Free A Reason to Stay by Delinda Jasper Page B

would not waste it by moping around and pouting over what would never be. She would enjoy their last Movie Night if it killed her.
     
    They’d been having movie night since their teens. One night a week they got together, watched movies and gorged themselves on take-out. At first Movie Night had been Saturdays, but as Date Night took its place and then they got older and busier, Movie Night became adaptable to their schedules. Once, when they were in college, they’d combined Date Night and Movie Night into one. It had been a complete disaster.
     
    Their dates hadn’t understood the ritual of renting one gratuitously violent action film and one pitifully sappy romantic comedy, and then talking all the way through both movies. Neither Jake’s, nor Ellie’s date had understood why they would want to rent movies they’d already seen about a hundred times. Nor had either date been impressed by the fact that both Jake and Ellie knew the movies so well they could, and did, say the lines along with the actors. In fact, both had complained so much Jake had shut the second movie off within minutes of its start and took his girlfriend home. Ellie’s date had left just before the end of the first movie. From that night on dates had been permanently banned from Movie Night.
     
    Her smile brighter and more genuine this time, she asked, "Pizza or Chinese for dinner?"
     
    ****
     
    Ellie loved Jake’s bathroom. She knew it was an odd room in the house to find the most attractive and comfortable, but she couldn’t help it. The first thing Jake had done when he bought the old farmhouse he lived in was remodel the master bath. It was once dark and cramped, with fixtures that had been there since the early sixties, but now it was huge and light and airy.
     
    The wall separating the original bathroom from one of the house's five bedrooms had been knocked out in order to expand the bathroom and create a massive walk in closet. A huge tiled shower and a separate roman-style whirlpool tub replaced the old built in shower-tub combo. It could have been the bathroom of a multi-million dollar mansion instead of a hundred-year-old farmhouse.
     
    She was going to miss this bathroom. Ellie sighed as she poured some lavender scented bath oil she kept under Jake's double sink into the steaming water filling the tub. She had often taken advantage of this room. She loved bubble baths, and both of the bathrooms in the house she’d shared with her grandmother had those tiny old tubs that barely held enough water to get a person's ankles wet, much less enough for someone with Ellie’s figure to submerge herself in.
     
    Once the tub was filled, she turned on the whirlpool jets, stripped off her clothes and lowered her body into the frothy water. She nearly groaned her pleasure. Her body was so tired and sore from all of the packing she’d done in the last week the steaming, scented water felt like heaven on her skin. She leaned back, laying her head on the back of the tub and let the jets of pulsing water work out the kinks in her muscles.
     
    She had at least half an hour or more before the Chinese food Jake was ordering got there, so she would have plenty of time to relax a bit. But relaxing was easier said than done. The way she’d felt when Jake held her in his arms earlier in her living room haunted her. She’d felt safe, and like in his arms was the one place she belonged. Unfortunately, that was the one place she didn’t belong.
     
    Jake was sweet and caring, but he was also a ladies man. He loved women, and women loved him. Ellie doubted if there would ever be just one woman who could satisfy Jake’s lusts. She did know that if there was, it definitely wasn’t her. He dated tall, thin, super-model types, and that sure as heck wasn’t her. It wasn’t that Jake was shallow, far from it. But when tall, thin, leggy women were constantly throwing themselves at him, who could blame him for partaking.
     
    There was definitely