Begin Again: A Charlotte Bloom Short Story (3 page)

"You don’t know anything about me," she hissed.

And I realized she was right. I knew nothing about her. I didn’t know why she left Los Angeles. I didn’t know what she did for work, or whether or not she had a boyfriend. This could never happen between us. Sure, she may have been attracted to me physically – most women were, if I were being honest – but she wouldn’t like me when she got to know me. I didn’t deserve her.

"Thank god for that," I whispered, my breathing ragged. I wanted to push her away – I truly did. But being so close to her… it was damn hard. I wanted to shut this down. It needed to be shut down. I was drunk. This wasn’t going to happen.
Ever.

"I have been nothing but nice to you since I arrived a week ago. And you… you’ve been nothing but rude and arrogant. I don’t know what I did to piss you off, but I’m done trying to be your friend," she whimpered.

Here goes nothing. I needed to pretend that I wasn’t interested in her, in any capacity. It was better this way. It didn’t matter if I thought she might be the one. It didn’t matter if she drove me wild with her big eyes, or her perfect face. It didn’t matter – none of it mattered. Because at the end of the day, we would never work together.

"What makes you think that you could say something to piss me off? Do you think I care that much? Never in a million years could we be friends."

I turned around and walked away. I could feel the dejection radiating off of her at my words, and for a second, I debated running back, grabbing her, and throwing her against the railing to make love to her.

Love.

Love was a funny word. And yet… as I walked back to my room alone, I had a feeling that love was precisely how I’d come to feel about Charlotte.

The end.

***

Read more about Charlotte and Alec’s story
in my full-length novel,
The Fortelling
! The synopsis of
The Foretelling
(now available on Amazon), which contains the same characters as Begin Again, can be found below. Thanks for reading!

At age thirty, Charlotte Bloom has the perfect marriage. Everyone agrees: she got lucky. That is, until a psychic predicts a different life for Charlotte — a life that does not include her husband. Over the course of five months, Charlotte works to prove the psychic wrong, but what she doesn't expect is for everything to fall apart.

Suddenly single and alone, and by an act of fate, Charlotte flees her life in Los Angeles and is thrust into a different life: one that takes place in rural Wales. For the first time in eight years, Charlotte puts her happiness first, only to discover that maybe her life in Los Angeles wasn’t so perfect after all.

After being offered a part-time job at a quaint bed and breakfast in Wales, Charlotte finds herself bickering with her moody, attractive, Irish co-worker, enjoying it more than she'd like to admit. An undeniable connection between them leads her to believe that maybe she can have a second chance at love — but only if the magnitude of her past and her impending divorce don't get in the way first.

Love can't survive across oceans. The fairytale always ends.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amanda Richardson is an award-winning author living in Los Angeles with her fiancé and two cats. When she’s not writing, she can be found drinking wine, playing Scrabble, or searching for cheap flights to places she’s never been.

You can visit her website here:
http://www.amandarichardsonauthor.com

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