Chapter 9
Taking it slow was a lot easier said than done.
The day Noah came over, we ended up making out on my couch, which turned into a hot and heavy frotting session while some Netflix rom-com played in the background.
He might have stayed the night, if he didn’t have an early morning and I didn’t have a ton of work to do on my project.
Instead, we ended up making out at my door, at his car, and finally said good night.
He called a few hours later, to tell me to go to bed.
The phone call turned into a video call, just so he could make sure that my laptop wasn’t in the bedroom with me.
Or maybe he was making sure the rubber ducks weren’t back in full force.
We talked and texted for the next two days, but with the deadline for the first phase of my current project looming, I couldn’t make time to meet with him.
Every night, we ended up on video calls.
I had a feeling that he was checking in on me during some of the calls and texts.
I knew he was during the video calls. He made sure I was eating more than just bags of Sour Cream and Onion chips, drinking more than root beer, and knew what day it was.
Even my friends didn’t hover and worry the way that he did.
Unfortunately, all of the care he was showing me was making it really hard to take it slow.
If anything, it was like someone was pouring water down a slide and pushing me down it.
I was barreling fast into emotional attachment.
I’d always fallen hard and fast, even with loves that I knew from the start wouldn’t be forever. With Noah, it was different.
For one thing, I knew how good we could be.
I knew what it was like to be loved by Noah Guthrie before, and the way he was treating me gave me a taste of what it would be like again.
Except that he’d told me that it took him longer to feel anything like that.
I knew that he didn’t even know if he could feel it ever again, because he’d not had it since we’d broken up.
I didn’t want to get my hopes up, didn’t want to convince myself that I was the exception to the rule.
I needed to rein myself in.
Luckily, I had a deadline. I could find a balance between losing days the way I had over the weekend and burying myself in work.
The first step was a list of milestones I still needed to reach for the project.
I took painstaking care with each one, outlining the necessary steps to accomplish them.
There were a few milestones that I’d already completed, and I included them on the list as well.
I set deadlines, and then I sent a picture of the list to Noah.
Noah
That looks like a lot.
Matt
It’s not as bad as it looks. But if I don’t answer or my texts are short…
Noah
Don’t assume you’ve sacrificed yourself to the ducks?
You know I’m still going to check in on you, right?
Matt
You worry too much.
Noah
And if I hadn’t interrupted you the other day, you might STILL think it’s Saturday. [kiss emoji]
I laughed at his text and told him it was time to get back to work.
The tight schedule made it easier to focus on my work more and on him less.
His check ins came in a few times a day, and he still called me every night around dinner.
But two days flew by without being terrified that I was falling deeper into my feelings for him.
Unfortunately, when Thursday came around, I still had a long list of things to do.
I texted my friends a rare cancellation of our Thursday night plans.
They sent back a slew of shocked GIFs and emojis and more than a few messages of shock.
I didn’t blame them. I couldn’t remember the last time any of us had canceled on our Thursday night. I hated it. It felt unnatural not to be with them at the Rusty Nail or Goliath or even Dana’s Diner. Those nights were sacred for us, and they always had been.
I shouldn’t have been surprised when I heard a knock at my door an hour after canceling.
I really shouldn’t have been surprised to find my friends piling into my apartment before I could even get to the door.
Eli was dangling the key I’d given him for emergencies.
Holden was carrying a case of beer. Seb had a stack of Pie in the Sky boxes, and Jonas was empty handed but had an apologetic look on his face.
I wondered if he’d tried to talk them out of it.
After all, he worked with codes. He knew how stressful the job could be, especially when a deadline loomed on the horizon.
“What are you doing here?”
“You’ve been locked in this apartment for a week.
No one has seen hide or hair of you since last Thursday,” Eli explained as he pocketed his key.
He plopped down on the armchair while the rest of our friends milled around the apartment.
Seb’s pizza boxes were put down on the side table while Holden made his way to the kitchen with the beer.
“Figured if you couldn’t come out to play, we’d bring the party to you.
You don’t even need to entertain us. You can code, and Jonas can play the role of rubber duck or do that weird talking to you while you type what he says thing that you coders do. ”
“Pair coding,” Jonas supplied. He was still near the door, like he was waiting for an official invitation to actually come inside.
I patted the couch cushion next to the one I was sitting on.
“And that only works when I know the project. Matt probably has some confidentiality things with his client that would make that impossible.”
“I don’t, but the codes are also kind of a mess right now.
” I noticed the panic in his eyes and laughed.
“A documented mess!” Jonas and I had spent too many hours bitching about developers who didn’t properly document their codes for him to think I’d joined their legions.
He let out a dramatic sigh of relief, and I laughed for what felt like the first time all day.
“But I don’t know that you’d really be able to make sense of it. I wouldn’t mind the company though.”
I reached for my laptop, but Eli smacked my hand. “Pizza first. You probably haven’t eaten—”
“Since lunch,” I cut him off. I could feel all of my friends staring at me. When I turned around, I noticed Holden at the kitchen door. Yeah, all of my friends were staring at me. “I don’t always skip meals when I’m coding.”
“When you’re so deep in that you’re canceling Thursdays, you do,” Eli insisted.
I sighed. “Not now that Noah’s figured out that I get too deep in,” I admitted. “He texts me a few times a day to make sure I’m eating.”
“Damn, why didn’t we ever think to do that?” Seb questioned with a laugh. “Wait, lunch wasn’t just chips and a soda, right?”
“And a sandwich. Ham.”
Eli still wouldn’t let me have my computer until I had two slices of pizza.
I had a feeling he would’ve tried to force more down me if Jonas hadn’t stopped him.
I slid off the couch with my laptop to give Seb and Jonas more room on the couch.
Once again, Holden and Eli were crammed into the armchair.
They were sitting closer than Noah and I did when he’d come over, and Noah was my boyfriend.
But then, we were taking it slow.
I sighed as I pulled up my coding project.
Holden and Eli started wrestling for the remote, and I was accidentally nudged in the back of the head by Jonas’s knee as he reached over to steal it from them.
I started typing away while my friends bickered about a show to watch.
There was something calming about their presence, something that made the bits of code I’d written and had been struggling to connect suddenly make sense.
An hour later, I was loading up my testing program on my laptop. “Jonas, you want to test this?” I asked him. “I would, but I think I’m turning code blind.”
Jonas slid off the couch to sit beside me, and I passed him the computer. I watched as he clicked around the program I’d built. “Stop watching,” he muttered. “Sit on the couch and let me play.”
“Yeah, sit on the couch and tell us about how your boyfriend is managing to get you to eat and respond to text messages,” Seb teased. “Let Jonas play.”
I didn’t have a choice. Just like I didn’t have a choice in my friends not allowing me to miss our Thursday night hang out.
Besides, I did want to tell my friends about our decision to take it slow.
Maybe they could offer me some tips. After all, Seb and Jonas were both in relationships, and neither of them had tripped and fell headfirst into love in less than two weeks of dating someone.
Jonas even had history with Silas and had managed not to fall into that trap.
That history had been mostly negative, but it was still there.
“He came over Sunday and found me deep in the coding hole. Surrounded by ducks.”
“How many ducks is surrounded by ducks?” Holden asked. They all knew how extensive my duck collection was.
I grimaced. I did not need to admit how many ducks I had out that day. They’d think I’d gone off the deep end. Besides, I’d lost count somewhere Saturday. Which might have been Sunday. Hell, it might have even been Friday. Time had no meaning in the coding hole.
Holden read the harsh reality in my expression. “Ouch, that many?”
“He thought I’d gone off the deep end,” I admitted.
“He cleared a path and started talking in this soothing voice. You know the kind of voice, the one people use with wounded animals when they don’t want to spook them.
” My friends laughed. “Anyway, he managed to break me out of the coding hole. I thought it was still Saturday, and he got a bit freaked out.”