Chapter 3
Emma followed Haddie into the small bedroom, dropped a box labeled Running Gear on the floor, and then spun to peek out onto the rest of the apartment from Haddie’s bedroom door.
“Oh my god,” Haddie whispered, grabbing Emma’s elbow. “You are the least subtle human to ever human!”
“I hear cheering,” Emma whispered back. “Do you think they’re watching bachelor-party videos to plan for Matteo’s? Do you think I should worry?”
Haddie snorted. “Are they going to Vegas?”
“No. They’re doing a pub crawl through town, which basically means hitting up two entire spots, including the inn,” Emma replied. “Matteo doesn’t even drink. But you never know.”
Haddie rolled her eyes and then popped her head out next to Emma’s to find Matteo and Levi standing at the breakfast bar in front of Levi’s laptop.
“Whatcha guys watching?” Haddie asked.
Matteo turned toward the two women and laughed, winking at Emma.
Levi pivoted quickly to face them as well, and Haddie swallowed, telling herself that the stubble on his unshaven face was not sexy and that seeing him like that every morning from here on out would not be an issue.
“Um… Coach Crawford sent some video files of last year’s team so I could get an idea of what I’m starting with.”
Haddie nudged Emma with her elbow. “See? Just a coach doing what coaches do.” She offered Levi a salute. “As you were, gentlemen.” Then she turned around and winced at her utter lack of coolness, pulling Emma back into her bedroom.
Emma closed the door behind her and leaned against it with her arms crossed. “You took a bath and cleaned out his minibar?” Emma whispered back. “Matteo’s brother? My soon-to-be brother-in-law!”
“Shh!” Haddie hissed, then grabbed her friend’s wrist and pulled her away from the door as if that would keep Levi and Matteo from hearing them through the apartment’s thin walls.
“I didn’t know he was Matteo’s brother. And also, I did not clean out his minibar.
” She shrugged. “I took what I wanted and left the rest.” Then she gasped, climbed around and over the boxes stacked all over the small room’s floor, found her purse, and inside the purse, found her bounty.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “The second one! Only the best commercially produced chocolate in the universe, and I’m about to share it with you. ”
The two women dropped down onto a tiny clean patch of wooden floor. Haddie tore open the long triangular package, ripped off the top half of the foil, and broke off a chunk of her prized possession, handing it over to her friend.
Emma accepted the offering eagerly, popping the whole thing into her mouth. “I know you plying me with chocolate is a redirect, so I won’t belabor the fact that you’re still attracted to Levi, and it’s almost working,” she mused. “But I might need one more bite.”
Haddie popped a piece of chocolate into her own mouth and then broke off another wedge for Emma. If she had to buy her friend’s silence, she’d do it. “He’s my roommate and my colleague now. And you know I’d never date a guy I worked with. Again.”
Haddie had tried that. Once. She thought that she and Collin, a fifth-grade teacher at her former school, were on the same, casual, let’s-have-fun-until-this-runs-its-course page until he sprang a surprise meet-my-parents brunch on her on a random Sunday morning.
That was when she knew she had to end it.
Emma sighed. “Poor Collin. I hear he still puts your photo on every New Year’s vision board.”
Haddie rolled her eyes. “He does not. I think he actually got engaged right before I left.”
“Aww,” Emma crooned. “Good for Collin. But Levi… I mean, how great would it be for me and Matteo if the two of you did actually hit it off?”
Haddie scoffed. “Oh, so this is all about you?”
“Absolutely,” Emma admitted. “And Matteo.”
“Ems, as much as my goal in life is to make all your dreams come true, I won’t know if I’m hired back for year two until I make it through year one, so whether or not I find your almost brother-in-law attractive doesn’t matter because our relationship now is 100 percent professional and…
platonic.” Emma raised her brows, but when she opened her mouth to retort, Haddie blurted out, “Moratorium! I’m instituting a moratorium on who I am or am not attracted to, and in exchange I will bestow upon you the great honor of coming furniture shopping with me. ” She gestured around the room.
Emma sighed. “Fine.” She pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “You’ll get hired back after a year. You’re too good at what you do.”
Haddie huffed out a mirthless laugh. “Principal Crawford said the last person in my position, who I guess wasn’t born and raised in Summertown like everyone else on staff, didn’t have the town’s best interests at heart. Thanks to her, I have to prove that I do.”
Emma snorted. “The last person in your position was a seventy-eight-year-old con artist who embezzled field trip money so she could buy an Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. So unless you start cruising around town in a giant hot dog, I think you’re probably safe.
” Haddie shrugged, but Emma opened her mouth to continue.
“So, I have one more question before we go, and I promise it has nothing to do with your pupils turning to hearts when you look at your roommate.”
Haddie groaned and pushed herself back up to standing, holding an arm out for Emma. Then she pulled her friend to her feet.
“Why Toblerone?” Emma asked.
Haddie opened and closed her mouth. That wasn’t the question she’d been expecting. “Because I love chocolate?” That was a perfectly acceptable response, right? “I am human,” she added.
Emma raised her brows. “And those who don’t like chocolate are not?”
Haddie scoffed. “Obviously.”
“Okay,” Emma continued. “ I’ve never seen you eat a Toblerone. I feel like I should have seen one or two or ten whenever I came to your apartment.”
When Emma still lived in the city. When Haddie felt like she still had some semblance of family, thanks to her friend.
“For example…” Emma pointed to her T-shirt, which sported the images of three potted flowers and read, I Wet My Plants, a pun and homage to Summertown, famous for its award-winning topiaries and gardens. “I not only love my punny tees, but I wear them almost every day.”
“Yeah, we need to talk about that,” Haddie replied with mock concern. She loved her friend’s quirk and that she wore it on her sleeve…or at least the front of her tee.
Emma held her hand out for more chocolate, and Haddie pouted, yet ultimately obliged.
“It surprises me not that you came here with zero furniture but somehow managed to wedge your treadmill into your back seat. So why is your love of this—I don’t know—airport delicacy a complete mystery to me?”
“Ding! Ding! Ding!” Haddie tapped her nose and grinned at her friend. But then her smile fell as the fragment of a memory settled in.
Emma’s expression morphed to mirror Haddie’s, as if she felt it too.
“You okay, Hads?” Emma asked.
“Yeah. It just reminds me of a trip I took with my mom once,” Haddie told her. It was the last image of her mother that was seared into her brain, her breaking off a triangle of the Swiss chocolate treat and handing it to her as they sat next to each other on an airplane.
“Did your grandma never get it for you?”
Haddie shook her head. “My grandmonster? Nope. From the time I was six years old she pretty much ignored anything I said.”
Emma gave her a sympathetic nod. “Do you…want to talk about your grandma? I still wish you would have let me come for the memorial service.”
Haddie pressed her lips into what she hoped resembled a smile. “Nope,” she replied again. “I want to get a bed, though.”
Emma narrowed her eyes. “Oh, we’ll get that bed, my friend. But mark my words. You’re on my home turf now, and Summertown is a place where people talk. To each other. About their feelings. If you’re going to live here, you’re going to have to abide by our rules.”
Then she grabbed Haddie’s hand. “You know I just want to make sure you’re okay, right?”
Haddie nodded. “I’m okay. I promise. But know that in my rusted Tin Man heart, I do appreciate you worrying about me.”
“You do not have a rusted Tin Man heart,” Emma insisted.
“For everyone but you. And my students. I’ll miss those little six-year-old clouds of dirt, germs, and potential. But you have the same brand of first graders here, don’t you?”
“Yes.” Emma laughed. “Probably even dirtier if they’re getting an early start on their topiary trimming skills.”
Haddie smiled, and then they made their way back into the main living area where the two brothers were still staring at Levi’s laptop.
“Who’s coming furniture shopping?” Emma called, and both men turned around. “Matteo, I volunteer you since we need your truck.”
Matteo grabbed his fiancée’s wrist as she approached, pulling her to him and kissing her on the top of the head. “I go where you go,” he told her.
Haddie sighed. “You guys are so cute it’s gross. I mean that as a compliment.”
She tapped Levi on the shin with the toe of her flip-flop. “What about you, roomie? You gonna join us?”
Haddie looked down, suddenly not sure about making eye contact with him. Ugh. Fine. Emma was right. It wasn’t like attraction just went “Poof!” and disappeared once you decided not to sleep with someone. Their chemistry or whatever it was would run its course soon enough.
Levi cleared his throat. “Um…no. You all go ahead.”
Haddie’s relief was capped off by an unexpected twinge of disappointment.
She glanced into his room full of nothing but boxes, just like hers.
“Not a big fan of beds, are ya?” she teased but immediately regretted the words as soon as they’d left her mouth because saying them only made her think of the hotel bed they had almost slept in.
“I’m actually a very big fan of beds,” he countered.
“But I ordered one of those mattress-in-a-bag things online. It should be here in a day or two.” He turned his attention to his brother.
“Dad said Tilly has an extra couch in her basement we can use, so I’m going to head over there and take a look, see if it will fit. But you three have fun.”
Once out the door, Haddie let out a breath.
Of course things would be weird until they got used to each other, until they found their stride.
Focusing on all the parts and pieces of moving and quickly furnishing an apartment before school started would keep them busy enough to forget about what almost happened.
“Shit,” she said before they’d even made it to the stairs. “I forgot my phone. I’ll meet you at the truck.” And while Emma and Matteo headed down to the street, Haddie jogged back toward her new front door and strode back through it.
Levi swore and slammed his laptop shut.
Haddie rounded the corner, brows raised and a bemused smile on her face.
“Levi Rourke, did I just interrupt something…scandalous?” She had no idea what he might have started watching once the rest of them had left, and she truly didn’t care.
He was a grown man. He could watch what he wanted.
But something about the look of abject horror on his face made her want to poke the bear.
Levi Rourke had a secret, and she wasn’t leaving this apartment until he confessed.
“What’s on the laptop?” she asked.
“I thought you left,” he countered. “What are you doing here?”
“I forgot my phone,” Haddie replied. “There. I answered you. Now you answer me.” She took a step toward him, and he stood in front of the laptop on the breakfast bar, his big, broad body blocking any chance of her stealing it from him.
Haddie shrugged. “I’m not leaving here until I know you’re not partaking in any illicit affairs that might be unbecoming to a new roommate.”
His dark eyes blinked more than once. “I’m not even sure what the hell you just said.”
She threw up her hands. “Come on, man! Just show me already. Otherwise, I’m going to walk out of here thinking the worst, and then I’m going to have to ask Emma and Matteo if they know what’s going on, and next thing you know, whatever is on that laptop becomes the talk of the town, which, depending on what’s actually there, will either bode very well or very badly for you.
At least now it’s just me, and you’re not afraid of little old me, are you? ”
Levi scrubbed his hand across his jaw and swore again. Then he spun toward the breakfast bar, flipped open the laptop, and the screen immediately awoke to show a still from…Ted Lasso?
He turned back to face her, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter, a muscle pulsing in his jaw.
Haddie’s brows drew together. “Why wouldn’t you want me to know you were watching Ted Lasso? It’s a great show.”
“One of the best,” Levi agreed.
“Are you Team Roy or Team Jamie?” she added.
“Team Keeley gets to make her own damned choice,” he countered, quicker than she’d expected.
“Good answer,” Haddie mused, taking a step closer as the pieces fell quickly together.
The videos of last year’s team made sense.
This added another layer of complexity. “But something tells me that Keeley’s empowerment to choose herself over the two men who aren’t quite worthy of her isn’t the reason you’re squeezing in a rewatch while we’re out furniture shopping. ”
Levi groaned. “You’re really going to make me say it, aren’t you?”
Haddie shrugged, then closed the distance between them, picking up the laptop that was paused on Coach Lasso in the locker room with his players, probably in the middle of an epic pep talk about being a goldfish or believing in themselves as a team.
She glanced from Levi to the laptop and then back at Levi again.
“You don’t know a thing about soccer. Do you?” she asked.
He pulled his arms tighter, his biceps clearly straining against the sleeve of his T-shirt. A muscle pulsed in his jaw as his eyes met hers, and his lips—lips that had kissed hers and lit a fire within—forced themselves into a pained smile. “Not one goddamn thing,” he admitted.