18. Lila
Chapter eighteen
Lila
I burrow into the warmth, trying to fully cocoon myself in its embrace. A small piece of my mind tells me to wake up, but I quickly silence it. I’ve rarely felt this content, and I plan to keep consciousness at bay for as long as possible. With a deep sigh, I press my body into the source of the heat next to me. I hold on to this sense of calm, this feeling that everything is exactly where it should be. Then, the realization hits me that the solid bulk under my cheek is not, in fact, my pillow. Startled, I blink my eyes awake.
The sun is shining through the windows, and I slowly take in the unfamiliar room and the far too familiar body I’m currently draped over. Damn, that man looks good asleep, his long eyelashes resting on his cheeks, his lips slightly parted. I track the lines of his body, down his bare chest to the arm that’s wrapped around me, the bandage from last night peeking—shit!
Last night comes rushing back to me. Waking up to the sound of something battering against the side of the house, having no idea what could possibly cause that all-encompassing sound.
And then JT was there, carrying me to safety. Protecting me as another window gave in to the constant beating of the hail.
When he invited me to sleep with him, I'd almost balked, but where else was I going to go? And then he’d pulled me against him, and it had felt right. Safe. So I’d fallen asleep in his arms.
And if I’d known how amazing it would be sleeping next to the man, I don’t know if I would’ve had the willpower to leave all those nights ago in Vegas. In spite of everything, I think those few hours might've been the best sleep of my life. It’s so nice, in fact, that I’m having a hard time convincing myself to get up, even though I know there is so much that has to be done today to even begin to clean up from the storm.
JT’s phone starts vibrating from its spot on his nightstand, and he jerks upright, a worried “Lila?!” escaping from his lips as he glances around frantically. I slip off his side at the movement, still not functioning enough to process the fact that I’m the first thing he was thinking about this morning. His hand fumbles around next to him before coming up with his cell phone. He answers the call with a husky, “Hello.”
I sit up in bed next to him, not at all sure what the proper protocol is, but I’m nosey enough to want to stick around to see what this phone call is all about. His eyes slip over to me, silently scanning me as if checking for invisible injuries.
“Thanks for the information, Mary, and for the call last night. We’re both okay, but yeah, we have at least two broken windows, one in a bedroom and one in the living room. I haven’t explored enough to know what other damage we have.”
Ahh. The course is calling him to make sure we are all right. I wonder why they didn’t call me. I search the bed for my phone before realizing I hadn’t grabbed it in my dash to safety last night. Dang it. I should’ve thought about grabbing my phone before I rushed to the bathroom. What if something had caved in, and I was stuck in there? What if someone needed to get a hold of me? I should’ve known better—JT clearly did.
JT’s listening intently, and I catch pieces of information about the havoc the storm wrecked both in Wild Bluffs and at the course.
“Okay, thanks for the information. We really appreciate it. And don’t worry about us. We can sweep up the glass here.”
His fingers pick at the comforter while he stares out the window, nodding in apparent agreement with whatever Mary is saying.
“Sure. We will head into town to see how we can help, then. Thanks, Mary.”
He hangs up the phone and looks at me, clearly prepared to handle the fact that I’m in his bed now. I, however, am not, so I decide to take control of the conversation.
“What’d she say?”
“Apparently, the power is still out at the course and in town, but someone brought a generator to the coffee shop. They’re making a bunch of eggs and coffee for breakfast for anyone in town who needs it. I guess the storm destroyed an unbelievable number of the southern-facing windows in town, including those at the hospital and nursing home. The hardware store and a couple of the families who own construction companies are putting together teams of volunteers to help patch all the broken windows in community buildings or seniors’ homes if we want to join.”
“Oh, that would be good. I’d love to help,” I say, jumping out of bed. “Should we try to get ours patched up first?”
“Mary said that, for liability reasons, they’d prefer we leave everything as it is, and they will have a team in here as soon as they can to get things boarded up and cleaned.”
Okay. I can work with that. I am nothing if not flexible.
“Okey-Dokey, smokey,” I say, before mentally face-palming at using such a juvenile expression. “Let me just go get changed, and we can head into town.”
I turn to exit, but JT calls, “Wait!”
I guess we are going to talk about us sleeping together after all.
“You can’t go out there without shoes on.”
I look down at my bare feet like I’ve never seen them before. How does my lack of shoes have anything to do with us sleeping in the same bed, curled around each other?
“There’s glass everywhere out there,” he explains.
“Oh, right. Of course.” Duh, Lila, you buffoon. We aren’t talking about it. “I’ll just…” I look around, searching for an answer. “Can I borrow your shoes?”
“Yeah, of course.” He points to a pair of tennis shoes by the foot of the bed, and I slide my feet in. I feel like a kid dressing up in my mom’s heels. My feet are so much smaller than JT’s that I have to flex my toes with all my might to keep the shoes from falling off as I walk. My exit turns into a shuffle, and my face burns as JT lets out a light chuckle. Jack sniffs at my feet, making it even harder to get where I’m going. Well, not the stride of pride one would want after spending a night with a guy, but I think I’m hiding my embarrassment pretty well.
I open JT’s door, and my worries about looking like a fool vanish at the sight of the living room. Jack tries to slip past me, but I shove him back into JT’s room, shutting the door behind me. There is glass everywhere . One of the doors to the patio has a large, jagged hole right in the middle of it. The carpet is covered in shimmering shards of glass, and I can even spot some on the couch itself. Outside, everything is covered in a layer of melting hail. The few flowers that poke through the layer of white are decimated, all broken stems and missing petals. A lone evergreen tree stands across the fairway from me, half of its branches missing.
JT slips out his door behind me, and I feel him pull up at the sight.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
His words are the final knock, and my walls come crumbling down. I can’t take it anymore, the terror of last night, the devastation of this morning, and so I start to cry, my shoulders shaking with built-up emotions. JT steps up behind me, turning me into his chest and wrapping his arms around me. I know I should stop, I shouldn’t let him see this side of me, the one that isn’t perfect or tough. Plus, I’m getting snot and tears all over his shirt. Unfortunately, I can’t help it. The stress of graduating, starting a new job, moving to a small town, trying to date, living with a guy I slept with and now just fight with all the time, and then being woken up in the middle of a fucking act of God is just too much for one girl to process.
“You’re safe,” JT mumbles into my hair, lightly stroking my back. “You’re safe.”
We stand like that for I don’t know how long before I finally pull myself away from him, wiping my eyes with my fists.
“Sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I’ll pull myself together.”
“No need to apologize, Lila. It was terrifying. I thought I was going to lose it when I walked into your room and saw your bed empty.”
Well, that’s…something I will need to process at another time.
He continues, “But you might want to prepare yourself. Your room is going to be just as bad, if not worse.”
I nod, forcing myself to take a deep breath before shuffling my way to my door. When I open it, I realize he’s right. The floor sparkles like a kid has been playing with silver glitter, and my bed is somehow worse.
“Shit,” I say.
JT heads to my closet. “What do you need for today? If you have any boots, those might be a good idea if we’re going to be helping clean up glass.”
I shake my head. “My boots are in storage. I have some running shoes in there that will have to do.” I move over to the closet, which fortunately had been closed last night, and grab what I want off the floor.
I head to the bathroom to change when I notice JT sticking things into my suitcase. “What are you doing?”
“Well, you’re obviously not staying here tonight, and it may be a while before they can get the window fixed. You can stay with me until they do.”
I want to say I can stay in Jameson’s room—assuming none of those windows are broken—but I can’t seem to offer it as a suggestion. There’s always tomorrow.
Instead, I follow JT’s lead and pack up my toothbrush and assorted bathroom paraphernalia and move them into his room as well. After a quick change into jeans, a T-shirt, and shoes that actually fit, I exit the bathroom to find JT in matching attire.
“No boots for you either?” I ask.
“Not something I thought I would need for this trip.”
“Let’s check out the rest of the house before we head into town,” I suggest.
The room Jameson has been using for storage looks a lot like mine, though the window that broke was slightly smaller. Jameson’s room is on the same side of the house as JT’s, so it’s fine. Neither of us mentions the fact that I could sleep there.
Instead, we head outside, and I groan at what I see. My poor car is totaled. The front windshield was facing directly south, and it’s now completely shattered. The body looks like a golf ball, it’s so covered in dents.
JT’s pickup, luckily, is better off, and by that I mean it’s covered in divots from the hail, but no glass appears to be broken.
“I guess I’ll drive, then?” he says.
“You don’t want to ride in mine? Everyone loves the wind in their face.”
“I’m just not a huge fan of glass in my ass.”
“Weird. I thought for sure that’d be one of your kinks.”
“Jesus, Lila. That…nope. Not even going to think about it.”
“Let me just take a few pictures so I can submit an insurance claim, and then we can go.”
We both snap a variety of pictures of our vehicles, capturing the destruction from all different angles. I take longer than JT, and while he waits, he walks around the house, commenting on the damaged siding, the broken fake logs in the firepit, and the bent gutters.
“Ready?” he asks when he gets back around to the vehicles.
“Yup. Let’s go board up some old people’s windows,” I say, looking forward to having something to do to put things back together.