Two Wrongs

Making Peace: Allegra

I panicked. I think anyone within the contiguous United States could have figured that out. Everything was fine... until it wasn't. Standing there, alone in his kitchen, beers in hand, I felt it. I felt the tension that had been building all night long and it overwhelmed me. It overwhelmed me because of Trevor. It overwhelmed me because of my brother. It overwhelmed me because of Liam and my own insecurities. It settled over me until it was suffocating, and I could no longer stand it.

So, I ran, like I often did. Let me tell you, Allegra Reynolds was the queen of self sabotage, and I had a laundry list of past offenses that could prove it if you had the next year and a half to listen.

I immediately felt like shit about it too. It's not like I ran to the guest house and went to bed. I ran to the guest house and paced and questioned and almost went back about four thousand times. I questioned running. I questioned not running sooner. I questioned even being in LA. I questioned literally everything there was to question, because that was how my glorious fucking brain worked. I questioned and I paced, and I drank the entire bottle of Rose I had stored in my fridge, which helped with the pacing, but not so much the questioning.

I watched out the window for a while. Watched Liam's slightly distorted figure doing the exact same thing I was. Watched him pace, watched him drag his hands through those perfect chocolate lava cake colored curls. I watched him drink a couple more beers, watched him sit at the kitchen table just inside the glass patio doors. And then I watched him turn off all the lights and disappear. That's when the worrying started.

I worried that he'd given up on me. I worried that he'd gone upstairs to text one of the millions of women I knew lived in his phone. I worried that one of them had come over because if they had parked in front of the house, I'd never have been able to tell. My anxiety was having a fucking field day with my brain. And that's when I then decided to put myself to bed in hopes that, in the morning, all the awkwardness and the worries and the pacing would all just melt away.

But it didn't. At least not from where I stood.

I paced more the next morning. I put extra time into making my usual iced coffee, trying to distract myself. It didn't work, so I made breakfast. That didn't work either, so I took a shower. I got dressed and put on some makeup, trying to not look like the train wreck I felt on the inside. And it almost worked. At least until I saw that stupid, gorgeous man doing pullups in his little backyard gym. Shirtless.  With a backward baseball cap. And every inch of his wide shouldered frame glistening with sweat. I watched as all the muscles in his arms and back rippled as he pulled himself up over a bar, and then released, dropping back to the ground. His biceps were the size of my fucking head. No wonder they'd casted this dude as a superhero. Comics weren't my thing, but I'd pay good money to see him in spandex. My brain decided it was now a great time to remind me that I likely could've seen him in far less and sent my heart beating into oblivion.

Fuck.

I needed to fix this. If for nothing other than my own sanity. I at least needed to make sure we could still be friends.

I quickly chugged the rest of my coffee, gave myself an internal pep talk and headed into the yard.

It was clear that Liam hadn't heard me at all, but it wasn't until I got closer that I realized he had airpods in. I took a fortifying breath and, as he lowered his feet to the ground, tapped his shoulder. He plucked out the tiny earpiece, jumping a bit, but as he turned to face me, it was me that let out a shocked shriek.

"Oh my god!" I exclaimed, covering my mouth with both hands. His entire right eye was no more than a slit due to the intense swelling of his cheek, now a dark, painful looking purple.