Chapter 1: Double Dare to Desist 💘
Chapter One
Dylan's POV
MAY 24TH
9 AM
"Jeez! Charl." I groan, still sleepy.
The smell of thick black coffee enveloping the place with its strong burnt odor has me sighing nonstop.
Yielding to reflex, I pull the duvet over my head, not sure if I should be mad at Charlotte, my cousin for being so bad with coffee, or my brain that just goes wild at the smell of the black bean.
"Dylan!" Her frail voice screams from downstairs. "Breakfast is ready!" She seems to get closer.
There is a creaking sound as my room door opens without her knocking.
"Can I just sleep a little more?" I plead, clasping my ear.
"Nope." She tugs on the sheet. "Get your sleepy self up already!" She cries in frustration, unable to get my big frame outta bed.
"Charl, please, I'm on a break..."
"Which is why you have to be useful, to me." She just had to add. "You have to be up early, you promised to take me to the hall I will be hiring, yeah?"
"Fine." I exhale sharply and spring up from bed, my heftily built muscles bare. "After you." I motion for her to give me some privacy.
"Whatever," she scoffs. "be down in about five."
I don't argue as she will always win. I get out of bed, half-naked and just in my green shorts. Retrieving my black robe from the cloak beside my bed, I shrug into it.
I came down to Chicago at the sight of a short break to spend time with Charlotte for a while to fill up my energy bank, but it's beginning to seem like a terrible idea.
The past few months have been hectic for me. I just got recruited in the military, with our base in Alabama. It was my dream as a child. Meeting their requirement and getting shortlisted, felt surreal...
"Argh!" She growls, snapping me out of my mind and making me hurry up by knotting my robe tightly around my waist. "Your sandwich is getting cold."
"A minute." I juggle down the flight of stairs.
The view from the front door makes me stop at the foot of the stairs. It's Emma, our... Charlotte's neighbor. She is a single mother to a smart five-year-old.
Charlotte said her late husband who was a lead pastor in the town's chapel, died before the birth of their son. Very sad.
From a distance, I've watched her struggle with work and being a good mother to her little boy, and quite frankly, she is overwhelmed, so, I volunteered to teach her son extra lessons, thrice weekly, on the second week of my arrival in their neighborhood. Initially, she opposed it but eventually caved in.
"You should talk to her, yunno." Charlotte interrupts my thoughts and hands me a white thick coffee mug with steam emanating from the surface of the hot liquid.
"Uh... I don't know what you mean." I take a greedy slurp from my mug, the whipped cream sticking to my lips.
"You like her..."
"I feel for her." I correct her immediately. Charlotte is one to think out of impulse and fly with it.
"And what you feel, is not pity, brother." She smiles and looks outside to see Emma with a big backpack strapped to her shoulder and her little sleepy head on her back.
"She's struggling." She sighs softly.
"She's doing a good job," I shrugged, trying not to sound so defensive.
"Still, she can do better." She smacks her lip. "It's past nine and her son isn't in school yet..."
"Charl," I puff. "Give her a break. I head for the dining area and sit on a vacant seat with a plate of two sandwiches before me.
"What she needs is a support system," she stands beside me. "It's been five freaking years and not one man is seen around her, it's either she's scared of society, or she just wants to punish herself unduly."
"She isn't a parcel to just pass down to a man," I murmur as I munch on bread crust.
"Whoa, easy." She sighs and sits next to her plate of oats. "Don't tell me you're amongst those against happy women?"
I laugh. "What does that even mean?"
"Whatever." She waves me off, her usual way of dismissal.
Done with breakfast, I do the dishes before picking up my laptop and going outside for some fresh air.
"Hey, dude," I wave at Jordan's beaming face on my screen.
He is my colleague and Charlotte's childhood crush until he lost a tooth and didn't grow it back. Currently, he is in Alabama, touring the city on our short break.
"Hey!" He keeps his grin. "You good?"
"Never been better." I nod. "What 'bout you?"
"Living the life, bruv." He shrugs. "How's Charlotte?"
"A pester as always. We're prepping for some shopping and booking of a hall and all of that." I give him a heads-up. "She's got this one-time contract to take some bunch of kids on an excursion for the Children's Day celebration... She's being on and about."
"That's great." He remarks.
"And stressful and..." My jaws drop as I gawk at Emma, the lady who has me spiraling in circles in my adulthood.
Her long dirty blonde hair that tussles about with the wind and forms a wave of curls around her pretty oval face, her delicate frame that makes anything she is wearing sexy, no matter how old-fashioned Charlotte says they are, her...
"Dylan?!"
"Oh..." I look back at my laptop's screen.
"Who's that? You almost drooled on me."
I chuckle. "Don't be ridiculous."
"I'm serious..."
'What she needs is a support system.' Charlotte's words taunt me.
Perhaps, I should talk to her... Maybe she douches me in bottle of soda or a cup of coffee... What's the worst that can happen?
"Man, you're distracted," Jordan notes.
"I guess." I don't deny it. "Can I call you back?"
"Erm..."
I close the laptop even before he finishes his statement. I'm fucked up.
