Felix

Chapter 8 - Part 1

Ella

All right, Ella had to finally admit it. The past few weeks she'd been a little absentminded. Carmen was right; she did seem to be walking around lately with her head in a cloud. Ella could admit to herself that maybe, just maybe, being around Felix so much and the way he gazed at her—making her insides go absolutely nuts, yet he was still a complete gentleman—had a lot to do with it. She'd thought him amazing looking from the very beginning, but adding to that how sweet he was when he spoke to her and how deeply he looked into her eyes sometimes, she'd been breathless around him more than once now. It was almost embarrassing, but as far as she knew, she'd managed to play it off every time she'd been around him.

Today she'd totally goofed and had shown up at 5th Street when Carmen and Sonia were scheduled for back-to-back classes. Ella had a couple of hours to spare now. The good thing was that Nellie had approached her with an outline of her ideas for the breast-cancer awareness program. It was several pages long, so it gave Ella something to do to kill time instead of heading back home only to have to come back in a few hours for the class she was actually scheduled for.

She'd been sitting at the juice bar for over an hour, drinking some carrot juice as she read through the pages of the outline very thoroughly. Nellie had some excellent ideas, albeit very ambitious but excellent ideas nonetheless.

"Hey."

Ella looked up as Felix took the seat across from her, wearing that beautiful smile that would be the end of her. She smiled back, breathing in deeply.

"Are you saving this seat for anyone?" he asked.

"No." She smiled, leaning over her juice and bringing the straw to her lips as a calming mechanism.

His eyes were instantly on her lips, and that completely warmed her insides. "You on a break?"

She shook her head then rolled her eyes, feeling dumb all over again. "I got here way too early. I mixed up my schedule. The class I'm here for isn't for almost another hour."

She lifted the paperwork she was reading and explained what she'd been doing since she'd gotten there to kill time.

"So you've been sitting here for over an hour?" he asked, and if she wasn't mistaken, he almost sounded irritated by this.

"Yeah," she said, confused by his annoyance.

Felix frowned, looking around. He was definitely annoyed. "I wish I'd known," he said. "I could've kept you company longer."

This wasn't the first time he'd made such an in-your-face statement like this. He'd referred to her as a friend a couple of times, too, in the past recent days. Ella reminded herself that this is what he thought she was now—a friend. And that was all he meant by this. As a friend, he could've kept her company. It still didn't stop the storm of butterflies already running amuck in her belly.

She waved the papers at him, trying to avert her panicking insides from giving way to the utter excitement that simple comment from him made her feel. "This has kept me busy. Nellie"—she laughed softly—"she reminds me a little of my mom."

"How so?" he asked, his eyes full of curiosity now.

The girl behind the counter brought over a juice and placed it in front of Felix. "Here you go, Mr. Sanchez. One large Body Charger."

"Thank you." He smiled but brought his attention back to Ella immediately.

Ella glanced at the girl, who didn't leave right away. If Ella were rude, she'd ask her when they started doing table service. In the two years she'd been there, they called out your order and you picked it up at the counter. As a matter of fact, the girl hadn't even reached the counter when the other guy behind it was already calling out someone else's juice. But then not only was Felix one of the owners of this place, he was the Felix Sanchez.