"Funny. No, Jake. I'm good with the bus." She keeps walking.
"Evie, we need to talk," I say seriously, but she doesn’t even look back my way and instead keeps walking.
"No, Jake, we don't," she says.
Fuck me, there are cars parked along the street from this point forward so I pull to the side and get out of my car. I would leave my car in the middle of the street if I had to.
As I jog up to her, she sits down on one of the empty bus stop bench seats and cranes her neck to see if the bus is coming. Oh hell no, I will jump on that bus with her.
Because there are people milling around in front of her, I stand behind her and slightly to the left as I say, "Listen, Evie, last night was not what you think it was."
"Jake," she interrupts, "It's been a long day. I'm really asking you to just leave this, okay? You should have told me you have a girlfriend. You didn't. It's done. Walk away." Then she turns away from me. I can feel my blood start to boil, not because I blame Evie for her anger, but because it’s f**king Gwen who is between us right now. It’s too ludicrous for words. I clench my jaw.
"Gwen is not my girlfriend, Evie. I hope you'd think more of me than that after the time we've spent together."
"Jake, again, walk away."
"I'm not gonna do that, Evie," I say. No way in hell.
I see her heave a big impatient breath and purse those beautiful lips of hers. She’s pissed. She stands up and gets right in my face, eyes narrowed. "Clue in, Jake. You don't know me. You think you do, but you don't. You think you know what type of person I am, but you have no idea. And so, you don't get to do this. You don't get to interrupt my life over and over again and then think that I will be grateful to you for gracing my life with your very presence. After last night, I think it's perfectly clear that there is no reason for you to be here. So I am asking you again if we can have this conversation another time like never?"
As she goes to turn away from me, I grab her hand and pull her back toward me, right up to my face. Oh hell no. This girl is going to listen to me if I have to pin her against the wall to make her do it. Would I really pin her against the wall to make her listen to me? Yeah, f**k yeah, I would. But I’m kinda hoping that scenario is not going to go down because then I’ll really piss her off. I’d really rather have this conversation in my car, but I guess that’s not going to happen.
"It wasn't my intention to do this on a street corner, but this stubborn girl is gonna make me," I say, mostly to myself. Okay, though. I’m flexible. I take a deep breath as Evie narrows her eyes at me again. But she’s not trying to move away. This is a start.
I don’t have to tell Evie who I am to let her know what was crystal clear to me simply from watching her live her life for a little over a week. I could very well have been a stranger and still figured out how amazing she is. "You think I don't know you, Evie? I'll tell you what I know about you. That week I was following you, I know that you took the goddamn BUS to an old man's house to drop off cookies."
Her brows snap down and she stares at me for a second. "Mr. Cooper?" she finally asks, shaking her head in confusion, her eyes losing some of the anger they just held. "He lived next to the house where I lived for four years. He was always nice to me. He's widowed. Lonely. He really likes my chocolate chip cookies."
"It's a two hour round trip bus ride, Evie."
She’s still looking at me like I might be slightly crazy as she takes a deep breath. "Jake, I'm sure there's a point here but–"
"That guy across the hall was going to kill me before he let me even think about so much as making you uncomfortable."
"Maurice?" she says, scrunching her face up in confusion. God, she really has no f**king clue how she affects other people. "He's a really protective guy."
I keep going, trying to make my point, "Like the guy last night who practically melted me with the angry lasers coming out of his eyes after he thought I disrespected you in public?" I ask gently, my hold on her hand loosening because I don’t think she’s going to run now.
"Landon?" she asks. "He's one of my best friends, he–"
Jesus, am I not making this crystal clear to her? I’ve never met anyone who has a harder time understanding a compliment. I get it, believe me, I get it. But it’s still f**king frustrating when you’re the one trying to deliver the praise. It occurs to me that she probably hasn’t had a lot of heartfelt compliments in her life since I left and it’s no wonder she doesn’t recognize one when she sees it. This thought makes an intense flood of possessiveness fill my chest and I make the vow to keep telling her how amazing she is every day until I leave this earth. If by some horror she rejects me once she knows my whole disgusting truth, I will have it written in the sky every morning over her apartment. It feels like the greatest travesty of justice on the planet for this girl not to understand the depth of her own beauty. For my girl not to understand the depth of her own beauty. "Evie, I think you're failing to grasp what I'm saying to you and so I'm going to spell it out for you here, baby."
I stare straight into her widened eyes as I say, "You say 'please' and 'thank you' to everyone, Evie. You almost bumped into a cocker spaniel being walked by his owner and when you ducked around him, you said, 'excuse me.' You said 'excuse me' to a dog, Evie. And I bet you didn't even think twice about that. And that's because your manners are so deeply ingrained in you, that that is second nature. And given what I know about your past, I'm gonna guess that no one f**king taught you that. That that is just all Evie."