Chapter 104 – Beginning with a Daring Encounter

“You seem to be reading a lot about ulcer… You know a lot of people with ulcers?” Celsie asked curiously as she took the glass of juice from him. She was just going to drink the cranberry juice here and go home to make herself a cup of coffee later. Ulcer or not, she wasn’t going to deprive herself of something she loved.

“Yes. My next-door neighbor, my boss, and now my girlfriend,” Benne said with a wink making her lips twitch in amusement.

“So you read up all of that just because of me?” She asked as she looked at him with a serious expression in her eyes as she sipped from the glass.

“I had to. I don’t like to feel useless in any situation,” Benne said as he dropped his cup of coffee by the counter and moved the dishes to the table.

He had taken his time to read up on ulcer because of her? What kind of a man was he? Celsie mused, feeling oddly touched by all of his thoughtful gestures.

They both set the table without saying a word to each other, and once they sat down to eat, Celsie remembered Anita’s suggestion the previous evening, and she cleared her throat, “Will you be busy later in the day?” She asked, making Benne look at her with interest, while she ate.

“I don’t think so. Why?” Benne asked curiously as he picked up his fork and started to eat too.

“I was thinking we could go see a movie together? My friend and I are going, and I want you to come with us,” Celsie added, not wanting to tell Benne who the friend was, or that her friend had suggested the outing.

“Your friend?” Benne asked with a slightly raised brow, and Celsie gave him a nod as she stuck a piece of steak into her mouth.

“Yeah, the one I visited yesterday,” Celsie explained.

Although he was of the school of thought that said ‘Three is a crowd’ and would have preferred to spend the day alone with her, he also wanted to meet this new friend of hers and get to know what sort of person she was, “Are you going to tell her about our relationship?” Benne asked, and Celsie shook her head immediately.

“No. We can’t tell her about it.”

He wanted to ask why, but chose not to. “Okay. Anything else you want to talk about?” Benne asked curiously.

Celsie cleared her throat, “Yes. You said you were going to teach me….” She let the rest of the sentence trail off since she expected him to know what she was talking about.

Benne said nothing as he quietly ate from the plate in front of him. From the moment he woke up that morning he had been occupied with thoughts of how to help Celsie enjoy their relationship. He wanted her to desire not just being in a relationship, but being in a relationship with him.

“Can you tell me about the person you were in love with before now?” Benne asked, wanting to confirm if Sonia’s half-brother was the person she had been in love with.

Celsie blinked at him in surprise. What did that have to do with anything? Why was he asking her that?

“I just figured I should know about your past relationship. Maybe that would help me not to overstep any boundaries,” Benne said when it seemed like she wasn’t going to say anything.

“There was no relationship. So maybe you should just forget about my past and focus on teaching me what I need to know,” Celsie suggested with a frown.

“Did he die?” Benne ventured to ask ignoring everything she had just said since he knew that to get answers from her, he needed to be stubborn else they would get nowhere.

Celsie scowled at him, but when Benne remained unfazed by her displeasure she sighed, “No, he didn’t. Look, I don’t even know if I was in love with him, okay? He liked me, and I liked him too. He asked me to be his girlfriend, but before I could do anything about it everything changed. So I don’t even know if what I felt for him was love,” she concluded with a shrug, not wanting to get into the details.

So the person she had been in love with wasn’t Sonia’s late half-brother? Benne mused.

“I was thinking… Maybe we should make a list? Like a checklist of things couples do in a relationship and then we can tick all of them together?” Celsie suggested, wanting to change the subject since it seemed like Benne was bent on talking about her past.

“What happens after we have ticked everything on the list?” Benne asked curiously.

“Then we can be sure we have both learned all we need to know about being in a relationship, and you can go on to confess your feelings to her,” Celsie suggested with a bright smile.

Bryan woke up that morning with a worried frown on his face as he sat up on the bed. He couldn’t understand why butterflies were fluttering in his stomach, or why he was feeling very anxious about the day ahead.

He was feeling confused about a lot of things, and he knew he needed to straighten out some of them before the arrival of the producer and his team. He needed to first figure out exactly what was bothering him.

He scowled when his thoughts drifted to his misunderstanding with Sonia the previous evening, and he realized Sonia was the reason behind his anxiety.

What bothered him the most about her was the inconsistency in her character. One minute she was acting like a normal person and the next she was acting like a crazy witch. He just couldn’t seem to figure her out, and as such he didn’t know whether or not he could trust her.

~The Previous Evening~

“So? I thought we were supposed to talk about the reality show?” Bryan asked as they both sat to have dinner at the table which Sonia had set by the porch.

“Yeah. Mia said we will be meeting with the producers and the camera crew tomorrow, so we thought it might be best if we both got our stories straightened out before then, or what do you think?” Sonia asked as she took a forkful of salad into a mouth.

“You discussed that with Mia? When? Don’t tell me you already planned on doing the show even after I rejected it?” Bryan asked with a slightly raised brow.

“Seriously? Are we going to fight over this too?” Sonia asked with an eye roll before taking a sip of water from her glass.

Bryan took in a deep breath as he tried to view things from a logical perspective. If they were going to pretend to be in a relationship, then they were going to have to do a good job of it and come up with a believable story of how they met and how they managed to keep their relationship away from the public until his proposal.

“You are the story writer, so I believe you can come up with a suitable script,” Bryan said as he continued to eat.

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