Wonderful
Lyra
Iwake up in a room I've never seen before.
For a long moment I just lie there, staring at a water stain on an unfamiliar ceiling, trying to piece together where I am.
I’m assuming it’s Owen’s guest room. I hope.
The walls are a plain, flat blue. There's a small side table and a window with the blinds drawn, thin daylight leaking around the edges.
I don't know what time it is.
Hell, I don't even know what day it is.
I could have slept four hours or fourteen.
I shift my hips, then stop. My body feels strange. Stiff and heavy from sleep, but underneath that there's a low hum I can't place. My skin is too warm, and there’s something restless coiled tight in me that I can’t figure out.
Anxious, I press a hand flat to my stomach and wait for it to fade. But it doesn't.
I sit up and pull the sheet off my legs, then I realize I'm not wearing anything under this shirt.
Right. The sweatpants.
I have a foggy memory of kicking them off, trying to get my legs free. I lean over one side of the bed and look. Nothing. I check the other side, lifting the sheet, peering under the bed frame. Nothing there either.
They’ve vanished, leaving only Owen's shirt to cover the top of my thighs.
Wonderful.
There's a closet door across the room, at the foot of the bed.
I don't want to open it. Snooping through a stranger's things is exactly the kind of rude my mother would have a stroke over.
But I can't walk out of here half-dressed, and I'm not spending the rest of the day hostage to a missing pair of pants.
"Sorry," I whisper to the room as I push myself up off the bed.
Every muscle in my body protests—my back, legs, and hips—as I cross the room and open the closet.
It's a small walk-in, barely big enough to turn around in.
Men's clothes hang along one side, flannels and worn t-shirts with a couple of button-downs dotted here and there.
A heap of dirty laundry sits piled on the floor.
Everything is big and broad-shouldered and very casual.
Nothing that would fit Owen's leaner frame. These must be Nico's.
I find a pair of red gym shorts on a wire hanger and pull them down.
The scent hits me as I bring them close. Pine and crisp, clean air. Like the woods after a rain.
Adrian.
My heart picks up as I bring them up to my face and inhale deeply. The smell of him settles over my skin, mixing with a gentle hazelnut aroma, and something inside me goes quiet. Like this is exactly where I'm supposed to be.
I don't understand it, and right now, I honestly don’t care.
I step into shorts, pulling them all the way up to my belly button.
They're enormous on me, falling well past my knees, the waist loose enough to slide right off. I cinch the drawstring as tight as it'll go and knot it twice.
Good enough.
I open the bedroom door and then step outside.
Thankfully, the hallway is the same one from yesterday.
The photos are still there: the green-haired woman, the wedding, the three men on the dock.
Something in me unknots at the sight of them.
I don't know why, but I half-expected to open that door and find myself somewhere else entirely, like I had been abducted by aliens or something.
But this is the same house. The same hall. I'm still here.
A television murmurs from the living room with a man's voice, low and even, narrating. Something about the migration patterns of some bird, the words rolling out in that soothing documentary cadence.
I follow it down the hall and step into the living room.
Owen sits on the couch, a book open in his hands, the TV on in front of him. He looks rested. Showered and dressed. Nothing like the wrecked man from last night.
I hate that I caused so much trouble for him.
"Good morning," I say and he looks up.
A smile breaks across his face, and he sets the book down on his knee.
"Good morning." He stands, tucking the book onto the arm of the couch.
He's wearing a dark blue polo tucked neatly into dark denim jeans, the same put-together way he dresses for the library. It makes me smile. The man is home on his own couch and still buttoned up like he might get called into a meeting.
I doubt he owns a pair of sweatpants.
"Is anyone else here?" I ask, glancing toward the quiet kitchen.
"Just us. It's Monday," he says with a smile. "You slept through most of Sunday. Nico's at work."
Monday?
Damn.
My hand comes up to my mouth. "I can’t believe I slept that long," I say with a small laugh. "I guess I was tired."
Owen huffs a soft laugh, watching me with a warmth that makes my face heat. Like he finds my reaction a little bit funny or endearing.
"Well, you needed it," he says simply.
I nod, not sure what to say.
"Your clothes are in the wash," Owen points toward the back of the house. "I saw that you had some money with them, so I set that aside for you. It’s in the junk drawer in the kitchen."
I nod, pretending like I know what a junk drawer is. I really hope it’s labeled.
"So, why aren't you at work?" I ask, trying to will some of my nerves away.
"I took the day off," he says. "I wanted to be here when you woke up."
Something in me goes soft at the thought. He stayed home. For me.
Then I immediately stop the feeling in its tracks. He has a husband. Whatever this warm, fuzzy thing is that keeps rising up inside my chest needs to back the hell up.
He. Is. Married.
"Can I make you something to eat?" Owen is already moving toward the kitchen. "You've got to be starving."
"I can feed myself,” I say, not wanting to be a bother. "You've done enough."
I follow him as far as the kitchen doorway.
It's a small room, barely big enough for more than a few people to stand in without bumping elbows. The countertops are a yellow laminate, a little worn at the edges. The cabinets are white with mismatched knobs, and mugs hanging from hooks underneath them.
A window over the sink lets in the morning light, and a row of potted herbs sits on the sill, green and a little overgrown. There's a kettle on the stove and a bowl of fruit getting ripe on the counter and a magnet on the fridge shaped like a taco.
Everything about it is small and functional and lived-in.
"So what are you in the mood to make?" Owen crosses to the fridge and pulls it open, scanning the shelves. "We've got eggs, bacon. I could help make French toast if you're feeling fancy. Or there's cereal, if you want easy."
He looks back at me, waiting.
And that's when it hits me. I have no idea what I'm doing.
I've never made a meal in my life. Not once. We’ve always had a chef. Someone that made the menu my mother laid out, and I just ate it.
Hell, I couldn’t even fry an egg if my life depended on it.
"I, um." I look around the little kitchen, at the stove and the fridge, then at the cabinets like they might open themselves and teach me. "Whatever's easiest. I’m not in the mood to cook."
"Easy it is." Owen shuts the fridge and looks up at the top of it, where a row of cereal boxes stands crammed against the cabinets. "Let's see. We've got the frosted flakes, chocolate puffs, fruit rings, and whatever this marshmallow situation is that Mack keeps buying."
I drift over to stand beside Owen, tipping my head back to read the unfamiliar boxes.
They're loud and bright, cartoon animals grinning off the fronts, colors that don't exist in nature.
Nothing like the cereal I grew up on. My mother kept exactly one kind in the house, a plain gray bran that tasted like wet cardboard.
I ate a small bowl of it every morning with a hard-boiled egg, because it was what appeared in front of me.
Sugar was for the weak.
"I've never had any of these," I admit. "Any of them. I don't even know what half of them are."
"Really?" Owen looks down at me with that sexy smile, easy and kind.
"Really."
"Well then." He reaches up and rests a hand on the boxes. "Which one do you want to try first?"
"First?"
"First." His smile widens. "You've got a lot of catching up to do. We'll get through all of them, eventually."
"That one." I point. "The red one. With the bird."
"Good instinct." He pulls it down, then reaches for two more. "Actually, let's do this right. We'll make a flight."
"A flight?"
"Yes," he says as he turns to open the cabinet behind him. "Kind of like when you try a flight of whiskey in a bar. You know."
I don’t know, and he seems to sense that.
"A flight is where they give you three or four different kinds of whiskey in little glasses so you can taste the difference between them." He pulls out a stack of small bowls. "We’ll put a little of each cereal in each bowl. This way you can try them all and compare."
I lean a hip against the counter and raise an eyebrow at him. "Do you spend a lot of time drinking flights of whiskey in bars?"
He snorts, shaking his head. "God, no." He pushes his glasses up his nose.
"I'm more of a flight-of-pastries kind of man.
" He leans in a little, dropping his voice like he's letting me in on something.
"There's a place downtown that does a tasting board.
Six little tarts. It's the highlight of my month. "
"Now that sounds lovely."
Thirty minutes later, we're sitting at the little folding table by the living room, bowls scattered between us, and I've reached a verdict.
The red box with the bird is the clear winner, sweet and citrusy and a little tart.
But I've also made a discovery. If you mix the fruit rings with the chocolate puffs, and add just a few of the marshmallows, you get something better than any of them alone.
I'm mid-bite of my third custom combination when Owen sets his spoon down and stares at me.
"That is a war crime," he says. "You've taken three perfectly good cereals and built something unholy."
"It's an improvement." I nudge the bowl toward him. "Try it before you judge me."
"I will not. I have standards." But he's grinning.
"A gentleman," I say, sliding the bowl another inch toward him, "always accepts what a lady offers him. I'd have thought you'd know that."