Impressions of You (The Impressions Series Book 1)

by Christopher Harlan

  “God, you look beautiful.” It’s the first thing he says before reaching out and placing his hand on my shoulder to kiss my cheek. He smells great, like a fresh shower, and even the gentleness of his touch can barely hide his strength. “I’m so glad you came, did you find the place okay?” At first I think he’s being really sarcastic, but I realize it’s a genuine question, like he doesn’t realize that he lives in the middle of nowhere in a giant castle.

  “Oh, yeah, I just followed my GPS directions.” I don’t mention getting a little lost. When I step through the doorway I’m absolutely captivated by everything my eyes can take in. The outside of the mansion is breathtaking, but it’s nothing in comparison to the interior. The decor is old, and obviously expensive, and even though it isn’t my taste, it looks like one of those beautiful old mansions that you can visit on a real estate tour. I’m overwhelmed already, and as he shows me around I keep wondering how I didn’t get this vibe from him at all. Like so many other things, Wesley managed to keep this part of himself a mystery and I don’t know whether to judge that as private or secretive. Is there even a difference? I wasn’t looking for a guy with money, but my God, this house is impressive.

  As I follow him through the giant living room into the dining room, I comment, “So, all those bad jokes about you being the adopted son of a wealthy Saudi oil tycoon were true, huh?”

  “What are you talking about?” He laughed. “Those were great jokes.” He cracks a smile and puts me at ease. Even though he’s being his normal self, it’s hard to escape the feeling of formality that this place creates; I feel like I should raise my hand when I have to go to the bathroom or something.

  The closer we get to the dining room the more my nose picks up the amazing smells of whatever it is that he’s prepared for dinner. The whole house (excuse me, I mean mansion) starts to feel warmer with the scents of a home-cooked meal. Wesley seems to have it all: good looks, amazing body, impeccable style, obvious wealth, and based on what I can smell he can also cook like a master chef. He walks me into a dining room that could literally fit my entire house inside of it, and I can’t believe the fantasy that I seem to be living at this moment, it seems too good to be true, but I decide to just go with the moment, telling the negative voice in my head to shut up as I walk.

  If there was ever a room to live out my Beauty & the Beast fantasy, this was it. The table is covered with fresh roses that make the room even more fragrant, and I half expect the elaborate place settings to start singing in Angela Landsbury’s voice and dancing around the room. Wesley never asked me what kind of food I like, but whatever he’s making smells incredible. The only thing he knows about my simple palate is the mutual love that brought us together, our love of basic-ass coffee, served in white mugs. “So what are we having?” I ask.

  “It’s a rare French delicacy,” he tells me. “I found it in an old dusty copy of a cookbook whose title I can’t even pronounce, honestly. I believe the American pronunciation is ‘A Burger and Fries,’ but my French is for shit, I could be totally off on that.”

  “Funny. I hope you’re cooking is better than your French accent.”

  “My French accent is awesome,” he jokes, keeping the voice up. “We’ve already established that I’m a master of languages. And for dinner I use this special technique where I form the ground beef into these little patty-like discs, and then cook them. It’s crazy. You’ll be wowed by my technique.” I’m already wowed.

  When he excuses himself to go get the food I can’t help but notice all of the contradictions between what I know about Wesley so far, and the home he lives in. His house looks like a place that only people wearing crowns should live in, but he doesn’t act or dress like he has money; his driveway is the length of a football field, but he drives a car that costs less than mine; his place settings and dining room décor would cost me three years of savings to afford, but he’s serving me a burger and fries on them. It’s weird, like he’s a normal guy living in a wealthy guy’s home. Maybe he’s mansion-sitting, if that’s even a thing.

  Wesley comes back from the kitchen with dinner in his hands, and it smells and looks so delicious that it’s making my mouth water. “Let’s do this,” he says confidently. “Prepare to be blown away by my potato-frying skills.” Wow, the boy really can cook! He’s so full of surprises. He seems more relaxed, and I feel like I’m starting to see the real him; and I really like what I see. His deep voice is more commanding, more confident; his posture is a little more upright, and he doesn’t need to glare at me at all times to avoid seeing the people around us—not that I mind being glared at by him. In here, where it’s just the two of us with our fake French burgers and fries, he’s easily the hottest man I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

  “If you don’t like it I can make you something else.” Now he’s just showing off, which is a great thing. Some women might find what he just said cocky, but I see it differently. He wants to impress me. He wants me to know that he’s using something he’s clearly skilled at to make me as happy and satisfied as I can be in this moment, and that’s such a turn on that I want to toss my burger aside, reach across his expensive imported table and . . .

  “Make me something else? No way, this looks yummy.” Yummy. I said yummy, like I’m a kid eating Ritz crackers and peanut butter. He doesn’t seem to mind. “You seem different tonight,” I say, trying to move on from the dumb thing I just said. He smiles.

  “In what way? Not sure whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

  “Definitely a good thing,” I assure him. “You seem more . . . more at ease in here, but I guess everyone does in their own house, right? Or mansion. Or palace, whatever you call the place you live when it’s this big.”

  “So you think I’m a weirdo when we’re out together?”

  “Of course I do, but that’s one of the reasons I like you so much,” I joke back, and even though he’s being sarcastic, I know that he’s conscious of how he comes across to me, so I want to make him feel better. “Does having anxiety make you feel bad about yourself?”

  “It can,” he answers, his face becoming serious. “It’s hard to describe.”

  “Try me,” I say.

  “There’s an expression in boxing that says fatigue makes cowards out of men,” he begins to explain. “It’s kind of like that. Anxiety changes who you are completely when you feel it. I have to fight to be confident and think clearly in those moments, and it can happen anytime. But some things set it off more than others.”

  “My sister, Jenna, has bad anxiety too.” I finally confess. His eyes light up as I explain, as though hearing about another person with the same issue makes him feel less weird about himself. “It used to hit her at the most random times, it was frustrating actually.”

  “For you or for her?” he asks.

  “It sounds bad to call your sister’s issues frustrating, but it affected everyone. We couldn’t go out to certain places, or we’d go out and have to leave, or she would just get really . . . weird. I’m sorry, I know that’s the wrong word to use but that’s how seventeen-year-old me felt when it used to happen.”

  “I understand that, I feel bad when it happens when we’re together.” He looks sad.

  “You’ve been great, I barely even notice, to be honest. I just have experience with it in different areas of my life, so it’s easy for me to identify, but if that wasn’t the case I may not have even noticed.” I try to cheer him up.

  “I can be like your sister,” he says. “There are many times I need to leave somewhere, or won’t even go in the first place. I have a confession to make, actually, now that we’re talking about it.” I didn’t like the sound of that, but I wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “Okay,” I say awkwardly.

  “Remember how I told you I got a flat tire, and how that was why I ended up at The Drip the night we met?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That was only partially true. I did have a flat tire, and I was waiting for
a tow truck, but I didn’t go into The Drip for coffee.”

  “Then why did you go in?”

  “To challenge myself,” he says. “I saw that bright sign from down the block, and I was bored from waiting around for the tow. Normally a place like that would be my worst nightmare, and I would avoid it at all costs. That’s exactly why I went inside and sat down at the bar.”

  “I don’t get it. If that place was such a trigger, why not just wait outside, or something?”

  “Because I’m sick of letting anxiety run my life and determine my behavior. I’ve lived like that for too long, and I wanted to put myself in a hard situation—for me at least—to see how I could handle it.” I understand what he means.

  “And how did that turn out?” I ask, half-joking.

  “The first ten minutes felt like the longest of my life, actually,” he explains. I open up my mouth in fake shock. “Before you showed up, of course,” he says. “That’s how long I was waiting around for someone to even take my order, it was so damn crowded.” He’s being accurate; Dacia and I had to wade through the teens at the counter to even get our orders in. “But that ten minutes was rough. I was actually about to leave before . . .”

  “Before what?” I ask when he cuts his sentence short.

  “Before I saw you there. That’s why I stayed, Mia.” I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

  “No way, I definitely saw you first,” I argue.

  “No you didn’t. I was at the other end of the bar, ready to walk out because my heart was going so fast, when I saw you and your friend walking in my direction. I moved over to that stool next to you once the kid sitting there got up.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You stopped for a second,” he says, looking down like he’s trying to remember the scene. “Something with your shoes, but I remember you stopping and your friend holding onto your arm as you reached down to fix it.” Oh my God, he’s telling the truth, and I start to feel the impact of everything he’s saying.

  “The buckle on my shoe,” I explain, completely in shock. “It came undone and it was bothering me, so Dacia made me stop and fix it because she said my complaining was getting annoying. Jesus, you saw that?”

  “I see a lot of things. And believe me, the only thing keeping my heart from racing out of my chest and me having a full-blown panic attack at that moment was you. That’s why I ordered that coffee, so that I would have to stay a little longer. Trust me, I didn’t need anything else jolting my heart.”

  “But I spoke to you first. What would you have done if I had just ordered my drink and walked away?”

  “I was working up the courage, and really hoping that didn’t happen. I’m sure I would have said something, eventually.”

  “In Arabic, maybe,” I say, smiling at him.

  “Of course, in Arabic. I’m a poet in Arabic.” He smiles, and he seems to be getting out of his own head a little bit, but I’m still amazed by what I’m hearing. It changes my whole impression of that night.

  “So why tell me all of this now?” I ask, genuinely curious.

  “I wanted you to know that I’m trying to be the best version of myself for you, Mia, and that without you I’d probably just give into the bad feelings like I always have and just avoid situations. You help me, whether you know it or not.” We look each other in the eyes and I don’t know what to say. He just made me feel so special that I don’t even have the words to tell him. But he changes the subject so I don’t have to. “That’s actually where the dragon on my arm came from.” He lifts his sleeve even more, past his elbow as much as he can, and once he’s pointed it out I can see the figure—the head sits up by his bicep, peeking out from under his sleeve, and the body wraps around the rest of his arm, going all the way down to his wrist.

  “I don’t get it.” I’m not seeing the connection.

  “They have a lot of symbolic meanings in Asian cultures, but for me the dragon represents duality—the Yin and the Yang. The Wesley I am and the Wesley that I want to be, and how those two things blend together. Once I researched what the dragon meant, I knew it was the perfect symbol for battling my anxiety issues, and there it is,” he says, pointing to the tail that encircles his wrist. Everything he’s saying is making sense, and I really feel like I’m getting to know him more. “Now let’s eat, our fancy French delicacies are getting cold.”

  Our meal is absolutely delicious. Wesley’s cooked all of the food perfectly, and even though my culinary skills would be non-existent without my toaster, I can still see his attention to detail in every aspect of dinner: the place settings, the arrangements of flowers, the plating of the food, even the way he’s dressed. He’s made dinner into an event, something that took a lot of preparation and execution, all for me. What did I do to deserve all this work? I felt bad for talking to my friends about how weird Wesley was being, now that he’s opening up to me.

  WE MAKE SOME SMALL talk for a few minutes, but I’m not about to squander this opportunity to get to know the real him even more, and in my experience with guys that means asking direct questions. “Why didn’t you tell me that you were . . .?” I stop myself, my awkward phrasing rearing its ugly head. “Why didn’t you tell me that you had all of this?” He thinks on this question for s few seconds, as though he wants to choose just the right words to explain himself to me.

  “I don’t know. It’s never much mattered to me,” he explains. “I love it here, I really do, we all grew up inside these walls, but after my parents died it just wasn’t the same anymore. I don’t see a mansion like you do; I just see the place where I grew up. I guess it’s hard for me to talk about.” It wasn’t the answer I was expecting. I’d never met a man with as much money as Wesley clearly has, but I assumed that he didn’t tell me because he was worried that I was some kind of gold digger. There were plenty of girls who would use a guy like Wesley for his money; and maybe he’s had bad experiences with that sort of thing, but the contradictions I saw before make sense to me now. He really doesn’t think of himself or this place the way just about everyone else would think of it. To him, we weren’t having a fancy dinner in a mansion that belonged in The Great Gatsby; we were just having burgers at his house.

  “No, you can talk to me about anything, and who is ‘we’?” I ask.

  “Me, my brother, and my sister.”

  “Oh,” I say when he mentions that he has two siblings. I guess he didn’t even know that I had a sister until a few minutes ago when I mentioned it randomly. But for some reason I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was holding a lot back, and that bothered me. It was like if I didn’t ask a direct question for every topic, he’d never tell me on his own. “When did your parents die, if you don’t mind me asking.”

  “My mom died when we were all teenagers,” he says sadly, “and my dad died seven years ago. I’m the oldest of the three kids; I was twenty-five at the time. His old, mean heart finally gave out on him.” The last line shocked me a little. I could detect a change in his face and his tone when he mentioned his dad. I wait for an explanation, but then he does what he always does and shifts directions. “So how’s the food?” he asks me.

  “Delicious. Everything’s great,” I tell him.

  The night goes on, and we sit having a good conversation at the dinner table, mostly about me this time. I tell him about my family; how they live across the country and that I don’t get to see them as much as I’d like, and I tell him a little about Dacia and Kevin. I love that we’ve moved past the shallow, witty banter phase, and that we can be real with each other, but there’s still something that’s been bothering me since we met in the park. The thought occupies my mind so much as we talk that I just decide to be bold and ask him about it, straight up. “So,” I say innocently, “who is the she you mentioned the other day?” He looks puzzled.

  “What do you mean?” he asks, confused.

  “She. The one you alluded to in the park that day, the one who gets to call you Wes.” I can’t be mor
e direct than I’m being, and I’m surprised at myself for my boldness. I am a guest in his home, after all, and I really don’t want to be rude, especially to him. Gentle hints and waiting for him to offer more information on his own is getting me nowhere. But the look on his face changes quickly when I ask about his mystery woman, a look somewhere between anger and pain, and he puts down his fork loudly against his plate.

  “Really?” he asks, sounding annoyed at my question. I’ve never heard that tone directed at me before, so I must have hit a nerve. “Do we have to talk about that right now?” I nod. I wanted to talk about it, it was bothering the hell out of me, but I really wasn’t trying to upset him. “No,” he says, “I don’t want to, I’m sorry.” He means it, but for some reason the way he says it just rubs me the wrong way, and I’m getting irritated. “Can’t we discuss happier things?” he asks sincerely. “You asked me a question and I wanted to be honest with you.” What is he hiding?

  “You really haven’t told me anything at all, what do you mean?” It’s getting harder and harder to hide my annoyance.

  “I’m sorry, Mia, I really am, but I just can’t discuss her. We’re having such a nice dinner, why ruin it with that?”

  “You can’t or you won’t?” I ask, more than annoyed now. There’s almost nothing that bothers me more than when I feel like a guy is being secretive when I ask a direct question, I just can’t take it. I’ve tried to keep my temper under control, but I’m starting to lose it with that last comment. Mansion and great dinner aside, I won’t be ignored or lied to.