Perfectly Knight (Jordan Knight Fanfic, Liadan #4)

Guys and Girls

-NATALIE-

The swivel of DJ's office chair provided a semi-comforting sensation as I sat alone in his office and raked my fork back and forth through the bowl of lettuce, chicken, parmesan, croutons, and caesar salad dressing before me.

It was well past lunchtime and my knees had begun to cramp from sitting and waiting too long, but I simply didn't have an appetite or the motivation to do anything else except sit, wait, and stare at the brown box in the corner of the room that DJ had told me held all of his 'Dear Wife' notes.

The voice of reason in my head told me that box alone was confirmation enough that he wanted to get married. Long before all of this he'd dreamed of having a wife someday and the fact that a letter about "our time" at Martha's Vineyard addressed to me had ever made it into the box for Corinne to snoop and read was proof enough that he thought of me as the girl who he wanted to be his wife.

After all, this wasn't the first time he'd asked either-the first time had been a surprise during what had become our annual trip to Martha's Vineyard the summer before our senior year. Like a scene out of one of my favorite old movies, I'd had on a pretty, flowy dress and he'd been wearing suspenders with his perfect long, dark hair whipping around him as he'd gotten down on one knee underneath the shining glow of a gorgeous lighthouse and asked me to be his best friend and lover forever in front of all of our closest family and friends.

If it'd been up to him, the trajectory of our lives would have been very different. It was my bad decisions that had gotten us here. And yet, that voice that taunted me about my lack of perception was the one that was making me question everything now. Just because that's how he'd felt then didn't mean that was how he felt now. Maybe Corrine knew something that I didn't.

Sighing, I tossed my plastic fork down into the bowl before I brought my fingertips up to my temples and rubbed them back and forth while my bare right foot continued to pivot the office chair for me. I pressed my toes into the ground a little harder until my pivots picked up pace and I was soon spinning around and around like a little girl. The blurriness around me finally met the confusion banging in my head and I wasn't sure I had any intentions of stopping.

"Well, at least one of us is having fun today."

My heart leapt in my chest at the sound of laughter as I reached out for the desk and stopped myself suddenly to try to focus my bouncing eyes on DJ entering through the office door and tugging his welding helmet off his head before unzipping a thick jacket that looked particularly sweltering for a late spring day in Boston.

He pulled his DJ's Auto themed t-shirt off to strip down to a ribbed white tank and sure enough, when he finally emerged from the layers, sweat dripped over his flushed body.

I tried to steady my dizziness as a blush filled my cheeks and I bit my lip, "I don't know what I'm doing honestly. Is it hot in the garage?"

"For most things, it's cool enough, but after I put on all this stuff as protection for welding, hell yes. I'm dying," he groaned and tilted his head back as he rocked his neck from side to side and beelined to his mini fridge. He grabbed a bottle of water and began to guzzle it down. "The only upside is I've always wanted to get my hands on Uncle Jordan's car."

I felt my lips part in surprise, "So that red Corvette out there was my dad's?" I asked. "Your mom thought it was, but we saw a lady in it with her little girl."

"Yeah, Addison and Kayla. Addison's your dad's new manager at the restaurant and he let her borrow the car to pick up her daughter because her boyfriend's kind of an asshole from what I gather. You haven't met her?"

"No, but I've yet to go to the restaurant with everything else going on, honestly. So that's probably why," I nodded. "Did she get in an accident or something?"