Thank you so much for being so nice. Hope you like this chapter. I may not be able to update as often as I can because work requirements have come up again but hope that isn't something you would mind. :)

Chapter 7

When Elizabeth woke the next morning, she got dressed into a pair of jeans, a floral T-shirt, and her sneakers, ready for another day at school. As she went downstairs to the kitchen, she stumbled to a halt when she found Kenneth already awake like how he had been yesterday. He was standing near the kitchen counter, one hand lifted as he separated the curtains to glance outside the window. When he heard her footsteps, she had to glance away when he turned to face her, her heart beating furiously. She wondered when she would ever be able to act normal around him. It was annoying.

"Morning, Kenneth," she whispered, clasping her hands out in front of her nervously.

"Good morning, Lizzy."

She wanted to ask him if he would mind taking her to school again. She liked having him drive her, especially when it meant they had quiet time to themselves where she could ask him questions and they could talk. Even if it was nerve-wracking.

"Uh-oh, it's been raining again," Kenneth said, drawing her eyes back to him. He was trying to make a playful joke out of it all. In his mind, he acknowledged that perhaps he was trying to be slightly flirtatious too. "I think we both know what that means."

Her eyes raked down what he was wearing as her heart soared in her chest. This morning, he was wearing an unbuttoned black trench coat that reached just below his knees, black trousers, and a white shirt. The collar was pushed up around his neck. When she dragged her eyes up slowly to his face, he was watching her, expecting for her to answer. She felt shy that he probably caught her checking him out but he did not comment on it.

"You're going to drive me to school again?" she guessed breathlessly.

"Yes, that's right."

"Thank you," she murmured gratefully as he strolled around the counter, aware that she was whispering for some reason she was unsure of. "It would really help. Are you sure you wouldn't mind taking me again, though?"

"It's no inconvenience, truly. Also, I used initiative to make you a sandwich for lunch."

Elizabeth blinked up at him in surprise. She hadn't expected him to do that. "Oh, you really didn't have to do that?"

"Well, I couldn't help noticing yesterday that you hadn't packed anything for your lunch. I was up earlier so I assumed it was the right thing to do." She took more notice then of what he was holding in his right hand; The sandwich he made for her wrapped in plastic cling.

"Thank you."

"Your very welcome, Lizzy. You and Sam hardly have many ingredients in the fridge so I had to make do with what I could. I hope you like peanut butter and jelly?"

"I really appreciate it." An awkward moment passed where Kenneth stood in front of her, staring. Elizabeth really had no idea what to say.

"Shall we go?" He suggested while slipping a hand into the side pocket of his coat, and she was relieved he had broken the silence.

"Sure. Let me just run upstairs and grab my things."

She carried the sandwich he had made for her upstairs, shoving it into her bag as she grabbed all of her textbooks. The fact that he had bothered to make her a sandwich for lunch made her feel embarrassed. It was as if he felt obligated to do it, like she was a young child that could not fend for herself and make or buy her own lunch at the school canteen if she needed to. He was just being nice, she told herself. He wasn't trying to be condescending or to imply that he thought she was a child. Or so she hoped.

"Your driving has improved since yesterday," she commented when they reached a red light and were forced to stop. She didn't jolt forward in her seat this time. "Your much... smoother on the breaks."

"I think I've gotten back into the swing of it more than I had yesterday. It isn't as nerve-wracking nor is it as difficult as I had first assumed it was."

Another silence that felt awkward passed between them and Elizabeth resorted to staring out the fogged-up window, seeing and pretending to be concentrated on other things though she did not feel as though she was really seeing anything. It was still raining heavily though people were still walking outside, shielded under the safe shelter of their umbrellas. She felt hyper-aware of his presence in the restricted confines of her father's car.

"Who's K.R?" Kenneth asked, his voice startling her. He sounded curious. "A boy at your school?"

Her head shot back into his direction. He was looking right at her, though he inclined his head, motioning towards the textbooks she had resting in her lap with his chin. She did not fully understand what he meant until she lowered her eyes to them.

A surge of heat hit her face as she pressed her lips tightly together, clenching her eyes shut for a second in embarrassment, when she realized one of the pages in her textbook were sticking out. It was the one in which she had doodled K.R in the middle of a love heart during class.

It was the worst thing that could have ever happened to her, she felt, though she knew that was a rather over-dramatic way to view the situation. She had drawn that because of him, something that she did not realize at the time had been so childish and silly of her. K.R was his initials but when she lifted her head and returned her eyes to him reluctantly, searching his face, she couldn't easily discern whether Kenneth realized that for himself or not.

"Yeah, it... it's just a guy from school that I like," she muttered, deliberately looking away out the front of the windshield, at the windscreen wipers that were sliding back and forth furiously. She felt so mortified. "We have history class together." Before Elizabeth could stop herself, she added in a hopefully convincing tone, "His name is Keith. Keith Richards." The name sounded strangely familiar to her, though she could not figure out why.

Until Kenneth called her out on it.

"Are you sure you don't just secretly have the hots for Keith Richards?"

"Well, that is his name."

"No, I mean Keith Richards, one of the main members from the band The Rolling Stones?" She could not be sure, but it seemed as though he was teasing her. "Have to say that I'm a little disappointed in you, Lizzy." He tutted his tongue at her. "Keith Richards is far too old for you, wouldn't you think? I believe he's reached somewhere into his early seventies now."

Now Elizabeth understood why the name had sounded so familiar. The Rolling Stones was one of her father's favorite bands. "No, I... I definitely don't mean Keith Richards from The Rolling Stones," she muttered in exasperation, a laugh escaping her. "I mean the guy from school. Keith Richards is actually his name." She felt like such an idiot and now, he was making fun of her. She couldn't believe she had a slip-up of such a multitude. Of course Kenneth would know who The Rolling Stones were. He was close friends with her father. They probably even used to listen to their music together.

"Then he must earn some serious school cred for being named after Keith Richards from The Rolling Stones, I should imagine," he said, though she couldn't tell whether he had caught her out on the lie or not. Surely he had to know it was him she liked. "Does he know that you like him? This boy at your school?"

It was discomforting. It was truly Kenneth she had found herself crushing on, yet they were talking about it, with him most likely unaware that there was not really any guy at her school called Keith Richards that she liked.

She had to inhale in deeply through her nose in order to calm herself down. "No, he doesn't know that I like him."

"And do you intend to tell him?" Kenneth's tone was different, though Elizabeth couldn't put her finger on just what exactly it was that made it seem so. "Are you going to... ask him out on a date? It is something adolescents your age do nowadays still, isn't it? Going out on dates with the opposite sex?"

"Yeah, people do still go out on dates these days. I just... I don't think I would ever tell him, though. I wouldn't even ever ask him out." She turned her eyes on him, tingling again, when she noticed he was staring at her. He had a way of looking at her intensely with his piercing green eyes that made her feel like she was so interesting and captivating to him as both a person, and appearance-wise. If she had to be honest, interesting was the very last thing she would describe herself as.

"Why wouldn't you ask him? Is it because your shy?" He asked the question so straightforwardly, as if there was nothing wrong with being shy. It relieved her.

"I suppose I am pretty shy at times," she admitted, returning her gaze to the outside of the window. "I just... I find it hard opening up around people and being my real self unless I fully know the person."

"Yes, and I'm quite the same myself." Her eyes returned to him as she squinted at him in disbelief. "It's always easier to open up to someone that you know and trust wholeheartedly."

"You're shy?" she repeated disbelievingly. "I don't think that you are. You always seem so... confident? Shy is the very last thing I think of you to be whenever I talk to you."

"Well, it's true. I am shy." He gave her a tight-lipped smile. She noticed he did not say it as if to be shy was a negative trait. "Surely you've noticed the way I talk excessively, dishing out stories, some of which are completely unrelated to the topic in question?"

"I would never have once thought of you as shy just because you tell stories. I... I like hearing your stories."

"Well, I am painfully shy, believe it or not. I just try to overcome my shyness by acting and pretending as though I am the most confident person on the planet. Eventually, after awhile, you start believing that of yourself and it becomes infinitely easier."

It was so nice to learn that even adults do occasionally get shy from time to time. Elizabeth somehow had always believed shyness was only a trait of young children and people her age. It never occurred to her that adults could be inflicted with such the same thing.

It made Kenneth seem more human and real then. Though she still liked him a lot, he dropped from the pedestal she had placed him on, yet all the same, it made her like him even more than she already had.

"Well, it's reassuring to hear that. I always got the impression that I was the only one who felt that way."

"I can assure you that you're really not, Lizzy. I'm sure many your age and older have gone through what you feel you are going through, at least once in their lives. It's completely normal and a relatively harmless way to be."

She cleared her throat, saying anything she could muster. "And what about you?"

"What about me, Lizzy?"

"Do you like anyone?" she asked, then she hesitated uneasily. The question was silly and she regretted it the instant it came out. She thought of a way to reassemble the question, to make it sound better. "Well, what I actually meant to ask is are you married?"

Her eyes flitted to his hands that were clenched around the steering wheel as he drove, inspecting his fingers. She was looking for a wedding ring; The one fatal and unfortunate sign that told her that Kenneth was. Fortunately for her, she could not see one. There was no golden band there, or any rings that indicated such.

It was one of the main things she still did not know about him, one of the main things she wanted to know most. "Or do you have a girlfriend?" She hoped she did not seem rude or intruding in asking, but her heart swelled in desperation to hear his answer.

She watched his face as she waited. He did not seem to want to meet her eyes or return any sort of eye contact with her. She noticed the corners of his lips curve downward slightly, the way his jaw tensed, then slackened as he blinked convulsively out the windshield. Elizabeth wondered then if asking the question had been a dangerous error in judgment.

"I was married once, Lizzy, yes, though... that was an extremely long, long time ago. I was in my early twenties at the time."

Her heart sunk as he confirmed it. Why should she be so surprised, though? Men like him- so full of experience and so charming and handsome- had to have been married and been someone's husband, at least once. She never realized how much in difference stages of their lives they were due to the age difference, until then. Already, Kenneth had been married, while Elizabeth hadn't even so much as had her first serious boyfriend.

"I'm sorry that I asked," she got hurriedly. "I... I didn't realize that it would bother you?"

"It doesn't bother me in the slightest that you asked, Lizzy. I can understand your curiosity and your reasons for wanting to ask about it, at least on some level." Finally, Kenneth turned his head to meet her gaze. He smiled at her faintly, his eyes crinkling, though she could still see the tension there, particularly around his eyebrows and his forehead. "I just had made the mistake of marrying too young. I had rushed into things which was... incredibly foolish of me." He cleared his throat, putting on a brighter tone, "But alas, we all make mistakes as humans and all we can really do at the end of the day is to accept that we haven't the power to erase those mistakes and go back into the past for a do-over."

"Why?" she asked before she could stop herself. "What happened? You two are obviously... divorced?"

It disconcerted Red, how intrigued Lizzy seemed to be on the topic of his past marital failure, and he could not deny that. He did not understand why she was so interested in knowing such a thing, yet at the same time, he could. She was only in the start of her womanhood, with marriage being something completely unknown to her. It was foreign waters she had not stepped in as yet, and due to that, he supposed he could not fault her for her curiosity. Frankly, he wished she had not asked, that she was not trying to get him to speak of it.

"Yes, we are divorced now." He did not feel comfortable giving too much away, yet something about Lizzy made it impossible for him not to. He wanted to keep no secrets from her- to a certain degree. "She's since remarried to the man I caught her in bed with, at the time. You have to understand that, with my... profession, I am constantly required to travel to various locations to meet clients. I don't get home very much."

"As an accountant you are required to travel a lot?"

"Yes." It was a lie, of course. He was nowhere near an accountant or anything of the sort, but Lizzy could not know that. "I hadn't seen my wife in over seven months until I returned that night from my recent... travels with a client overseas. It was the forth of July, I believe, and I... I found her in bed with the neighbor next door. They had been playing house for quite some time." He felt rather embarrassed to speak such personal things to Lizzy, but he also knew that she was virtually an adult by now. It would not have harmed her to hear of such things.

Red was past his moment of feeling hurt and betrayed by his ex-wife Carla's actions. Now that he had gotten over it, he had been given a lot of time to properly access and evaluate what had gone wrong. He had come to the conclusion that he was the one at fault, that he was the one that had caused the eventual failure of their marriage.

"She was cheating on you with the next door neighbor?" He almost laughed at how Lizzy looked. She was so charmingly naive. Her blue eyes were wide with shock when he looked in her direction, her mouth agape.

"I adore your naivety on the subject," he remarked with a short laugh. "But yes, she had, and as it turned out, it was the... greatest thing she ever did." When he glanced Lizzy's way again, he saw how confused she was. "You have to understand, Lizzy, that I made a terrible husband, you see. I was an absent husband, and an even more distant lover."

He could still remember so vividly the way his ex-wife had looked when he walked in to find her laying in bed with the neighbor beside her; The petrified look gleaming in her wide-eyes. She had been so terrified that he would have killed Frank, her husband now. And, if Red had to be honest, he had felt tempted to murder him at the time, regardless of how passionate and desperate Carla had grown with her pleads for him not to.

"As humans we are naturally social creatures. We crave to feel loved, to feel reassured and appreciated, and above all that...to be fulfilled sexually- all the things that I could not give her while I was away, gallivanting across the globe. I couldn't blame her for her infidelity, because... he was there when I wasn't, and he was the companion she had needed at the time. If anything, I thanked him. It is always so difficult to maintain a marriage when your significant other is halfway across the world and, for that, there were no hard feelings felt for either of them."

"What was her name?" Elizabeth asked in a quiet, low voice.

"I beg your pardon? What was that?" She realized Kenneth hadn't heard the question.

"What was your ex-wife's name?" Red had no idea whatsoever on why she wanted to know that exactly. Why she felt the need to know his ex's name was a mystery to him.

"Carla. Her name is Carla."

"And do you still love her? Are you still... in love with her?"

He caught the way she grew squeamish in the seat as she asked the question. She rubbed her hands together, fiddling with her slender fingers. Then she turned her wrist inward, picking and plucking at her scar. "Do I still love my ex-wife?" he repeated, thinking it over very seriously for a moment. "Yes, I feel I do. It isn't something you will understand until you've no doubt experienced it for yourself, Lizzy, but... when you've shared such history with someone, a marriage, you don't just stop loving them." He paused for a moment, searching for the correct words to easiest explain. "But that love changes and... softens into something far less passionate than what it once was."

He couldn't see her face properly; She appeared suddenly too interested with what was happening outside the window on her side and her hair covered it.

"Do you wish you were still married to her? Do you... miss her?" Elizabeth wasn't so sure what she was doing. All she knew, was that something bitter and sour had settled into her stomach, making it twist into knots.

"No. I can honestly say with great confidence that I do not miss her or that I... I wish I were still married to her, Lizzy. Because, the man she is with now. Frank... he's so much better for her than I ever was. You can tell in the way they look at each other, in the way they... respond to each other in a room. She's happy in a way that I could have never made her. I think that's all that matters, in the end. That the other person is... happy with the choice they've made."

It reassured Elizabeth that he wasn't still in love with his ex-wife, that he didn't seem to want her back. It was a silly feeling, she knew; It wasn't like she ever had a chance of being with him, that Kenneth would ever like her romantically. Still, it eased her mind and made her feel better. "Do you think you'll ever remarry?"

"Absolutely not." His tone drew her to glance over at him; He sounded so adamant. He had brought his right hand off the steering wheel as he rubbed the tips of four fingers over the line of his lips. Those lips that she would have given anything to feel against hers, passionately, slowly. "You know, you hear about it in the papers all the time. In the... gossip rags, how millionaires get remarried on an average of three times to a different person. I certainly could never be like that, nor do I have any particular interest in getting married again. I'm not going to jump on the bandwagon and remarry simply because everyone else is doing it."

"But what if it's with someone you feel really... connected to? Wouldn't you want to then, if you felt you truly loved them and that you wanted to commit?"

"No, I cannot say that I would. Not even then. I've experienced it once, and given how much of a sheer disaster it was the first time around, I have no intentions of putting myself through that again."

"Well, it's her loss," Elizabeth mumbled.

"What was that, sweetheart?" He was trying to get her to speaker in a louder, clearer volume. "I can't quite hear you when you speak so quietly with your words all garbled?"

"It's her loss," she repeated, lifting her voice. "Your ex-wife, I mean."

Red shook his head slightly, misunderstanding her. "Her loss with what exactly?"

"You," she said finally, and when she turned her face to look back at him, he felt his heart stop at how determined and sublimely fierce she appeared as she met his eyes. It was a look he hadn't seen from her before; The look of a bold and confident young woman, one quite becoming. "She made a huge mistake. I can't imagine anyone ever wanting to have an affair if you were their husband." Just like that, the spell was broken. She mashed her lips together, her cheeks reddening as she glanced away again.

Red felt speechless as a tense silence broke out between them again. He was unsure what to say in response to her words. He opened his mouth then had to close it up again. Honestly, he did not feel that there was anything he could say as an appropriate response to Lizzy's words. The only response he considered appropriate and worthy was to dismiss it all and shrug it off with an anxious laugh.

"Thank you, Lizzy. That's incredibly... sweet of you," he managed awkwardly, patting the back of her hand. "Though, with what you've said, I don't necessarily believe that to be true."

He felt his face twist and contort with panic when she turned her hand palm-up, attempting to hold his, to interlace her fingers through his, but he brought his hand up to curl his fingers back around the steering wheel quickly instead, his palm sweaty. He really wished she would stop whatever the hell it was she was doing, especially when he had made a conscious decision to not get too close as to not complicate his friendship with Sam. It was far too hard already, and it seemed as if she was intentionally tempting him- dare he even think such a thing of her.

He found he was relieved by the time he signaled left and they had reached her school. As he found a suitable place to park and he switched off the ignition, words still were unable to form coherently as he smiled at her. He could not believe what she had just said. It was downright baffling.

Apparently he hadn't taken into consideration just how extreme her crush on him was.

"Well, here we are, at your school. Have a good day and be sure that you don't do anything I wouldn't do." Which wasn't a hell of a lot, he added mentally inside his head.

He noticed the way that, when she yanked off her seat belt, she leaned over slightly near him in the seat while gathering her dark hair in both hands, collecting it and pushing it to the other side of her face, exposing her glorious neck to him. Her head was tilted on an angle, the side of her cheek held high to him. He gathered that she was expecting him to kiss her goodbye again as he had yesterday, and it was both utterly terrifying and daunting, just what it was that he had created and unintentionally nurtured within her.

"Aren't you going to kiss me goodbye like you had yesterday in the car?" Elizabeth forced herself to speak, her throat tight, a smile playing along her lips. She was holding her breath, afraid to even so much as breathe as she waited, excitement thrumming within her for the moment she felt his lips on her skin again.

She sensed Kenneth's hesitation to before she heard the vinyl material of the car's seat give off a squeak as he moved. His breathing seemed to be all that she could hear from him inside the car, the way he exhaled and inhaled in shaky, long breaths.

But him kissing her cheek this morning was not as how it had been the day before. He pressed his warm, chapped, puckered lips to her cheek once, leaving them there for barely two seconds before he pulled back. He was purposefully holding back, distancing himself from her, and she could tell. She wondered if she had done something wrong, though she could not understand what.

If she had been largely braver than she was, Elizabeth might have done what she knew would make her feel like a real woman, like a woman in total control.

She would have made him kiss her- but on the lips this time. She might have even been the one instigating it, in leaning over the console and touching her lips to his herself. That would have really changed things then. That would have really made Kenneth see just what it was that she felt for him when she believed she could not properly express or find the right words to tell him on her own.

But she was not that brave. And, in that moment, when she looked at him as he rested an elbow on the door, not daring to glance in her direction, she hated that about herself. Despised it with a great passion, in fact. She wanted so badly for him to not see her as his friend's adopted daughter. She wanted him to see her as a young woman capable of being someone's girlfriend, partner, wife. His.

"Bye," she whispered in disappointment, opening the door and grabbing her bag to heft the strap onto her shoulder as she stood out onto the pavement. "Thanks for dropping me off again, Kenneth."

He merely waved two fingers in her direction as the side of his upper lip twitched, a bleak and glassy look to his eyes; making her cheeks burn and her heart feel swollen with shame, regret, and embarrassment. Why was it him that she had to like so much, she wondered despairingly as she slammed the door shut. Why couldn't it be someone other than her father's friend, a man who obviously only saw her as his best friend's daughter and not a woman of appeal.

She despised how old she was then and what he must perceive her as.

Another chapter here. :) I hope it wasn't bad and that, as usual, the two are still remaining in character somewhat. Again, my apologies if my English isn't so good or if I write the wrong words in certain places.