SAWYER #3
He picked up a moment later, his unruly hair somehow even less tame while he lay in his bed, his shoulders bare because he was, of course, topless.
When was he not? I adored that little contradiction about him.
He was so awkward and aware of himself at all times, but he so freely shed his clothes when he was alone in his room.
It was his safe space, I realized. He could act however he liked when he was enclosed between those four walls.
“Ah, so it really is a bathrobe,” he said, his tone flat.
“You sound bitter about it,” I pointed out.
“Oh, I preferred imagining you were naked, adding a bathrobe filter,” he said. Then, his eyes went wide with fear. “Shit. Are you alone?”
I laughed and shook my head at him. “Avery just went out. I’m all by myself.”
Noah shifted so that he now lay on his side and the phone was in his hand, resting on the pillow. The wall with the Christmas lights along the bookshelf was just behind him. “Good. That could have been awkward. I either overthink or don’t think at all.”
“Mm, that’s all great, but let’s go back to you imagining me naked. Is that a common phenomenon? Do you go to lectures to learn about particles and fantasize about me?” I teased him, my voice dripping in seductiveness.
Noah turned a shade redder and rolled his eyes, fixing his black-framed glasses with the back of his hand.
I’d warned him not to do it like that and it bothered me that I had.
He was adorable when he did it so mindlessly.
“Actually,” he said, a little strangled.
“Believe it or not, I don’t walk around all day imagining you in all sorts of unholy situations.
” He bit his lip against a rising smirk, then shook his head.
In a low voice, he murmured: “I save that for my evenings.”
I laughed, my voice rising by an octave, and my heart stumbled. As if someone pulled at my limbs, I suddenly felt a little more stretched and taut. “And it’s evening right now. Ergo…”
“Wow. That is a correct use of ‘ergo.’ Well done, Sawyer.” His eyebrows did a little dance above his eyes.
“I love it when you’re a smartass,” I husked. “Talk clever to me.”
Noah snorted, but it did little to cover up that sensational glow that came over his face when he was getting horny. “Shut up.”
“Give me a fun fact, Noah,” I pleaded, voice as slutty as I could make it.
He rose to the bait, although his flat expression told me he was well aware of being baited.
“Well, in 2004, astronomers discovered a star now known as Lucy. It’s a white dwarf.
That means it spent its nuclear fuel. Er, stars can either grow so big that they ultimately collapse and turn into black holes or slowly wink out.
Lucy’s the latter. What’s odd about Lucy is that she is essentially a gigantic diamond.
Carbon and oxygen in her core crystalized over billions of years, basically forming a diamond that is ten billion trillion trillion carats in size. ”
I gaped. How the hell did he even have that piece of information inside his head? “Someday, when a guy kneels and offers you a diamond ring, you’re gonna be horribly disappointed.”
Noah chuckled and I had a feeling he found the idea of someone proposing to him ridiculous, rather than finding my joke humorous. “Right.”
We gazed at each other for a short while, silence undisturbed. “Give me another one,” I said, making it sound dirty solely with the inflection and tone of my voice.
Noah sighed and obliged. “Did you know our galaxy is being pulled toward a mysterious region of space? We’re not alone.
Countless other galaxies are moving in that direction.
The stars and dust of the Milky Way don’t let us see what’s there, but we call it the ‘Great Attractor.’ Nobody knows what it really is.
It’s a gravitational force we can’t explain, but it’s pulling us in. ”
My eyes widened in horror. “What do you think it is?”
He shrugged. “If I knew, I’d have a Nobel Prize by now.
” He thought about it for a moment, then turned very still and serious.
The ominous look he gave me made me think of something apocalyptic.
“If I had to guess, I’d say it’s a Sawyer-like playboy, who galaxies just can’t resist. They’re all just falling head over heels. ”
“Ha-ha. That’s so funny. Watch me choke on tears of laughter.” I rolled my eyes at being teased so mercilessly, then watched him smirk on my screen.
We talked for a little while longer, then I released him so he could go to sleep.
My exam results were still not in and I was slowly going mad over it.
The feeling that lived permanently in my heart was of doom and gloom.
We’d done so much and I achieved so little.
I knew, deep down, that my days were numbered.
None of this was going to matter soon enough.
I’d be away from the Titans, from Noah, from Northwood.
Not that one exam would bring on Judgment Day, but it would be the first crack in the poorly constructed wall.
And it would all go downhill from there.
But, as I forced myself to eat a little, finding the food tasted like paper napkins compared to the richness all my senses experienced while I’d been on the phone, I understood one thing for certain. I missed Noah.