Take Me Home | ✔

Chapter Forty-Seven

VIENNA'S POV 

   IT'S SEVEN IN THE MORNING. That brings my total of “hours I’ve been awake and could’ve been sleeping instead” to seven.

   It takes me a little while to remember that today was the day of Terrence and Angie’s wedding vows. Tess told me that it wouldn’t be such a big reception, but considering Angie was the typical debutante-turned-country-club-goer and Uncle Terrence’s family never moved away from Texas, she told not me not to be surprised if a hundred people come. At least their ranch house had their own zip code and was more than big enough. Only now do I realize why they didn’t just hold it at a church instead. Their ranch house was already bigger than a church.

   I’m cocooned in the blankets, trying to force myself back to sleep. I keep closing my eyes, but my brain’s already too far gone. It’s a seriously futile attempt. Why do I even try? I spent the whole night awake anyway. I missed my chance, in more ways than one.

  I decide not to waste any time longer sitting in bed and wrapping the mound of the comforter around my body, slipped out of the room in search of a good, hot shower. I grabbed a towel and some clothes to change into before the guests started coming, because I was more than sure that Angie would round us all up and ask us to do more things for her last-minute.

  I’m headed to the bathroom in the upstairs hall of the family ranch house when the door swings open before I could do it myself. The roles are reversed this time when I see Elliot half-naked in the doorway, with only a towel wrapped around the lower portion of his body and another in his hand to rub his hair dry. His hair got longer, I noticed; it was more unruly and haphazard, but it was a dark brown mess of damp strands clinging to his forehead.

I expected the worst. I imagined him widening his eyes and not speaking a word to me, to walk past me in a silently angry mood. But he didn’t do that. Instead, Elliot’s mouth turned upwards into a morning smirk as he shuffled past me and into the hall.

“Good morning, Vienna,” he said kindly. I blinked at him, and his bare, toned upper body that was making me lose concentration. He certainly got bigger over the year, and he was almost two heads taller than me.

“Hi,” I said quietly.

“I kept the shower warm for ya,” he told me, before saluting me. His eyes were aloof and light, and he looked relatively happy.

I was more than confused. I half-heartedly salute him back, watching as he disappeared into his room.

Hobbling into the bathroom and turning on the shower in a daze, I stopped to glance at myself in the mirror. Last night, I hadn’t been completely honest with Elliot. Even Tess could see that I wanted to be with the idiot. Hell, I’m pretty sure Angie and Uncle Terrence know. My own mother commented what a cute little boy he was when we were both sent to the principal’s office that year I punched him in kindergarten. I wanted nothing else to be with him, but I didn’t want to rush into anything. I was almost twenty years old, living the life of my dreams; travelling around the world and helping people in need of love and food and so much more. I was going to Duke University, and spending months at a time in exotic and different countries with different cultures.

And there was Eli. That was the part I wasn’t totally honest with because I didn’t really know what we were. We hadn’t lost touch ever since I graduated, but he was on the opposite coast and I was on the other. Our talks were mainly limited to just phone calls, text updates about whether or not we passed an exam, and the occasional Skype call with the time differences. I tried it out, I really did. At the climax of it all, we slept together and stopped talking shortly after. The calls got cut short and the texts became awkward one-word responses. Maybe because it felt so strange, we didn’t know what to do with each other.