Shifting Gears: The Complete Series (Sports Bad Boy Romance) (34 page)

“Don’t apologize,” I told him. “I’m just
not ready, Brock. I’m the one who’s sorry.” He didn’t look amused any more. I
had taken the amusement out of his pretty blue eyes. I felt really bad. “I’m
sorry,” I told him again.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” he
said.

“I’m here all the time. We’re together a
lot lately, and then I tell you I don’t want to get involved…”

“You’ve been honest with me from the
start, Molly. I knew within an hour of meeting you that you didn’t want to get
into a relationship right now. You’re just so pretty and so smart and funny and
on and on and on,” he said. “I’m extremely attracted to you, Molly. But I also
like being your friend, a lot. I don’t want to mess that up. I won’t pressure
you, I won’t try to kiss you anymore…not unless you tell me that you’re ready,
okay?”

Damn! He really does fight dirty. He
thinks I’m pretty, and he is apologizing for trying to kiss me. I think there
are millions of women out there who would call me eighty kinds of crazy for not
wanting to be with this guy. They’d probably stone me in the streets.

“Okay,” I said. I suddenly didn’t know
what else to say. I couldn’t backtrack now and say, “Oh what the heck, kiss
me.” I couldn’t do that, but don’t think I didn’t give it some serious thought.

We turned our attention back to the movie.
It was a little awkward now. I knew he was embarrassed and he knew I was
feeling guilty for saying no. Somewhere along the way I shivered. It was a very
slight shiver, and I didn’t say anything about being cold. I was, but it was
his apartment. I wasn’t going to say so.

He excused himself right after the shiver,
and he went down the hall and came back with a blanket. This guy was something
else, and those women would be right, I must be eighty kinds of crazy. That was
my last conscious thought before I fell asleep. I guess the blanket put me over
the top…

CHAPTER
TEN

BROCK

I woke up sometime during the night. I
wasn’t sure what time it was. The movie had gone off and it was too dark to see
the clock. I started to sit up to grab my phone when I suddenly realized that
Molly’s hair was tickling my nose. I blinked a few times, adjusting my eyes to
the dark. I could finally make out her pretty face. She was lying on my chest,
and with each breath I took, I could see and feel her chest rise and fall, and
I admit, I smelled her hair. I had wanted to do it all night, but I think it might
make women a little uncomfortable for a guy to just stick his nose in her hair.
Besides, she hadn’t let me kiss her. Smelling her hair after that would have
just been weird.

I honestly couldn’t remember going to
sleep though. As nice as this was, and as much as I liked it, I sincerely did
not plan it. We were watching the movie after I had embarrassed myself by going
in for the kiss and she was really quiet. I thought maybe she was just
uncomfortable because of the whole kiss thing at first, but then I realized
that she was asleep. I did take her head and lean it over on my shoulder
softly. I had the most honorable of intentions though. I didn’t want her to
wake up with a kink in her neck. Then I must have fallen asleep, and then we
must have just stretched out. We were laying on the couch with me on my back
and her alongside me with her head on my chest now. I panicked a little. The
last thing I want her to think was that I staged this and I’m some kind of
pervert. I can be, but that wasn’t what this was about, I swear.

I had the strongest urge to rub my face
against her hair, but that would seem a little…desperate and weird, if she woke
up and caught me doing it. Instead I settled for the hair smell again. She
always smelled so good, I thought to myself, just before falling back to sleep.

I woke up again when the sunlight started
coming through the blinds. I had hair in my face now. I knew it wasn’t mine; it
was too soft and shiny. Molly was still in my arms. Sometime during the night I
must have pulled her in closer, because now she had her leg just slightly
draped over my knee, and her left hand on my chest. I was still trying not to
move. I was afraid…no, I knew that if I woke her, it would break the spell.

I lay there like that for half an hour or
so before she woke up. When she did, she looked surprised. She hadn’t meant to
fall asleep, that much was obvious. She was looking around the living room with
wide eyes like she wasn’t even quite sure where she was. I hoped that she
wasn’t going to be upset. It was not a big deal really. We had slept together,
but that was it. The pervert in me liked that I phrased it that way. I tried to
change it to something less perverse in my head, so when I opened my mouth I
didn’t piss her off. I threw caution to the wind and said, “Good morning.”
Scary stuff, I know.

“Hi,” she said. “I’m guessing I fell
asleep?”

“Yeah,” I told her. “Right before Arnie
ruined the cake.” She smiled at that.

“That’s good, I hate that part. Gilbert
smacks him around then, right?”

I nodded and she said, “What part did you
fall asleep during?” She was testing me. She wanted to know how long after she
fell asleep that I did. If I said right away, she wouldn’t believe me. But if I
said I finished the entire movie then she would wonder why I didn’t just wake
her up and take her home.

“Right after Gilbert smacks him around,” I
told her. It was the truth.

She moved her neck back and forth and
smoothed down her hair. I wanted to tell her that she’s gorgeous in the
morning, but that sounded more like a boyfriend and less like a friend. I had
no problems admitting that I wanted to be her boyfriend, but I was so afraid of
scaring her away now and having no relationship with her at all.

“Want coffee?” I asked her.

“Yes,” she said with a smile. “Please. I’m
going to use your bathroom.”

While she was in the bathroom, I put the
coffee on. Then I started making my juice drink. I have a combination of
vitamins I put in it, so I was doing that when she walked back in. I sat a cup
and the creamer next to the coffee pot. She poured herself a cup, left it black
and took a big sip of it without even making a bitter face. Awesome girl!

“What are you making?” she asked me as she
took a seat at the counter.

“It’s a juice drink. I put some vitamins
and herbs into it. It gives me energy.”

She was nodding. She didn’t seem to think
it was too weird. “What kind of vitamins?” she asked.

“Um…there’s B12, Vitamins C and E, and
some electrolytes too, magnesium and potassium.”

“What’s in the powder stuff?”

“It’s protein.”

“For muscle?” she said.

“Something like that,” I told her.
Actually Molly, I imagined myself saying. I have a tumor in my brain. Because
of that, my body doesn’t absorb vitamins and minerals the way it should and I
get sick. The increased protein helps my body to do what it should just
naturally do. I didn’t say it out loud. If she wasn’t ready for a kiss, she
wasn’t ready for that. I poured some in a glass and said, “Would you like to
try it?”

She took it and smelled it. It reminded me
of Jake saying it smelled nasty.

“How does it smell?” I asked her.

“Good,” she said, “Fruity.” I knew she was
smarter than Jake. She took a sip and said, “Hmm, it’s really good.”

“You want a bagel to go with it? I think
I’m going to have one.”

“Sure,” she said. “By the way, I’m sorry
for falling asleep on you last night.”

I smiled and said, “Are you sorry for
falling asleep on me in the middle of the movie, or literally falling asleep on
me.”

She shook her head and then with a smile
she said, “Both, I suppose.”

“Don’t be,” I told her. “It was the best
night’s sleep I got in a while. Do you want cream cheese on your bagel?”

She smiled. “No thanks,” she said.

After our bagels were done, we took them
out on my little balcony. It overlooked the back lawn of a dilapidated, should-have-been-torn-down-years-ago
house and across the street from one of those fortune teller places with the
big neon palm out front. Needless to say, the view is not what we’re paying for
here. While we ate I asked her, “So how long have you known Megan?”

“We met in kindergarten and bonded over
our first haircut.”

“Your first haircut?”

“Yeah, you know she cut my bangs, I cut
hers. All kindergarteners do it. Didn’t you?”

I thought about it for a minute. Part of
what my cancer treatments have done to me is mess with some of my memories. I
don’t really have short term, or long term problems, per se. It’s just harder
to remember things then it used to be. Good old radiation zap to the head about
thirty times will do that.

“I don’t remember doing it,” I said. It
was as honest an answer as I could come up with.

“How about you and Jake?” she asked.

“Jake moved into the neighborhood when I
was eight and he was seven. I acted like I didn’t know him at school, but at
home we played together almost every day.”

“Why did you act like you didn’t know him
at school? Was he already a little weird?”

I laughed at that. I loved the fact that
she liked Jake, yet she also loved to pick on him. She never did it in a mean
way, just funny.

“I was eight,” I told her. “I had just
started third grade. Third grade is a big step up from second. It was about my
image, my reputation. I couldn’t be seen running around the playground with a
seven-year-old.”

“Of course,” she said. “What was I
thinking?”

“What about high school?” I asked her.
“Were you a cheerleader, prom queen or all of the above?”

She smiled one of those far away smiles
that said the memories were either bad or bittersweet. Her eyes looked kind of
sad as she said, “I wasn’t much of a socialite in high school. Megan did all of
that our junior and senior year and I lived vicariously through her.”

“It’s hard for me to imaging that you
didn’t have a hundred offers to go to the prom. Were you an emo girl, against
all of the establishment and the gender and societal norms?” I was kidding,
sort of. I really couldn’t wrap my head around this beautiful girl not being
the most sought after, popular girl in school.

“No,” she said with a smile. She got that
it was mostly a joke. I liked that about her too. She had a great sense of humor.
“I was too cool,” she said. Then she grinned. I thought she was kidding, but I
wasn’t sure.

She finished her bagel and we carried our
dishes back inside. She washed her plate and her cup and sat them in the
drainer. I needed a roommate like her. Jake lets them ferment until one of us
gets home from school or whatever and can’t stand the smell any longer.

“I should head home,” she said. “I could
really use a shower and my toothbrush.”

“Okay. Let me get my boots on, I’ll take
you.”

“I don’t mind taking the bus.”

“I don’t mind taking you. I’ll be right
back.” When I got back, she had folded the blanket we left on the couch, and
straightened up the living room. It was funny how much we were alike sometimes.
“You ready?” I asked her.

We rode back to her dorms on Susie, so
conversation was pointless. I don’t know about her, but I was enjoying her arms
around me again, even if she only did it to keep from falling off the bike. I
thought about my failed kiss attempt. Then I thought about the night we danced in
the rain. I think she would have kissed me that night. I was beginning to
figure out that Molly’s a thinker, and if she lets herself, she can think of a
reason to talk herself out of anything. I think some guy must have hurt her in
the past. She tries to put up this wall around her heart. She likes me though;
I can see it in her eyes and her smile. I feel it…in my heart. I’m not ready to
give up on this being more than just friends. I wasn’t going to pressure her at
all, but I was still hoping if we hung out enough, she might start to feel it
too.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

MOLLY

I had just gotten out of the shower when
Megan got home. “Phew!” I was really glad she hadn’t already been here; I would
have never heard the end of it, having spent the night with Brock, no matter
how innocent it had been.

As I dried my hair I thought about how
good it had felt to wake up in his arms, with my head on his strong chest and
his arm around me. If I hadn’t been so shocked to wake up there, I may have
pretended to be asleep a little longer, just because it felt so right. He was
already awake when I opened my eyes and I had to wonder how long he had lain
still like that, just holding me and letting me sleep. Everything he did was
so…caring and sweet. I wondered how a guy that good-looking wasn’t spoiled and
arrogant. They were few and far between that’s for sure. I thought about the
failed kiss and wondered when….or if I was ever ready if he would want to try
it again. Megan’s knocking on the door interrupted my thoughts. I turned off
the blow dryer and said, “Come on in Meg.”

“Hey Molly, how was your night?” Megan
said as she came in the door.