#brayella

In all honesty, this was all pretty new to Ella.

I mean, how often did gorgeous men that looked like sexy lumberjacks and smiled like sunday school children just fall into your lap? (Ella was still thanking the gods of winter for that one, by the way.) And yeah, okay, she'd had her fair share of handsome guys coming and falling all over her, that wasn't the issue here.

The issue was that this guy, this random dude who apparently hadn't been in town much longer than she has been since her vacation, was sweeter than her momma's pecan pie topped with a big ol' dollop of whipped cream. God, and how even thinking about that precious smile of Braylin's as she stood outside his door, hands fluttering about as they smoothed out the wrinkles in her favorite floral dress and tried to tame the flyaways that still peeked out of her golden braid...

She was nervous. Properly nervous to see him again. Ella hadn't been nervous around a boy in YEARS. Not like this with butterflies in her stomach and excitement pounding in her veins knowing he was just on the other side of the door and y'know, maybe he wasn't even home right now. Maybe she should just come back later when she was more prepared...

"Come on now. Pull yourself together Ella. You're just checking on him. Just bringing over a book. It's not that big of a deal. He's just a guy." She muttered to herself, reaching up a hand to knock, but stalling as her thoughts trailed to: just an incredibly gorgeous gentle giant of a guy who probably would chop down a tree with his own hands then craft you a new bookshelf all while staring at you lovingly with those big brown eyes you could just drown yourself in...

Oh fuck was Ella sunk.

With a soft whine the girl resigned herself to her fate and knocked gently on the door, clutching the book of poems to her chest as she stared wide-eyed in wait for Braylin to answer. And once his large frame filled the doorway and that same damn smile crossed his lips, Ella was off like a rocket.

"Hi! It's me. Ella. The--The girl from the whole... y'know, ice... thing. Yeah. Anyway. I'd just come to check on you again, and I brought you a book? You mentioned you liked reading a lot while you were coming back from the near-dead, so I thought maybe you'd want to borrow my copy of Richard Siken's Crush?" Ella was silent for a beat or two as her arm still hung outstretched with the book in question held aloft--finally realizing that she was literally giving her new crush a book fucking called Crush.

"It's a book of poems!" She said quickly, face beginning to flush a slight pink as she wonders how much more of a trainwreck this situation could turn into. "A-and I know it's called Crush but not all of them are love poems?? Not! Not that I'm trying to give you a book of love poems, even though I guess I kind of am? Oh Jesus..." Ella sighed, putting a hand over her face, voice muffled as she continued: