Paper Thin

He lifted his pen and pointed it toward me, as though he was punctuating my sentence in the air. “I’ve never been a fan of the word stubborn. Independent sounds way better.”

My lips quirked into a larger smile than I had wanted them too. I could still remember the fluttering feeling in my stomach the entire moment had brought on.

“I’m Will Pelzer, by the way.” He licked along his bottom lip. “And you are?”

“Charlotte Montgomery.” I never knew how my words had come out so strong sounding during that awkward introduction, but they had, and I had been grateful.

Things had seemed to be looking up for me. After all, when had anyone ever heard of meeting their next asshole boyfriend in the library? Nice guys hung out in libraries. Smart, considerate guys. Guys who were determined to make good grades and had goals and ambitions set for themselves.

Will was all of this and more.

Unfortunately, he also had a girlfriend. A drop-dead gorgeous, should-be-a-model girlfriend. They dated for three more months. During that three-month stint, I could feel the chemistry building between us. We had too much in common for there not to be a natural attraction. But by the time they broke up, I was dating someone. And so the vicious cycle began. If I wasn’t dating someone, then Will was. And when we were finally free to date one another, he had already signed on to head to Haiti for a mission trip that would last four months. From the looks of it, he had found someone while there. I, on the other hand, was still single, which was not intentional. I didn’t believe in long-distance relationships, the same way I didn’t believe in waiting for someone forever. Neither was realistic. Life always got in the way.

“Here you go, ladies.” Jeff slipped back into his seat beside Sadie. There was a frosted-over pitcher of the lightest beer I had ever seen in one of his hands and three glasses in the other. “Want me to pour you one?”

“Thanks.” Sadie smiled.

“Sure,” I added. Generally, I wasn’t much of a drinker, but this situation was a tad bit depressing. Here I was, sitting at a table with my roommate and her boyfriend, pining over the guy across the room as though he had been mine before and I’d lost him to someone else. What the hell was wrong with me?

Nothing that was what. Who needed a man anyway?

I damn sure didn’t. I was fine being alone. You had to love yourself before you could love anyone else right? Wasn’t that how it worked? I’d heard somewhere that was the secret. If you didn’t like who you were, no one else would either. Well, I liked who I was. Even when I was boyfriend-less.

Jeff poured Sadie her beer first, and then mine. I felt the tension in my shoulders release as I gripped the cool glass and lifted it to my mouth. Skunk. The beer tasted like watered down skunk. I hated it.

“This is good.” Sadie praised Jeff for his choice. Was she not drinking the same beer as me? We had similar tastes when it came to alcohol, and this was nowhere close to what we liked.

“It is, isn’t it?” Jeff took another sip, and smacked his lips together. I fought the urge to roll my eyes. I hated when people did that. It didn’t make them taste anything better. It was just plain a

Char? Jeff didn’t know me well enough to cut my name down to Char.

“It’s not my favorite.” I shrugged, avoiding Sadie’s eyes because I knew she would frown at me for being so bold. She also knew how much I hated it when people shortened my name as though they’d known me for years. There was only one person I had let slide with that.

He was sitting on the other side of the bar with a girl who wasn’t me wrapped in his arms.

“Hey, Sadie. Hey, Char.” The voice was husky, sending goose bumps across my skin in a ripple effect. “I spotted you over here, and figured I’d say hi.”

Scratch that, the only person I had ever allowed to shorten my name in such a short time was not across the bar. He was standing behind me.

“WILL. HEY, IT’S GREAT to see you,” Sadie piped in. Jeff and Will might not have noticed it, but I could hear the nervousness enter her voice. She never was one who could handle silence, especially not the awkward kind.

I understood her nervousness. My heart was already pounding out of my chest from knowing he was behind me. Forcing myself, I twisted around to glance at him, while plastering a smile on my face. “Hey! How was Haiti?”

“Great. Wonderful.” The corner of his lips quirked upward. It was the same sexy little grin I’d come to love over the last year. “Inspiring. Good for the soul.”

I knew right away he meant every word in its truest form and wasn’t being sarcastic. Will was appreciative of the experiences tossed his way. Maybe that was why I liked him so much. Where I was all hard edges and sarcasm, equal parts stubborn and independent, Will was warm and loving, genuine and motivational. We would be the perfect balance. If only.

“That’s awesome. I’m glad it was everything you thought it would be and more. I’m actually sort of surprised to see you back so soon. Wasn’t it supposed to be for four months?”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” And there it was again, that slight lift of his lips that made him sexy.

“No. Never.” I paused to take a sip of my drink, hoping the move would make me appear far less flustered by his presence than I actually was. “I just thought the trip was for longer is all.”

“I’ve been gone a little over two months.” His hand moved to wipe at the back of his neck. “Was that not long enough for you to miss me?”

My pulse quickened, something I wasn’t aware it could do, considering how fast it had already been pounding through me.

“Oh, she missed you,” Sadie muttered under her breath loud enough for me to hear. I glanced at Will, wondering if he had heard her as well.

He arched a brow at me. His blue eyes seemed even more intense and endless than I remembered them to be.

“Of course, I still need help with business calculus. I completely bombed the last test.” I forced my hand to steady so I could take another sip of my beer. Damn you, Sadie. She really needed to not say things like that.

“You telling me your grades have slipped since I left?”

“Yup. Not intentionally though.”

His grin grew. “Of course. Nothing is ever intentional with you. Is it?”

“Nope.” The witty comeback resting on the tip of my tongue died as the beautiful dark-ski

“There you are.” Her voice was sweet. Too sweet. If it was sultry and sexy, I could degrade her in my mind and place Will in a category I thought I would never put him in, but it wasn’t. It was too pure, too nice, for any of that. “I went to the restroom, and when I came back you were gone.”

“Oh, sorry.” His arm reached for her, pulling her to him—again—as if forced by some magnetic energy unseen by the human eye. “I saw Char and Sadie sitting over here and had to come say hello.”

The girl’s honey-brown eyes seemed to widen at the mention of my name. A sick sense of satisfaction slipped through me at the sight. She’d obviously heard about me. “It is so nice to finally meet you.” Her hand extended to reach for mine as her sticky sweet voice slipped over me.

I wanted to hate her. I wanted to find something about her I couldn’t stand, and latch onto it as though it were my life preserver. But as I looked at her, as I replayed the sound of her voice in my head and stared at her charming smile, I couldn’t find anything to hold on to.