The Eyes Of Wonderland

#Chapter10-03

#Chapter10-03

None of them were from Delilah.

"How mad is she?"

"Huh?"

"You're frowning." He'd disappeared off into the kitchen, and returned with a glass of water. With a stride so graceful that he appeared to float, he made his way over to me. Setting the glass down on the floor next to where I'd dropped, he perched on the edge of the couch. "And you said earlier that you had a girlfriend. How mad is she?"

"Liar," Deacon accused with a tiny smile. "Your nose goes funny when you lie."

My hand automatically shot up to my nose before I glared at him. How the hell would he even know that? He didn't even know me! "Go away."

Throwing me a look that seemed to say, 'are you f*****g serious?' a hand was waved around the room in a grand sweep. "Go where? I live here."

My eyes fell back to the phone. "She hasn't texted in a while. I screwed things up. This is one of our longest breaks yet." Teeth sinking into the tip of my tongue, I cursed myself for saying that. Challenged myself to give an answer as to why I had. The guy didn't need to know s**t about me or my life.

Except as he gave a small nod, concern seemed to bleed throughout his expression. It reminded me of a time not so long ago when I had a best friend to talk to. Back when It didn't feel like I was facing the world alone.

I hated the way I suddenly missed everything Blake and I used to be.

"What did you do?" he asked. "Maybe it's not too bad to fix."

Says the guy who technically helped me cheat on her? Admittedly, he hadn't known that at the time, and I was still in a deep-set detail that it had never happened, and not to mention that Delilah and I weren't technically together at the moment.

"This time?" I had checked my last message to her just in case by some fault she'd sent one and it hadn't come through yet. Nada. So I'd moved onto her i********:, glaring at the half naked pics she'd posted. "This time, I bailed on our date night so that I could go drinking with the boys."

An eyebrow quirked. Was followed by a nod. "And the times before that?"

"More of the same," I found myself confessing. We'd been on and off since high school. When we were good, we were great, but when we were bad, it was biblical. I had strayed. I'd f****d more girls than I could count on our breaks. She'd found out about a few and gone apeshit. Claimed it was cheating. That breaks were just space apart. But we always ended up back together.

"More of the same," Deacon echoed.

"She said our priorities differed. She said I was too immature for a relationship, or too selfish; I never put her first."

She hadn't been wrong. I never had. Sometimes, I think we were better off apart. I didn't care enough about her feelings to claim to love her and she didn't give a damn about me or the things I cared about. But we were familiar and now that school was done and everything seemed so big and daunting, familiar was good.

Familiar was my only anchor.

"Did you mean it?" I asked, head snapping towards him as a thought crossed my mind. She'd managed to get over the other girls. But if she ever found out about Deacon, about the alcohol induced madness, would that be forgivable? Or would she have been just as disgusted as I was? "Earlier, when you said that you wouldn't tell anybody. Did you mean it?"

With a deep breath, I blinked up at him. "Did you mean it when you said that you wouldn't tell anybody?"

Giving a very serious nod, he made a crossing motion over his heart. It earned him a tiny smile. It was the kind of dumb thing that Oz would have done.

"I swear to you, Isaac. I'm really, really sorry about the way it happened. I don't go around taking advantage of drunk people. If I was sober, or half-way close, it wouldn't have happened. I know this is going to sound really messed up, but for what it's worth, a small part of me is glad it happened. I like you."

"I'm not gay."

Eyes flicking up in an exaggerated roll, he blew out a tiny breath. "So you keep saying. Maybe not. People do strange things when alcohol is involved, but like I said, you weren't that drunk.

"I wasn't sober."

"I know." He held up a hand. "I was just saying maybe you're a little bit scared and confused. Or that maybe having a drink or two gave you the courage to act on feelings you were trying to repress. Either way, that's okay. I understand if you don't want to see me again, but if you ever need somebody to talk to, somebody to help you figure things out, I'm here for you if you need me."

"Is that your way of offering yourself up as a booty call?" I sneered.

Scowling, he shook his head. The overhead light danced over his flesh, lighting up the valley of contradictions. High set cheekbones that fell into a shallow dip along his cheeks themselves, and a razor's edge for a jawline, but softened by the gentle cast around his eyes that brande him with a sincere and trustworthy demeanour. He looked like the kind of man that every mother hoped and prayed her daughter would bring home.

"I wasn't offering you s*x, Isaac," Deacon said firmly. "Though, maybe if you begged me." He gave a cute grin that made his nose wrinkle. "I was offering to be your friend. I was scared and confused once, too. Having somebody there for you helps. A lot."