I raise my eyebrows. We both know the answer to that.
She rips another bite off with her teeth, then snarls around it, “Can you let go of me now? I’m eating your stupid sandwich.”
“Mm. Icould,but…”
But this is actually quite comfortable, and she smells like vanilla beans and summer, and her hair is brushing oh-so-softly against my arm.
“I don’t trust you’ll finish your food if I do,” I finish.
Ears spitting steam, she digs her nails into my back again and leaves them there while she eats in irate silence, only breaking it once to ask for help opening her water bottle.
I oblige, ever her servant, as her nails spark a current under my skin.
She drinks half the bottle in one go, finishes her sandwich off, then drinks the other half, glaring at me the entire time.
I wonder if she knows how long her eyelashes look when she squints like that.
I wonder how they’d feel against my cheek, dotting butterfly kisses along my skin.
I wonder if she’s going to say anything about the fact that I still have my arm around her even though she’s finished eating.
I remove it before she gets the chance, shooting her an unimpressed frown.
“Good job,” I say. “You’ve earned yourself a nap.”
“You’re such a pompous jerk,” she replies, not lying down. Almost as if feeding her body gave her back some of the energy she’d depleted.
Crazy.
“Do you even hear me when I speak?” she asks. “Or are you so deafened by the sound of your own self-righteous need for everyone to recognize howrightyou are all the time that me even opening my mouth is a waste of my time?”
“Elodie, you don’t take care of yourself,” I reply. “I get why you’re annoyed with me, but do you realize that ninety percent of our arguments start because I’m worried about you, and you’re so defensive that you take everything I say as combative instead of caring?”
“Right,” she says, sarcasm dial on full. “Because you’re so benevolent all the time.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.” She’s so freaking obstinate. “I know what I’m like, especially when I get in a mood. But that doesn’t change the fact that ninety percent of our arguments start because I’m worried about you, and you’re so defensive that you take everything I say as combative instead of caring,” I repeat.
She breathes in—one, two, three times—then grits out, “It’s not your job to care about me. Or for me.”
I throw my hands up. “We don’t get to decide who we care about, Sweet. Because, believe me, I would not have decided to care about you if I had any choice in the matter. I do, though, and I’m doing the best job of it I know how.”
“Well, I’mso sorryto have caused such great inconvenience to you,” she spits, face red. “But, you know, being agrown freaking man, you can stop any time you want to. Especially as itis not invited or asked for.”
She’s not getting it. At all.
“I’m trying here, Sweet, to do the best I know how.”
“And I’m telling you tostop.”
Fire pours from her eyes. The frustration in my own jaunts quickly toward anger.
She’s somaddening.
“I need twenty minutes to finish cleaning,” I tell her, deciding to step away from this conversation before I say or do something stupid. “Then we can go home.”
Nostrils flaring, she nods.
Nostrils flaring, I nod back.
