Watch Over Me (7 page)

The elevator stops on Zander's floor before I realize it, and I quickly dig through
my purse looking for my phone to busy myself before he tries to engage me in more
conversation or God forbid ask me out. It's not until the elevator doors are closing
behind him, and I'm still pawing through my purse, that I look up and realize he didn't
even look my way or make an attempt to talk to me again before he got off. I don't
realize how much I actually
wanted
him to do something like that until I feel a twinge of disappointment as he walks
away from me.

"See you around, Bakery Girl," he says over his shoulder as I watch the doors close
and feel the elevator start to move again with my mouth wide open.

I'm distracted.

My mind is a jumbled mess ever since Zander walked away from me in the elevator almost
two weeks ago. I've burnt cupcakes, dropped entire trays of cookies, and snapped at
Meg, which I never do. She's the nicest person in the world, who doesn't look at me
with pity, and I bit her head off about an order that
I
wrote down wrong.

I skip the following week's meeting, not wanting to chance running into Zander again
with his easy laugh or pretty eyes or the way he completely shocked me by just walking
away. Even though I hate those damn meetings, I feel uneasy after missing one. I keep
checking to make sure I don't leave the oven on, and I keep patting my pockets to
make sure I still have my car keys. After running back into the apartment this morning
to make sure I unplugged the iron, I kicked the front tire of my car when I got back
outside, frustrated that all of this nonsense is over me feeling guilty about skipping
a stupid meeting—a meeting that never helped me and never made a difference in my
life.

My frustration is the only explanation as to why I am currently stalking over to the
table in the corner—the table where Zander currently sits reading the paper. It's
the same table where I found six more notes that followed in the first one's wake,
each one reminding me that I'm much more beautiful when I smile or trying to fool
me with humor like yesterday's note.
"Every time you frown, God kills a kitten."
I should have known that skipping the meeting wouldn't just make him disappear. And
of course Meg has been having a field day over those stupid napkin notes, telling
me that it's something right out of a Hallmark made-for-television movie.

Who the hell does he think he is?

"Who the hell do you think you are?" I ask angrily as I stop right next to his table
and fold my arms protectively across my chest.

He glances up from his paper and my breath catches in my throat. I was too distracted
a few weeks ago by the fact that he was at
my
hospital in
my
personal space to notice anything other than how good he smelled or that he was cute.
Staring at him now, I notice that his eyes aren't just blue. They're crystal blue.
They sparkle as the sun shines in from the window next to him, and incredibly long,
dark lashes frame them.

One side of his mouth turns up in a smile, and a dimple I never noticed before pops
up out of nowhere on the lower part of his left cheek. His jaw is smooth and freshly
shaven, and he has a small scar above his right eyebrow that I have an unnatural urge
to run my finger over. I'm so busy blatantly staring that I momentarily forget my
purpose for coming over to his table. My eyes are taking in his soft, full lips, and
after a few seconds of ogling them, I realize they are moving and he's answering my
demanded question.

"I think I already established in the elevator that I'm Zander, but I could be wrong.
You sound really pissed, so how about you just tell me who I am," he says me with
a grin.

"I don't care what your stupid name is. I care about why you keep leaving me these
annoying notes." Ignoring that stupid dimple, I smack the handful of stupid napkins
with the stupid messages on them on top of the stupid table in front of him. His coffee
cup rattles against the table with the force of my hand, and he glances back and forth
from the pile of napkins to my face.

"You kept all of my notes?" he asks softly, his eyebrows rising in shock.

Seriously? That's the only thing he has to say?

"Stop leaving me notes. Stop staring at me. And stop smiling," I growl before turning
on my heels and walking away.

"Is it okay if I still breathe? What about blink? Is blinking allowed, Bakery Girl?"
he calls to my back.

"Stop calling me Bakery Girl. My name is ADDISON!" I shout in irritation over my shoulder
as I round the corner of the counter and walk past a smiling Meg resting her elbows
on the counter with her chin in her hands. She opens her mouth to speak, and I hold
up my hand in front of her face.

"Don't. Not one word," I warn her before I keep going, slamming both of my hands into
the swinging door that leads to the back room.

I start dragging mixing bowls and pots and pans down from the cupboards, banging them
onto the counter and cursing at myself as I go.

What in the hell possessed me to talk to him? He's going to be like a stray cat that
you feel sorry for and feed out on your front porch. I'm never going to be able to
get rid of him now.

I grow increasingly angrier at myself when I realize that I'm not exactly sure if
I'm happy or pissed that he might keep coming back, and I wonder if Dr. Thompson will
be pleased that I showed him who I was AND told him my name. It's probably not exactly
what she had in mind when she told me to share part of myself with someone, but I
don't really care. Now he knows I'm a bitch, and if he's smart, he'll change his mind
and won't want anything more to do with me.

"
When was the last time you did something just for you? Something that made you happy
and had nothing to do with anyone else?" Dr. Thompson asks as I curl up in my usual
position on her pristine white couch. She stares at me and then twitches her nose
like Samantha on the old television show
Bewitched
. My mother had the same facial tick. We used to joke with her that it wasn't something
she did unconsciously, but that she was secretly casting spells on all of us.

Dr. Thompson's question should be an easy question to answer, right? I mean everyone
does something for themselves every now and then, whether it's getting a manicure,
taking a nap, or sitting outside on a nice day and reading a book. It shouldn't be
that hard for me to think of something, ANYTHING, that I've done for myself recently.
Unfortunately, I'm coming up blank.

"Addison?"

Dr. Thompson sits with her hands folded in her lap, waiting for me to answer her.
But I can't. I don't have an answer. I haven't done anything for myself in longer
than I can remember. I run the bakery every day and sure, it pays the bills and keeps
a roof over my head, but I do it for my mom, not for me. I do it because it's what
she would have wanted. I go to support meetings every week, and supposedly they're
to help me, but they aren't really for me. They're for my dad and because of my dad,
and it makes HIM happy that I go to these meetings week after week.

"I want you to do one thing this week. One thing that is just for YOU. One thing that
doesn't benefit anyone else but yourself. One thing that doesn't make anyone else
happy but you. Do you think you can do that?"

Sitting on the bench in front of the bakery, I stare down at the top sheet of the
yellow legal pad that's been sitting in my lap for five minutes. As much as Dr. Thompson's
advice usually annoys me, I decided to try out one of her suggestions this week. I
just put a batch of banana nut muffins in the oven, and I have twenty-five minutes
to myself before I need to go in, take them out, and pack them up for an order. Twenty-five
minutes all to myself; one thousand five hundred seconds of uninterrupted time that
I can spend on Addison. I knew as soon as Dr. Thompson suggested it what I'd choose
to do if I had the time. I would write. I would write until my fingers were sore from
holding the pen, and I would write until I had no more words left in me. I would write
enough material to fill a hundred yellow legal pads and still have thoughts left for
a few more. But here I sit, on a bench in the spring sunshine, unable to write one
word. The only thoughts that fill my mind are ones about the bakery and all of my
responsibilities—the type of thoughts that remind me I shouldn't be sitting here doing
nothing when I have so much other work to do. Obviously I'm not grasping the purpose
of this exercise: to do something that makes me happy and that will help pull me out
of the black hole I've been in for far too long.

I close my eyes and try to think of something cheerful that has nothing to do with
the building behind me, but it's impossible. I put a wall up between my heart and
my mind a long time ago and nothing can break through it. I try to feel something
other than numb, but I can't do it. If I let just one little feeling in, the rest
will follow and my wall will come crashing down, and then I'll feel everything. I
can't afford to feel everything. I can't afford to have the weight of all of those
emotions crushing me. I have a business to run and bills to pay. At nineteen years
old, when all of my former friends are enjoying college and having fun, I have responsibilities
that can't be put on the back burner because if I take time for myself, everything
will collapse around me.

Frustrated with myself and my failure at "me" time, I open my eyes and see a napkin
resting on top of the legal pad in my lap with familiar handwriting on it. The handwriting
doesn't affect me as much as the picture drawn underneath the words does. There's
a stick figure with its arms open wide and the words "I like it when you smile thiiiiiiiiiiis
much" underneath it.