Who's Fault?

Chapter Fifteen

Knocking at the front door pulled my attention away from the Criminal Minds episode that was playing on the TV. I had been watching the episode where the team investigates a group of conspiracy theorists, called the truthers, about the murders of a couple members of their group. I had seen the episode already, but it was one that I really enjoyed. I paused the episode then made my way downstairs and opened the door to see Eli standing there with a smile on his face. I gave him a shocked smile in return, "Ellie? What are you doing here?"

"Well, you said that you didn't have work and no plans, so I figured we could spend the day in. You know, watch movies and all that?" Eli said, scratching the back of his neck.

I smiled and opened the door wider, letting him inside. The two of us made our way upstairs and snuggled up together on the couch in my living room. Eli stayed quiet for a bit letting me enjoy a few more episodes of Criminal Minds before he wrapped his arm tighter around my shoulders to get my attention and spoke up. "I have an idea."

I looked toward him to see he had an excited smirk on his face, "yeah? And what is it?"

"We should build a fort!"

I giggled in disbelief, "a fort?!"

"Mhm! Out of blankets and pillows. We can move the furniture around, bring the TV to the ground and watch movies, order pizza, and eat junk food. C'mon, it'll be fun!" Eli said practically jumping where he sat.

"You had me at pizza!" I told him, getting up to grab what we needed. As I walked away, I heard him mutter a "yes" under his breath. I could imagine him doing a fist pump as he said it and the thought made my smile even wider. He is too good to be true.

For the next hour or so we built our blanket fort. We pushed the couch back against the kitchen island and the coffee table over against the sliding glass doors that led to my small patio. Eli had grabbed any hair ties and clips of all kinds that he could find while I gathered lamps from around the whole house. Together we moved the TV to the floor and began draping, clipping, and tying sheets over the lamps and to the ceiling fan; we even found some push pins and pinned them to the wall. We used the clips to keep the sheets from separating as they lay over one another. Once everything was hanging and sturdy enough, we took comforters and blankets and laid them out all over the floor. We had multiple layers so it would be as if we were sitting on clouds. I grabbed pillows of all kinds and placed them randomly around our whole set up.

When we were finished, I didn't forget to snap a picture of all our hard work as Eli placed an order for delivery from The Box. It turned out to be a candid photo of Eli in our fort. He was sitting on the ground with the phone up to his ear and he had the biggest smile on his face. The light from outside made its way through the sheets and provided his face with a natural glow. Without thinking twice I made it my phone's lock and home screen. It was just too good of an opportunity to pass up. After the pizza arrived we watched a couple movies and ate so much junk food I thought I was going to explode.

Later at night, we were watching Megamind, and I was laughing at a part in the movie when Megamind and Minion are fighting; Minion tells Megamind "good luck on your date" to which Megamind responds with "I will." It was a dumb joke, but all of the jokes in the movie are. I caught Eli staring at me with a look on his face that I couldn't decipher. "What?" I asked him, suddenly feeling anxious and self-conscious. Probably laughed too loud and obnoxiously.

"You are just so stunning," he told me as if he was lost in a daze, but he didn't look away. "Sometimes I wonder how I got so lucky that you wanted to be with me." I could feel my blush heating up my face and went to look away, embarrassed by the reaction, but Eli caressed my cheek.