Ta-Da! First Excerpt.

“How was your trip?” Lizzy asked after they had given Michael and Aileen a quick, courteous farewell and walked towards the subway in the opposite direction. “Jase?” She called, one hand wriggling his arm lightly.

“Fine,” he replied shortly, still harbouring so much resentment in his voice; a fact that hadn’t escaped Lizzy’s radar.

She folded her arms in front of her and sighed, feeling wary and defeated even though the battle hadn’t technically begun.

‘Technically’ being the operative word, she thought sardonically.

Jason hadn’t had the grace to even attempt to conceal his crabbiness of finding Michael and Lizzy reaching across the square table, believing the gesture a bit too close for comfort that to her, he had been nothing but short and snappy, answering her questions with minimum amount of words, all her calming touches and pleading gestures remaining unreciprocated; to Michael, the guy had ignored him completely Lizzy had to dart repeated quick, apologetic smiles, all the while wanting to club her boyfriend’s head, drag him by the ear, and shake him real hard, hoping that she could also rattle off the five-year-old child that had taken over Jason’s twenty-five-year-old body.

“Did they feed you well on the way back?” Lizzy prodded; or rather, repeated, for she had asked the question sometime during their spur-of-the-moment double-date, receiving only a half-begrudging nod in response.

“They put me in business class. Of course they fed me well,” Jason snapped, using that patronising tone he knew damn well Lizzy loathed.

Unable to withstand his crabby mood any longer, Lizzy picked up her pace, hopping up the set of stairs leading to her apartment building’s main entrance and walked straight into the gaping elevator, pressing the white round button with bold black number ‘3’, her fingers tapping the side of her thigh impatiently.

The hell with waiting for you, Lizzy thought bitterly, not caring that wishing for the elevator door to close before Jason had a chance to catch up to her was utterly childish.

Still, she felt somewhat obliged to leave the door to their shared apartment ajar, purposely avoiding from taking another step, or even fixing her glance at the main bedroom.

“What… the hell… is the matter… with you?” Lizzy growled, hands settled on her hips, rounding him up as soon as Jason emerged through the door he involuntarily reared back before challenging her glare with a look that indicated he could ask the same thing from her.

“How could you be so rude to Michael?” She badgered him, voice raised it was getting dangerously close to being a high-pitched, supersonic screech. “Didn’t your Mother ever tell you about manners? About replying to someone when you were being spoken to, especially when you were in the company of others?”

“And didn’t his Mother ever tell him not to touch or be too frickin’ chummy with the girl who was already spoken for?” Jason hissed, body shaking with fury he clenched his teeth and hands lest he hurt the girl in front of him by reflex. “Did you ever stop and think how you two looked like from across the room? From across the street?” He said fiercely.

Perhaps, under any other circumstance, Lizzy would have backed away, a little; would have made more of an effort to diffuse the lit dynamite that was about to explode inside Jason. But tonight, after the night she had had previously…

She made a short gasping sound and rubbed her damp eyes with the back of one hand roughly, hating the fact that she was always so emotional when it came to an all-out argument; hating herself more that she seemed to be unable to keep the tears from streaming down.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Jason said irritably, brows knitted close together as if he had reached his wit’s end dealing with her, a problemed child. “Using tears as a weapon won’t work on me!”

“I am not using tears as a weapon!” Lizzy roared so loudly her voice travelled straight through the still-opened door, reverberating throughout the dimmed hallway.

She whirled around so quickly and stomped her way across the open-plan living room, the hand that was about to push open the bedroom door halted as she turned to face him once more.

“Did you ever stop and think, for once, Jason, why I was so hell-bent in wanting to have company tonight? Did you ever wonder why your girlfriend, who has always cooked you a special dinner after each and every one of your overseas trip, this time wanted to dine out?” Lizzy prompted, and without waiting for his answer, took one step and disappeared into the bedroom.