Across the Room
Shauna didn’t believe she’d ever get used to the parties. She looked around the room at the celebrities, the sports stars, and the ‘some bodies’. She still couldn’t quite fathom Shauna Coe from Chicago, Illinois had been sent an invitation. She wasn’t part of the elite. She didn’t see herself as part of the entertainment industry. All she did was write stories. Albeit, her first mainstream book had become a runaway best seller and now she was being courted for the movie rights. None of it seemed quite real.
JC entered the party already in full swing. Well, at least it would be a mindless night where he could escape his loneliness by pretending to have a good time. When Shauna had disappeared, he’d done a cursory search for her. He could have found her if he’d hired investigators, but obviously she hadn’t wanted for him to find her. She had wanted to be gone from his life and he had been forced to accept her wishes. Still, her absence had left a huge hole in his entire existence.
Shauna sipped her glass of champagne sparingly. She had learned her lesson on overindulgence the night JC had held her head over the toilet as she got sick on mixed drinks. It seemed so long ago, another lifetime almost. But it had only been months, not years.
When she let herself dwell on her ill-fated love, her heart still ached. At the time, walking away seemed to be the only choice she could make. She didn’t think she could continue to love a man who had two traits she despised: ugly jealousy and a quick, unthinking temper. Of course, JC Chasez had been much more than those two flaws. He could be loving, passionate, generous and wonderfully vulnerable and honest. But the pain the jealousy and anger had inflicted had cancelled out the sweeter emotions when he was on a tear. Shauna sighed, suddenly melancholy. Sadly, she suspected JC Chasez had also been the love of her life.
It couldn’t be…could it? JC found himself staring at a familiar face across the crowded room. Shauna? She looked so beautiful, so aloof, so sad…
He tossed back his drink and took a deep breath, summoning the courage, steeling himself for what he was about to do; what he needed to do. As he recalled, Shauna wasn’t one for accepting apologies without taking her pound of flesh first. He was going to walk over there and beg her forgiveness, hand her his heart on a silver platter and promise her the world if she would just consider coming back to him. Okay, Chasez, do this right and don’t fuck it up, he told himself as he started across the floor.
Shauna looked up when she felt eyes on her. Hot blue eyes. The eyes she saw in her dreams whether she was asleep or awake. She saw the vulnerability that had spoken to her as nothing else had – and something new…a grim determination. She could easily enough disappear into the milling crowd and make an escape, but was that what she truly wanted?
She’d seen him and hadn’t moved. Was that a good sign? It had to be, didn’t it? She wasn’t running away or avoiding him. It didn’t even dawn on him she could simply be waiting to toss her drink in his face. Then, he was standing before her. All his words failed him. For a long moment, they merely looked into each other’s eyes.
“Uhh – remember you’re a lightweight. I – umm – how many of those have you had?" JC heard himself ask.
“Only this one,” Shauna replied quietly, taking another sip.
Silence.
“Uh…if I drink too much will you rescue me?” she ventured to ask.
He slowly smiled. “You know it, honey…and I’ll hold you while you puke.”
Silence again.
“Shauna…”
“Josh…”
They said simultaneously.
“You go ahead,” he told her.
“I…I think that’s when I fell in love with you,” Shauna admitted softly.
“That was the night you became my girl,” JC reminded her.
Her smile turned the light in his heart back on.