Residue Read Online Free PDF Page B

watching as the woman shrugged and disappeared into the back room still chuckling.
    Then he chuckled to himself, surprised. “She said she’s never seen this before. Apparently she’s read about it and been told of it but hadn’t witnessed it herself.”
    “ Witnessed what?” I asked, taking my sack of school supplies.
    He laughed again, farther down in his chest. “Well…” He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “She thinks she just saw the introduction of two fated lovers.”
    “ Really? Who?” I asked, my head swiveling back and forth now, profoundly intrigued and looking for the people they were referring to, the two whom they believed to be the cause of this mess.
    He hesitated and then spoke deep, firm, and with certainty. “She meant us.”
     

 
    3 REVEALED
     
    Us?
    The word lingered in my consciousness attempting to connect to a clear, concise thought.
    Fated lovers…
    She meant us…
    They simply wouldn’t unite.
    As I processed the meaning of what this stranger was telling me, I absentmindedly looked up at him and then my awareness changed entirely.
    Gazing at me less than a foot away, were breathtakingly beautiful clear green eyes that told me that he was more curious than disturbed by the idea. In fact, he looked like he was evaluating me to determine whether it could be a possibility. The unadulterated intensity of his stare should have made me uncomfortable but it didn’t. I felt excited as if a fire had been kindled in my stomach.
    He shook his head, seeming to clear his thoughts and I wondered if my evaluation of him might have been correct. Then he opened his mouth to speak but was distracted by the storekeeper who waddled in from the back room carrying a broom and dust pan.
    His attention then seemed to be solely on her. “Can I help you?” he offered.
    “ Pfff,” she replied, with a forced exhale. “Out of my store.”
    Evidently, she was no longer enthralled with us. Instead, she circled the counter and with one hand on each of us, pushed us down the aisle and out the door.
    “ Come back soon,” she added before closing and locking the door behind us.
    The entire time I had not looked back at him, instead focusing on leaving the store without tripping over the destruction. Yet, the impact was made, his face burned in my memory. With a single glance, I could have gone a decade and still recognized him on the street.
    His sandy blonde hair hung over his forehead, still a little tousled from the store’s eruption. His jaw and chin were strong and defined. And he’d been grinning which accentuated the curve of his lips and boasted perfectly-straight, stark-white teeth. His crystal clear green eyes, so innocent, had drawn me in before I even knew it had happened, captivating me. Even his one flaw seemed perfect. A faint scar just above his lip made him ruggedly seductive and real. His white, short-sleeved shirt fit snuggly against the contours of his muscular arms and molded against his chiseled abdomen. The three buttons down the front were left unfastened to a point that exposed his rippled chest muscles. His jeans hung loosely from legs that stretched as tall as mine. All together, he was unassumingly alluring.
    Then he said something that, while meaning to be innocent, altered my focus entirely.
    “ I guess I’ll have to come back for my own school supplies,” he laughed quietly, shaking his head at the closed shop door.
    “ School supplies?” I blurted. “You were here for those, too?” My heart leapt at the hope of meeting someone from my class.
    “ That’s right.” He nodded.
    Ever since I’d stepped foot inside that store one question ran through my subconscious and it had now bubbled to the top of it. I took a brief moment to formulate it and then decided to risk any ridicule my question might bring before asking, “Exactly what type of school are these supplies for?”
    His eyebrows shot up then. “You don’t know?”
    “ I wouldn’t be asking if I did,” I