Evelyn

Chapter 5: Evelyn

Waking up, I found my stomach churning and full of nervous butterflies. I thought about the night before, when Maximus stopped me in the hall.

I was walking down the hall towards my bedroom when I heard, "Evelyn?" 

I paused my steps and turned around looking to see our guest, "Yes?"

I was nervous as I watched him come toward me. His large stature towered over my smaller frame. It wasn't that I was fearful, no certainly not fearful of him. But, I feared the raging feeling inside me that made me want to walk straight up to this man, a practical stranger, and hug him.

"What are your plans for tomorrow?" he asked, taking more tentative steps near me.

"I- oh-um-" I got flustered as he grew nearer. I internally scolded myself for acting like a middle school girl in the presence of a cute boy. "Well, I don't know if I have any plans tomorrow..." I trailed off, twiddling with my fingers.

Was he going to ask me out? What no, stupid stupid Evelyn, there's no way, I thought. I mentally facepalmed. I had never been entranced by a guy like this in my life and the feeling was overwhelming.

"Would you mind showing me around town then? It looked nice yesterday evening when I drove past," he said rubbing his head and glancing to the floor. My mental scolding had clearly not worked because instead of answering immediately, I found myself staring at his flexed biceps as he rubbed his head.

He cleared his throat nervously.

"Oh- I- Of course! Sorry," I said, rubbing one of my arms, "I'm a bit tired," I said trying to excuse my jumbled speech, "I would love to show you around town though!"

"Wonderful, thank you," he smiled, flashing a beautiful set of pearly whites. "Good night," he said.

"Good night, Maximus," I whispered back.

I turned away from him, heading down the hall to my bedroom, trying to ignore the feeling of being watched. As soon as I got to my room, I took a sigh of relief, leaning against the door. If a few minutes in this man's presence had this effect on me, I couldn't imagine what a few hours of a tour would do. I twiddled with my fingers before deciding I needed to go to sleep.

I now found myself out of bed and combing through my closet, in desperate need to find something cute to wear. I found myself mentally chastising Alaska for forcing me to wear so many large layers. I searched and searched until I found a nice light brown sweater. It had an oversized turtleneck so it didn't feel suffocating. I grabbed my thermals and jeans and layered up before grabbing a scarf and my puffy black coat. When I had first woken up, I had braided my hair and so it swung behind me as I headed out of my door and downstairs.

Turning into the kitchen, I was surprised to find it empty and decided to start making breakfast. I grabbed some toast and placed it in the toaster and then filled up a kettle with water and started to heat it on the stove. While those were being made, I began to scramble and pour the eggs into a hot pan. Humming to myself, I failed to notice the person who entered the room. Footsteps made their way toward me and I remained oblivious until a velvety baritone that sent shivers down my spine whispered, "What are you making?"

Jumping up, I screamed, flicking eggs off the spatula and onto none other than the owner of the voice, Maximus.

Mortified, I stumbled over my words, "Oh my- I'm so sorry- I had just been," before running to grab a towel trying to get the eggs off of his nice cashmere turtleneck.

An eruption of laughter stopped me dead in my tracks as he gently took the towel from my hand, fingertips grazing my hand. He easily wiped the egg away.