Into the Realm

Chapter Eight: Brown is My Least Favorite Color

"Dear, would you like something to drink?"

From deep within a quiet summer slumber Tessa stretched out, completely relaxed in a hammock that hung between two trees in her backyard, and felt the warm air try to lull her back to her cat nap. A trashy teenage vampire romance novel (her literary guilty pleasure, stop judging her), dangled haphazardly from her fingertips, about to slide over the edge and onto the soft grass beneath her. The sun blew a warm kiss as a cloud moved, her hair blowing in the breeze and tickling her forehead. Someone stood over her and blocked the sunlight. Tessa lazily opened an eye, a bit peeved that someone had disturbed her in her relaxed state.

There stood Brown, holding a silver tray with a frosted glass of lemonade. A small bowl of fresh raspberries and blueberries sat next to the glass. Tessa's opened eye slid from his face to his body and both eyes widened when she saw he wasn't wearing a shirt. Perfectly sculpted abs bombarded her line of sight and she was surprised she couldn't look away; it was almost like someone took his face and photoshopped it onto Chris Hemsworth's body. She bolted upright and her book fell to the ground with a small plop.

Oh. My. God.

"Tess, darling, you dropped your book. Here, let me get that for you."

So shocked that he would actually bend down to pick up her book for her, Tessa didn't even correct the unwanted nickname. She found that she just couldn't. Any form of voice that she may have once had was clearly a talent that had disappeared, like a piano prodigy who sat down to play a quick melody after twenty years of not playing. She couldn't even think of anything else that wasn't like a loud alarm blaring in her brain. Red alert, red alert.... Brown was actually being a civil human being... Brown was acting more than civil....

Kneeling down to pick up the paperback with a now-bent spine, he gave it to her on bended knee, offering the tray of lemonade and fresh fruit with the other hand. Soft music suddenly started to play, like the cheesy music that would play at the end of a 90's high school movie. Putting the book on the edge of the hammock, he ran a hand through his too-long hair-- the hair that used to annoy the shit out of her but now looked utterly divine and amazingly soft-- and she felt something inside her melt at the sight.

Wait, what?

Flipping a stray curl out of his eyes, making Tessa give an involuntary shiver, he said, "What else would you like? I could made you some lunch. I just got the lemon blueberry cake out of the oven; if you give me half an hour I could frost it and bring a slice out here for you."

He stared at her expectantly. Tessa realized she hadn't moved--she was still in the frozen position with her eyes opened wide. How could she not be in shock? Brown, serving her? Acting like she was worthy of his undivided attention? Her melting at the sight of his hair? This was preposterous. Farcical. Ludicrous. Completely cockamamie. And look, she was stressed out to the point of using SAT vocabulary words. Jeez. She only did that when she couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Tessa?"

His green eyes locked with her brown ones. There was nothing but complete adoration in his eyes-- well, that and confusion as to why she wasn't responding back to him. There was no way this could be real. Brown would never stoop this low. He had too much pride to ever think about doing something like this for Tessa and besides that, there was the obvious. She hated him. And he hated her just as much as she hated him. Why would he do this for her?

The wind blew again and her hair blew around her. His eyes were still painfully glued to hers. It was unnerving. Almost... alarming. She couldn't tear her gaze from his no matter how hard she tried. His stare was magnetic; something she had never seen before in his eyes. As much as she loved the idea of him serving her, there was no way this could be real. Her heart started to beat fast, faster than it did that last time she was really scared with the creature, worrying that this was another way for her to look stupid in front of him, wondering if this was being filmed, and--