“If you laugh, tell anyone, or even smile, I’ll throw something at you.”

“Okay?”

“I miss sex with Jakob, I miss…him.”

Elli tried so hard not to smile, but her eyes lit up as she covered her mouth, trying to keep the “aw” in.

“Oh,” she muttered through her hands.

“I’ve never had this problem, but that damn Russian brought his big ole penis into bed with me and now no other man even measures up! I miss my Jakey!”

And with that, Harper started to cry. Elli pushed her chair back more, scared shitless. Was this for real?

“I don’t know what my problem is. I never get like this with guys, but I just miss him, you know? Don’t you miss Shea?”

“Oh, yeah,” Elli scoffed, “but I’m in a relationship with him.”

“Well, yeah, but I mean, I don’t know! I just miss Jakob.”

Elli had to smile. She was so sweet and clueless. She was hopelessly in love with Jakob and she didn’t even know it.

“You’re smiling,” Harper said, putting her face in the pillow. Elli just grinned, leaning back in her chair. She watched Harper hit the pillow a few times before hearing her computer ding, signaling an email. She leaned back up to the computer, hitting her mail, to see the message was from Shea. She smiled and opened the email. It was titled “thinking of you.”

Hey you,

So I’ve been listening to that music you like…country…and well I don’t know if you’ve heard this song, but it made me think of you, so here is the video.

I miss you, babe.

Shea.

Elli smiled and clicked on the video. Lady Antebellum’s Just a Kiss video started playing. The song was about a kiss being enough, that they didn’t need anything else, they didn’t want to move too fast, keep things slow. She smiled as she watched the trio sing. She loved this song, but never thought of it in regards to their relationship.

Gosh, he was amazing.

She typed him back a little message, telling him thank you, then went to her phone carrier’s site, and downloaded the song for her ringtone when he called. She smiled as she thought that it was their song now.

She had a song, with Shea.

Elli debated with herself for over 30 minutes before just doing what she knew was best. She decided to go to Shea’s for the night, since Harper was at her moms, and it was almost midnight. Elli knew she couldn’t make it home. She pulled into Shea’s driveway and grabbed her bag from the back before locking the doors and heading up the stairs to his door. She dug his key out of her purse and put it in the lock, unlocking the door. She made sure to lock the door behind her and turned on some lights as she made her way through the living room.

Elli headed back to his bedroom, where she laid her bag on the bench at the end of the bed. She looked around the large room as she undid the buckles on her heels. The room seemed so much bigger when Shea wasn’t there. Gosh, she missed him. She finished undressing before putting on her favorite shirt, his old AHL tee.

After washing up in the bathroom, she went back out to the living room to get her movie so she could fall asleep. The only time she didn’t need the movie was when she slept with Shea.

Pathetic, she knew.

Elli looked through his movie collection, which was massive, before grabbing the Pride and Prejudice movie she had given him. She shut the doors to the cabinet, and turned to go back to the Shea’s bedroom when she saw some photo albums sitting under a wall table out of the corner of her eye. She had never noticed the table before. She stepped closer to see a picture of Shea and Grace when they were younger, then another when they had graduated high school, one of them at what appeared to be Grace’s wedding with James, and then the two of them, when the kids were born.

Shea loved Grace so much, it was sweet.

There was a picture of him and Grace with two older people that Elli assumed were his parents. They all had the same smile, big and beautiful. His father was just as handsome as his son; his mother was beautiful, with the exact same dimple on the right side of her face. Elli smiled, looking closer at the picture before she noticed another picture: it was the one of her at the park that he had taken on their first date. She picked it up, looking at herself sipping on her Starbucks. The picture was classy, so pretty, and it just blew her mind that he had it framed and it was in his house.

Wow.

Elli put the picture down and got a bottle of water before heading back into the room to go to sleep. After putting the DVD on and shutting the door, she crawled onto her side of the bed and cuddled in. The bed was huge without a 6’3” man beside her. Shea would be home the next day, but that wasn’t soon enough, in her opinion. The Assassins had lost that night. He was a little bummed when she talked to him, and she tried to cheer him up, but he said nothing would cheer him up until he was able to kiss her again. Just the thought of his lips on hers made Elli warm from head to toe; she smiled as she cuddled into the bed that smelled just like Shea as she started the movie.

Elli was asleep before she knew it.

Elli figured that the next day was a thing of luck, or maybe fate. She had a wedding scheduled that night, so she wasn’t going be able to see Shea until afterwards, but the bride got cold feet and called the thing off. From what the maid of honor had said, the bride had a little more fun the night before than she should have. She had slept with the groom’s best man. Oops!

Elli hated cancellations, she couldn’t be happier for the timing. Now she stood in Shea’s kitchen, frying chicken for a welcome home dinner.