Scarlett Bound

Chapter 6

“You know for a moment I thought you weren’t ever going to call me back.” Devin reclines in the seat on the other side of my desk completely at ease. 

“I told you I would give you an answer by the end of the week.” He opens his mouth to speak but I raise my hand and stop him. “The answer is yes but I’d like to add something to the deal and have it written up then signed by the both of us. I want this agreement to be legally binding and the two of us, mainly you, can’t disappear while in the middle of it.” I tell him firmly. I will not give him anyway out of this once we come to a final decision. 

“What is it you want to add?” He asks as he runs his hand across the scruff on his chin.

“I want you to do a makeup tutorial with me. Full face. No whining or complaining. I need a male subject for my fans. They would love it if I was able to get Devin Afton to guest star for me.” Half of me thinks he’ll say no. The other half thinks he’ll say yes. It’s not like the guy has never worn makeup before. He modeled for years but this will be a lot different than the subtle natural look. I’m tempted to give him a makeover to look like a clown.

The thought makes me smile but I quickly trash it. I can’t waste having him as a guest getting petty revenge. I may have forgiven him but it’ll take some time to stop being hurt. 

“I’ll agree if you let me do your makeup in return.” He gives me a satisfied grin as if he’s got me off guard. Like I haven’t had tons of people do my makeup for me before. He may end up doing it the worst but it’ll still be a fun video to do. Everyone will love seeing him do my makeup in return.

“That works for me. Please have a contract of some sort written up. I’d like to have it all finalized and signed as soon as possible. It doesn’t need to be anything complicated but it would make me feel a lot better to have something made up.”

“I get it. I’ll send my lawyer a message right now,” He pulls out his phone and quickly types out a message, “All done. I asked her to have it ready by Monday. Now, for one of the shoots, I was thinking about a water scene. How comfortable are you with being naked?”

My jaw drops. I gape at him lost for words. Sputtering, I try to string together a sentence to tell him where he can shove his camera but my tongue seems to have forgotten how to function. Devin’s straight face cracks into a smile and he howls with laughter. I grab the nearest thing which happens to be a pen and chuck it at his head.

“It was a joke.” He says between spurts of laughter. “Please don’t kill me with a pen.” The shiny black writing utensil sails by him when he dodges out of the way. Glaring, I resist the urge to smile at him. “What about your bra and panties?”

“Devin!” I exclaim but I can't hide my smile this time.

“There’s that smile! I thought I would never see it again. Loosen up a little, Letty. This won’t be any fun if you keep acting so uptight. It’ll be like old times. Remember when you helped me out in high school by being my model for photography class.” I roll my eyes at him.

“Letty?”

“What?” He leans forward with a look of innocence on his face but I know he’s not innocent at all. “You said you didn’t like Scar so I’m trying something new.” Not wasting my time arguing with him, I let the new nickname slide. Nothing could be as bad as Scar. I used to hate when he and my brothers called me that and because I hated it so much of course they used it at every opportunity they could.

“Are you trying to have a walk down memory lane with me?” I ask as I open up my email. A new message from Rye is sitting in my inbox. My video is attached to it along with a message.

I hear laughter. Sounds like things are going well. Let me know if you need an excuse to close the door. I can totally come up with something.

Shaking my head at Rye’s message I open up the video. I want to have this bad boy edited and posted by the end of the day. As I’m clicking around I notice a new shadow to my left. Turning my head, I find Devin leaning his hip against my desk and standing next to me.

The sight of him in my gold, shiny, sparkly laugh is almost comical. If he were a lesser man standing in here he would bring his whole surfer bad boy look down a peg but to my displeasure it doesn’t. He is all man. 

My eyes are level with his torso which is covered by a green button-down today. My eyes slowly travel up the dips and dives of his body until I’m looking into his brown eyes. “Maybe a walk down memory lane isn’t such a bad idea.”

“How about we don’t. That sounds about as fun as going to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned.” Even the thought of those metal tools scraping my gums makes me cringe. Then they rub that chalky textured stuff all on your teeth and it's like having sand in your mouth.

“It wasn’t all bad, was it? We had a lot of good times.” He says quietly as he looks down at his leather sneakers. Letting out a sigh, I twist my chair so my body faces him. 

“Do we really have to do this? I mean why should we dig up the past? For the sake of this arrangement, I’ve put it behind me. If you feel like you need to do this for me then know that you don’t. I’ve made peace with what happened.” 

“We both know that's not true, Scarlett.” His eyes meet mine once again and to my dismay, I feel my eyes begin to sting with tears. Embarrassed, I look down at my lap and hope he didn’t notice.

Things aren’t how they used to be. We’ll never get back to that. Growing up Devin was almost always around. He basically lived at our house because his parents were going through this horrific divorce. It took years for things to get finalized. One of his parents always had a problem with one thing or another and the papers would have to be rewritten. 

Even after the divorce once the dust began to settle Devin still stuck around. His mom was too busy trying to find her next husband. It’s hard to ignore someone when they are always around. Especially when you start to notice how attractive they are. Devin was my first crush but he was always unobtainable so we were just friends.

I’d hang out with him and my brothers and they would treat me like “one of the guys”. I never even thought Devin saw me in any way other than his friend's kid sister. Yes, he was nice and super sweet but that was just who he was. After all the hate between his parents, he wanted there to be more kindness and happiness in his life. One night while we were watching a movie together I remember him telling me about how there was already so much unnecessary hate in the world. He didn’t want to add to that. Instead, he wanted to try and oppose it.

I swear I swooned right then and there on the couch but I must not have since he didn't look at me like I was nuts. Time kept passing and Devin became more and more popular with the ladies at our school. If I'm being honest, he was a bit of a man w***e but at least he was always upfront about not wanting to start anything serious or so i was told. Watching all those girls come in and out of his life was a wake-up call. Yes, I still had feelings for him but I knew that we weren’t going to happen. He just wasn’t interested in me like that. Or so I thought. Then he came back after the summer he graduated. I don’t know what changed but we were watching a movie like old times laughing at some joke and the next thing I knew he was kissing me.

At first, I thought I was dreaming. I mean, how many times had I had the exact same dream where Devin would kiss me then wake up disappointed because it wasn’t real but when I kissed him back and felt his soft lips firmly kissing me back I knew it was real. My imagination wasn’t good enough to come up with how good he tasted in real life. How mind-blowing it would be to actually kiss him. That night was when our summer fling started.

“Hey,” Devin places his hand gently under my chin and lifts my head up, “I didn’t mean to upset you. I guess I mean I didn’t mean to upset you more than I already had. What I did, just leaving and how I treated you, it wasn’t okay. You deserved a lot better than me, you still do. I was a dumb boy then and I am so sorry for hurting you, Scarlett. So sorry. I was a coward back then afraid to make a serious commitment.” His warm hand cups my face and his thumb caresses my skin. The comforting gesture makes me unable to hold back, letting a few tears fall free. As I look in his eyes I can see the sincerity of his apology.

“We all make mistakes sometimes Devin. Or handle situations terribly when there are about a million other better ways to do it.” I c***k a smile through the tears and manage to get a chuckle out of him. “Thank you for the apology. It truly means a lot to me. Things can’t go back to the way they were before that summer but I think we can work on making a new friendship.”

“I don’t deserve you giving me another chance but I'm going to be selfish. Thank you.” He smiles sweetly at me and I swoon like I did back in high school whenever he looked at me like that. It almost made my heart flutter.

Shaking my head I wipe at the tear tracks on my face and dab at my nose in case there is any snot trying to escape. I hope there isn't. I'm already mortified that I let myself start crying in front of him. I am not a crier. When you grow up with five brothers, crying is a no go unless you want to be made fun of constantly.

“Look how much the two of us have grown. You are apologizing to people and I’m crying in front of someone other than my mother.” I kid. The two of us share a laugh as we try to compose ourselves. Devin may not be crying but I can tell he’s out of his comfort zone. Apologizing was never one of his strong suits growing up. I can tell it still isn't one of his strong suits because of how unsettled he looks. That's why it meant so much to me. In all my years growing up, I’m not sure if I ever heard him apologize to someone even if he was clearly in the wrong. 

With one hand in his front pocket, he used the other to rub the back of his neck. Rummaging around my desk, I finally find a notepad and pull it out. I turn to a blank page and write down my phone number, email, and address. Tearing it free, I hand it over to Devin.

“What’s this for?”

“It’s my information so that you don’t have to go through Rye to get ahold of me. I have to get back to work,” I tilt my head in the direction of my computer monitor which still has my unedited video up, “but I’m taking tomorrow off. How about we get together and do something? Give me a call. We’ll start working on our new friendship so things are a little less awkward.” I give him a small heartfelt smile that I hope conveys the honesty in my words. 

“Sounds like a plan. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.” I get up from my chair without thinking bringing the two of us basically chest to chest. Even with my tall heels on he towers over me. We are closer in height but he still has to tilt his head down a few inches to look at me. Some of his wavy curls fall into his face and my finds twitch to brush the strands behind his ear. One of my favorite things, when we were together, was to run my hands through his hair. He doesn’t know it but over the years he helped me a lot with accepting my own naturally curly hair. Without him, I would still be constantly wearing the long strands in a braided ponytail or bun.

I let out a sigh and let the memories fade away. It’s funny how things I had forgotten can be all of a sudden crystal clear in my mind. Sidestepping to avoid brushing against him I lead the way to my open door.

“Thanks for coming to speak with me today. I know it was incredibly short notice but I wanted to get this started as soon as possible.”

“No problem. I’m glad that you called. My lawyer should have the papers ready in no time.” He places a large warm palm on my bare upper arm and brings his head down to my causing my breath to still in my lungs. His lips land gently against my cheek leaving a kiss. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Letty.” He whispers to me before walking away leaving me frozen where I stand. Getting back to work is going to be nearly impossible now.