F*ck Fate! (Book 3)

Chapter Twelve: The Words that Aren't Spoken

Andy

I don't know what had gotten into me. From the moment I saw Shawn walking down the street that night, talking on his phone, Kat's words from a couple weeks ago echoed in my head. Forget about him.

Yet seeing him, after weeks of having no contact, I knew I had to at least say hi. Of course, that specific word never became vocalized, but the conversation that happened throughout the store was unexpected, yet welcome.

The best part of the night was getting Shawn's phone number. I was being serious about it being strictly platonic. I was just starting a relationship with Lance. He had just gotten out a relationship. This was not the time to try to force the two of us together.

It's been another week since that night and neither of us had reached out to the other. I had wanted to, badly, but I didn't know what to say. It was one of the things that liked to keep me up at night.

I sighed, staring up at the ceiling above my head. I shouldn't even be thinking about Shawn right now. Not with Lance sleeping on the other half of my bed.

Shifting my gaze, I let my eyes wander over his bare chest in the faint early morning light. I won't say the sex last night was bad, just not right for me. I'm sure if he was with any other guy, it would have been great. I just couldn't feel any of what he was doing to me, despite me telling him what gets me off.

I was starting to realize that Lance might not be the guy for me. As sweet as he was, he lacked quite a few important brain cells. I hated thinking it, but I knew whatever we had going on with each other wasn't going to last much longer.

He rolled over at that moment, throwing an arm over me. I let out another soft sigh, accepting the fact that I was now trapped. So I started running my fingers lightly over his arm, loving how muscular he was. I have to admit, though, that Lance was hot.

It wasn't long before Lance tighten his grip around my torso and wiggled his way closer to me. I knew he was awake even before he looked at me with a crooked smile.

"Hey, you," he whispered.

"Hi," I whispered back. "How'd you sleep?"

"Perfect, with you next to me."

I gave him a small smile. It was hard to think about breaking things off when he said sweet things like that all the time. It wasn't fair.

Lance then moved even closer to me, bringing his lips to mine. I kissed him back, expecting it to be short and sweet. Instead, he quickly changed the dynamic to be more like the one we had going on last night.

I broke off the kiss by turning my head. "I'm sorry," I muttered. "Let's not do that right now."

With a simple kiss on my cheek, Lance rolled over to lay next to me. If there was one thing I appreciated about him, it was his ability to understand what no meant. Not everyone does.

A memory of Eddie flashed in my mind. I tried to shake it off. He did not have any right sneaking back into my head like that. Not after all the pain he caused me.

"You okay?" Lance asked, worrying filling his eyes.

I nodded before pulling myself up into a sitting position. "Yeah. I'm going to go shower though, if you don't mind. Help yourself to anything in the fridge if you're hungry."

Before he had time to answer, I had hoisted myself out of bed and into the chair, quickly heading for the bathroom. I hadn't thought about Eddie in so long, so why now?

Thankfully, the shower helped. I felt refreshed, both my body and my mind. I was ready to start my day now.

The moment I opened the bathroom door to go find Lance, I was hit with the smell of something cooking. I followed my nose to the kitchen (not that the smell would be coming from anywhere else in my little apartment) and found Lance at the stove.

"Smells good in here," I said, having stopped in the doorway to watch him. He had put his pants on, but bypassed the shirt. I could see each of his muscles move every time he shook the frying pan he was using.

Lance glanced over his shoulder at me with a smile. "Hope you don't mind, but I found your eggs. Scrambled okay?"

"Sounds perfect."

By the time breakfast was ready a few minutes later, I had also pulled out my loaf of rye bread and the orange juice. It was a bigger breakfast than I normally have, but really nice of Lance to make it for us, so I wasn't about to turn it down.

We were just about finished eating when I heard the front door unlock and Rita's light little knock on the door frame. "Hello?" she called. "Andrew? It's me, dear!"

"In the kitchen!" I called back. Then I turned to Lance. "That's Rita, sorry." I hadn't expected her to be by this early. Usually she came closer to lunch time.

Before I could explain who Rita was, she was in the kitchen, placing handfuls of plastic shopping bags on my counter. "Good morning Andrew. I see you have a gentleman visitor. I don't mean to interrupt anything."

I shook my head. "Don't worry about it, Rita. This is Lance."

The introductions didn't last too much longer than that as Rita started putting away the food she'd brought. Lance and I continued eating, although with less conversation this time. It gave me more time to think, which I didn't particularly want to do right now, but I couldn't seem to find a good conversation to start, not with Rita still in the room.

Don't get me wrong, the woman was wonderful. It's just that she also cleaned my parents' house and wasn't always the best at keeping her mouth closed. I knew my parents would know about Lance by the end of the weekend, but they didn't need to know any more than that.

I wondered what they would think of Lance. He was sweet, almost perfect boyfriend material. I had no doubt about them loving him. I just wasn't sure I ever wanted to get to the stage in my relationship where I'd introduce them. It was the same thought running through my head all morning.

My only dilemma was finding a reason to end it. He was too nice of a guy to leave without a reason, but that also meant I couldn't come up with some excuse of not being treated the way I wanted to be. He has done nothing wrong other than not having sex the way I needed as a paraplegic, but that could be resolved with a simple conversation - maybe two, if he still couldn't grasp the concept after the first one.

There was really nothing wrong with Lance as a romantic partner. In fact, if I hadn't had a certain person on my mind so much recently, I probably would never question what this was. But all week, my mind has been going back to Shawn's number in my phone. I felt like I needed to text him, just to help ease my mind a bit. If we hang out for more than a few minutes, I might just find out that we have nothing in common with him after all. Then the debate in my head would cease to exist.