Chapter 16
CHARLIE
“Ohmigod.” I don’t really mean for that to be the first thing out of my mouth when Myles opens the door for me, but I totally can’t help it.
“Is that a good ohmigod, or a bad one?” His eyebrows pull together the teensiest bit as he runs his hand through his curls, down to settle it at the back of his neck. Those two little signs of how much he cares what I say next make my heart leap.
As does the fact that, yet again, he looks positively gorgeous in the red and brown flannel he’s wearing open over a perfectly fitted white tee. Is it really fair of him to look this amazing every time I see him?
A quiet, questioning sort of smile lifts his lips, and I have my answer.
No, it is not fair. Not fair at all. And what is especially unfair is that his gorgeousness is premeditated.
Considering how he’s changed since work (not that he didn’t look just as incredible when I’d seen him in his office this afternoon), he’s clearly put at least some effort into looking as incredible as he does tonight.
“A good one.” Thank goodness I was talking about all the obvious work he’s already done with his dad’s house and not about anything to do with him.
While I can tell that the room behind him isn’t finished by any means, what he’s done so far is amazing.
He’s painted the walls a warm, sagey-off white, though three of the four walls are taped off around the molding, like he’s getting ready to paint over the scuffed white paint that’s currently there.
The room’s empty except for a caved-in looking old brown leather sofa that has to have been left over from when the house belonged to his dad, a neat stack of what looks like floating shelves and a couple boxes in one corner, and a stack of thin strips of unfinished wood running along one side of the room.
New flooring, I’m guessing, to replace the stained, ground-down beige carpet.
Through a wide doorway, I can see into his in-progress kitchen, where slabs of light wood butcher’s block lean against freshly painted white cabinets. Running along the back wall behind the torn-up counter tops, there’s a new looking backsplash of simple white tile set below creamy yellow walls.
Even with the nasty old carpet and the unfinished kitchen, everything is fresh and bright and beautiful.
“You did this?”
“Yeah.”
“Myles, it’s gorgeous. How did you learn to do all of it?”
“Mostly from YouTube videos and articles online,” he shrugs. “A good amount of trial and error. Fortunately, the house really just needs a lot of elbow grease and cosmetic work. I don’t know anything about the real stuff like plumbing or wiring.”
“What you’ve done looks totally real to me.”
The huge, positively thrilled grin he gives me in answer goes straight on this evening’s list of unfair.
When we were kids, after I’d worked out how much more than just best-friendly-love I felt for Myles, I did my fair share of yearning and pining and daydreaming.
As for now? Yes, I am insanely grateful to have our friendship falling back into place, but for some reason, now all that more-than-friendliness is like a constant murmur in the back of my mind, keeping me hyper aware of everything to do with him that I really shouldn’t be thinking twice about.
Like, ohmigod, how it’s him that’s pulling me into a hug, pasta salad bowl digging into my ribs and all.
“Thanks for coming tonight.” His voice shivers through me as he squeezes tight for a second before letting me go.
“Stop! Stop!” I’m cringing and laughing, totally not responsible for the way overly dramatic way I’m flapping my hands around in the air as Myles flashes me a sadistic smile.
“So you don’t want to know if I just stayed in there forever and the spiders ate me?”
I suck in a breath, calming down enough to roll my eyes.
“Obviously they didn’t.” I gesture at him, sitting across the table from me, plate of mostly eaten pasta salad in front of him.
He’s pushed all the olives to the side, saving them for last, he said after he’d beamed at me when I’d told him I’d tripled the quantity that the recipe had called for.
“But fiiine. Keep going with your horror story.”
A minute ago, asking him about the most ridiculous thing that happened to him while he was traveling totally seemed like a great idea. Now that it turns out that it was accidently locking himself in an outhouse in rural Cambodia, with hand-sized spiders hanging right over his head?
Uggghh, so totally not a great idea.
Myles grins as I shiver, unable to stop myself from smacky-brushing at a sudden phantom spider sensation that just crept down my neck.
“Like I was saying, every time I tried to force the door open, the spiders sort of shook on their webs right over my head,” he pauses to smirk as I let out a sound that I will not describe as a squeak, even in the privacy of my own thoughts.
“You,” I thrust an accusing finger at him, taking care to use my most unsqueaky voice, “are making this up, Myles Marlow. Just to mess with me.”
“I swear I’m not,” he laughs, shaking his head as he raises his hands, palms forward, in a gesture miming innocence. “But how about I promise not to tell you about the centipede house, okay?”
“The—” My eyebrows shoot right up to my hairline, and he’s laughing harder than ever.
I snatch my unused napkin from the table, wad it up, and chuck it at him so it bounces off his broad, drool-worthy chest. Through Myles’s continued laughter, true, genuine happiness lights his gorgeous deep brown eyes, and I feel like I’m floating.
This.
This is what I’ve spent the last ten and a half years missing. The easiness of just being. The way there’s no end in sight to the words that just keep flowing so naturally between us. The laughter and the smiles.
Him.
And I’ll just have to keep telling myself, like I always have, that it’s enough, because it is. Pining over the fact that I’m falling even more totally in love with him than ever is greedy and ungrateful, and so I won’t do it.
Much…
At least, not more than I can help.
“So since you’ve subjected me to the horrifying start of this spider story, do tell how it ended.” I’ve got to get away from the subject suddenly running wild in my head. Even if it means directing him back to the subject of nightmare spiders.
“With me literally breaking down the door. The wood was old, and it didn’t take more than one good kick to get it to tear off its hinges.
But I spent a minute brushing myself off, convinced I was covered in those damn spiders, because how had one of them not fallen down on my head?
I guess I was channeling my inner Charlie. ”
“Mean.” I glare at him, which makes him chuckle. “And after I made you extra-olive pasta salad.”
“You love them too, you know,” he smirks. “Otherwise, the olive brawl in your mom’s kitchen never would have happened.”
“That,” I reach across the table and swipe one of his olives. “Is totally beside the point. This was a gift for you, and now you’re repaying me by first traumatizing me, and now making fun of me.”
He leans forward, spearing two olives from my plate before I can stop him.
Memories of launching into him, the two of us tackling each other to the ground and tussling over the exact same circumstances burst through my head, except in the scene playing out in my thoughts, the two of us aren’t twelve anymore.
Hands grabbing. Bodies tangling. Laughter turned choppy by our heavy breath…
My fork clatters down against my plate as my hand holding it goes slack when the Myles in my head wraps his legs around my waist, flipping us so that he’s the one pinning me—
No. Adult friends do not wrestle over olives like preteens. No matter how much I may happen to want us to.
I take as long as is humanly possible to eat, but eventually, even with the welcome delay of going outside with Myles to stash his delivery of exterior house paint and a ladder in his shed where it will wait for a dry stretch so he can paint the house, I have to give in and accept that the evening is coming to a close.
At least I can very reasonably argue politeness and get away with staying through helping him clean up.
Not that washing a couple dishes is going to take—
“Are you too tired to stick around for a movie?”
“So not too tired.” The level of excitement in my voice is probably way more than the situation calls for, but Myles has to go and drive it up yet another notch by beaming back at me, like he was every bit as not ready for me to go as I was to leave.
“It’s probably not still your favorite, but,” he lifts his eyebrows questioningly, and I have to mentally yell a reminder that he is my friend and only my friend at my stupid, naive heart as it gives an eager flutter at how hopeful and almost shy he looks.
Forcing my eyes away from his sweet, gorgeous, so-never-going-to-be-mine face, I snatch up my plate from the table and head for the sink.
“Do you still like Phantom of the Opera? Or we can watch whatever—”
Annnnd now he’s right at my elbow, setting his own plate down in the sink, totally unaware of how he’s just going and making it harder and harder to keep that fluttery hope in any kind of check.
“How much would you laugh at me if I told you that, yeah, it totally is still my favorite?”
“Not laughing at all.” He knocks his elbow against mine, and it seems that the rest of my body is just as stupid and crazy as my heart, because elbow knocks?
Not sexy. Only tell that to the wave of heat that just that oh so simple, totally not sexy touch sent rippling down my spine.
“And that’s really good, because I already bought it on Prime for us to watch. ”
Why? Why does he have to be literally the sweetest, most quietly sincere and unfairly hot man on the planet, in addition to being so completely off limits, it’s not even funny?
“You didn’t have to do that.” I bump my elbow back against his, and another rush of awareness tingles through me.