know.  We're just looking over my outline, right?"  Yup, that was the plan... but with how Esme looked today, it might never happen... She'd worn the same tanktop that she'd worn at her show and Juliette couldn't help but be distracted by the way that her muscles moved softly under her skin, the way that it clung to her body just right... It made her feel like she was gonna scream.

"I mean, yeah... If we don't get distracted." Juliette mumbled as Esme straightened up, giving her a nervous sort of smile.  What?  They got distracted while studying constantly, it was inevitable, it always happened at least once.

"Getting distracted in your house is far more terrifying and dangerous than getting distracted in my house, so it's probably not gonna happen... I don't want to repeat my last year, that would be pretty traumatic."  She had a good point there, especially since if they got caught, it would probably go very similarly to how her experience with Becky had been... but Juliette wouldn't let that happen, Samantha knew that the rule was that she had to knock on the door now, she wouldn't risk breaking that considering what was on the line now.

"Yeah... I don't think you need any help with that."  Juliette chuckled, reaching over to pat her leg.  Esme raised an eyebrow at her, tucking her pen behind her ear... God, how did that make her even hotter?  Something about seeing her in an academic way, the way that wasn't her normal vibe... it made Juliette wanna ignore any and all responsibility and safety measures that they had in place and kiss her until neither of them could think of anything but each other.

"What's that mean?"  Oh come on, like she didn't know what that meant.  It meant that Juliette and Becky could mirror each other in so many ways and she never wanted to be another reason why Esme struggled with relationships, she wanted to be healing for her.

"It means you're a poster child for everything that could go wrong in a childhood."  Maybe that was a mean way to say that, but it sounded right in her head... Honestly, in her head it didn't even sound that bad, but the slightly offended look on Esme's face mixed with her little frown told her it probably didn't come across as not rude as she thought it had... God, she had to work on her delivery so she stopped doing that.

"Hey." Esme's pout was almost too cute to bear.  She sighed and leaned across the bed, pressing a quick kiss to her lips, holding her hand on the back of her neck for a moment to play with the hair there as she grinned... Fuck, she looked even better up close...