Chapter 15
In anticipation of sitting in the oversized lounge chairs once this brownie hits, I set us each out a bottle of water and bags of chips. I know what’s going to happen. Lily and I have been in this situation with one of Mrs. Packer’s brownies more than once.
When the high hits, we’re not going to want to move from the chairs. Drinks and snacks will be too much of a hassle to acquire. There might be some crying too.
If I have it all set up and waiting for us, we can comfortably fall asleep in the chairs and let the high wear off.
“Why isn’t Sylvia St. Clare’s photo on the front counter like mine is?” he asks, walking toward me with the poster that the publishing house sent.
“Women don’t tend to want to kiss her poster like they do yours,” I tease.
“I kissed her once. It wasn’t bad.”
That has my spine stiffening. “You’ve kissed her?”
“At one of these literary events,” he says looking down at her picture. “Like I said, I was more of a power drinker.”
“And the more you drank, the more she let you kiss her?” The tremor in my voice annoys me.
“The more I drank, the more she drank. It was a few years after Abby died and I was just lonely. It didn’t go any further than that,” he says, and I’m thankful. I don’t want to care, but for some reason I do.
“Have you dated a lot?”
“A couple times. Dated a woman for a year, on and off.” He walks the poster back to where it had been displayed. “What about you? Do you date much?”
“And let someone do to me what my husband did? Not on your life.”
I plop down into one of the oversized chairs.
“I thought we had to clean before the high kicked in,” he says.
“I’m thinking I want to sit on my ass instead.”
He nods and falls into the chair next to me. “What did your husband do to you?”
I shift my eyes to look at him sidelong. Didn’t we talk about this? No, I guess we never did get into the meat of it.
“Ex-husband,” I remind him.
“Right. My mistake.”
“He had himself a girlfriend he got pregnant. She introduced herself to me at a restaurant when she came to tell him she was expecting. He left with her. I moved back home.”
“Fucker,” Noah says, but his words slur slightly.
“He was a fucker,” I say, but all I hear is truth. “I’ve been on a few dates that Lily set me up on, because she couldn’t take no for an answer. But, to be honest, I’ve spent more time with you in the past three days than I have with any other man in thirteen years.”
“Your forties must have been sad.”
I turn to him. “Why?”
“It’s a great time to not have any obligations to anyone else and just do what you want to do.”
“I did,” I say, lifting my hands to encompass the store. “I did this. This is my marriage, my family, my baby.”
It’s been about an hour and my head is starting to numb a bit from the brownie. Noah’s hit hard faster, I can tell, because his head is leaned back against the chair.
“Yeah, but you can’t have sex with your store,” he says.
“Who says Lily was making up the comment about my copy of the book?”
That has him lifting his head, eyes wide on me.
“Don’t be a prude,” I tease on a grand laugh.
“I’m not a prude. I just didn’t expect you to say something like that, out loud, to me.”
A giggle rips through me. “I guess I didn’t expect to say something like that to you either.”
“I have a dog-eared copy of that book too,” he admits, and that has me sitting up and slapping his knee.
“You do not.”
“I do. Abby and I were figuring each other out as we went. When she was gone, I decided I needed a different way to figure women out.”
“So you did that through romance novels?” My giggle turns to a laugh.
“Why not?”
“I guess if I wanted to kill someone and get rid of their body, I’d read one of your books. You’re fairly detailed,” I say, trying to sober my voice.
“Yeah, but I’ve never done any of those things.”
“And you think Alyssa Maxwell has done some of those things in her books?”
He shrugs. “I just think that it’s more likely that a woman has six orgasms from a skilled man and writes about it.”
“Maybe that’s why I never finished my book,” I say easing my head back against the chair.
“That’s because you didn’t date in your forties,” he says, and I pick up my bag of chips, unopened, and toss them at him. Only when he grabs them from mid-air, they pop and explode all over the floor.
The high has certainly set in now, as that sets us into hysterics.
We both slide from our chairs, the laughter rolling between us, and as we come to our knees on the floor we bump heads.
Noah falls back on his ass and I fall against him. “You’re high,” he says.
“You’re higher,” I say.
“More high,” he corrects.
“Fuck you,” I say and the laugher starts again. “I’ll get the trash can.”
I manage two hands on his chair and hoist my ass off the floor, bumping into him as I do so. He places a hand on my butt and pushes against me. Seriously, it’s the most action I’ve had in years.
I head to the front and gather the trash can from under the counter. By the time I make it back to the reading nook, the chips are in a tidy pile, but Noah isn’t there. I drop the trash can and follow his laughter through the stacks of books.
He’s standing at the romance section slowly running his hand over every title.
“What are you doing?” I whisper.
“Looking for something,” he whispers back.
“We’re not in a library,” I say quietly.
“Then why are you whispering?”
He sways into me as I move in closer.
Finally, he pulls a Jennifer Zeppelin book off the shelf, then turns to balance himself against the shelf with his back.
“Don’t bend that spine,” I warn.
“Ease up, Mom. I’ll buy it if I break it.”
I turn my back to the shelf, just as he has, and balance against it.
Noah flips the pages in the book until he’s about three fourths of the way through it. “Have you read this one?”
I look at the book. It’s newer, but Jennifer Zeppelin is consistently smuttier than some of the books we read for book club. And I say smuttier as a hot term, as the readers on TikTok have now praised the word smut so much, it’s now an iconic way to say bring on the sex .
He hands me the book and I start to read—and heat.
This sex scene is four pages long, and being high, it’s taking me much longer to read than normal. Then again, it could be the man whose body has begun to sway into mine as I read.
When I’m done reading, I press the book to my chest. My breath is heavy as if I were the one having the sex on the page.
“That’s some writing, huh,” Noah says still in a heavy whisper, and when I turn to speak, he is face to face with me.
When his eyes drop to my lips, I can’t help but lick them and then watch him lift his eyes and lock them with mine.
“I’m going to need a moment,” I say, with everything inside of me warm and pliant.
Noah lifts his hand to my cheek. “You’re flushed.”
“I just had sex,” I say, laughing as I let his touch surge through me. I lick my lips again, and his eyes fall to them, again. “Why did you make me read that?”
He runs his thumb over my bottom lip. “Words are powerful.”
“I know that. But why now?”
His thumb is still tracing my mouth. “I just wondered what it would do to you.”
“Did it do the right thing?”
The corner of his mouth turns up into that sexy smile, and now I’m weaker than I was.
“You’re high,” he says.
“So are you.”
“Oh, I’m fucking toast,” he laughs as his fingers slide down my throat. “And I’m attracted to you and unable to not say it out loud.”
I’m watching him, willing him to touch me, kiss me, all the while knowing we’re both too high for this now. “You’re attracted to me?”
“Does that bother you?”
“We just met,” I say, enjoying the nearness of him.
“Haven’t you ever been attracted to someone when you first met them?”
I study his face. Those dark, line creased eyes are lighter than they’ve been. The salt and pepper streaks in his hair, and that fine goatee that still needs to grown in so that he looks like the man on the back of his books, makes my body react in ways it hasn’t in years.
Then I think about the soft noise I’d made last month when his book arrived and Julia was pining for him—now he’s pining for me.
“I’m attracted to you, too,” I say, but my eyelids grow heavier the closer he moves to me.
“Sleepover or not, I’m not suggesting we have sex.”
That has my eyes opening to take him in. “You’re not? You just had me read sex, and then you touched me.”
He drops his head to my shoulder on yet another laugh, and I’m not sure he can hold his head up at this moment. “I mean, I’d love to have sex with you, sometime. But right now, I’d just like to kiss you.”
“Then stop making me wait for it.”
Noah lifts his head from my shoulder, his eyes locking on mine. He turns into me, his arms slipping around me, his body pressing against mine.
“That was the best fucking brownie I’ve ever eaten,” he says.
“You might not even remember this kiss tomorrow,” I warn him.
“I’ll remember. I won’t let myself forget something this good.”
That makes me snort. “You haven’t even kissed me yet.”
Noah takes the book from my hands and places it back on the shelf. “I hope you don’t forget the kiss.”
“Just kiss me so I know how much I want that sex someday.”
Noah skims a hand up my back until it comes to the nape of my neck. His fingers lift into my hair as his mouth hovers over mine. “Don’t forget this,” he says before his mouth comes to mine, and every part of me spins in different directions.