2 #2
He twisted his mouth to one side and bent to test the weight of the couch at one end. “I wasn’t running; I was walking with purpose.”
“You were escaping ,” she pointed out.
“Why did you call her Pixie?” Lexie interrupted, moving out of the way so Jake could grab the opposite end of the sofa.
Noah braced himself, his hands under the edge of the couch as his friend got into position.
With a nod of Jake’s head, they both lifted, and the four wooden legs left the cement.
“Because she wouldn’t tell me her name,” Noah said with a grunt, focused on not toppling a nearby table. “So I had to think of something.”
“To your left,” Jake called, directing Noah as they maneuvered along the edge of the driveway .
From the corner of his eye, Noah saw the girls grab their respective couch cushions and start hauling them toward the truck.
“It’s Olivia!” Lexie called, and Noah smirked as the other girl shoved her with the cushion. Lexie giggled. “What?” she asked loudly, the words obviously directed at her friend. “He’s carrying a couch , for goodness’ sake! He deserves to know!”
Within minutes, everything was loaded and ready for the ride. Noah gave one of the rachet straps a final yank and looked over to where Olivia was sitting on the corner of the open tailgate.
“I’m Noah, by the way,” he said. “Moving man by day, grocery boy by night and Jake’s best friend by unfortunate circumstance.”
“Unfortunate for him , you mean,” she quipped, and Noah chuckled.
“Exactly.”
Olivia leaned in closer, and he could see the way the colors in her hazel eyes rolled together like clouds before a storm.
“You do remember I live on the third floor, right?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper, and he felt a rush of adrenaline that had nothing to do with the forced labor in his future.
“Well, I do now,” he replied, and Olivia laughed.
She pushed herself off the tailgate with a little hop and landed squarely on her feet. Then she turned without another word and wandered down the street toward where her Mustang waited along the curb.
Noah stared after her for a moment before letting a wide smile creep across his face.
This girl was gonna be trouble.
“So, I came home to find this guy”—Jake jerked his thumb toward Noah—“smashing holes in his bedroom wall with a hammer.”
“I was hearing voices !” Noah exclaimed from his seat on the floor. “I thought I was going crazy! You’d be tearing open the drywall, too.”
Olivia laughed from the love seat behind him, and Noah felt her socked foot nudge his ribs. “What was it?” she asked.
“A Bluetooth speaker. I found it near the baseboards.”
“But why was it there?” Lexie added, piping up from where she sat with Jake on the larger couch.
“Why not?” Jake answered. “The things Noah and Conner do to each other defy logic.”
Noah shrugged. It was true.
The small motion made the back of his arm rub against Olivia’s shin, and he tried to ignore the heat that radiated through his shirt. She could have moved her leg when he’d sat down. She could have moved it any time after.
But she hadn’t, and he was taking that as a good sign.
“I think he had help with this one,” he said, narrowing his eyes at Jake. “There is no reality in which I see Conner James doing the army crawl underneath a house.”
Jake held up his hands in a sign of surrender. “Hey, man, it wasn’t me. I stay out of it,” he insisted.
“What else have you done?” Olivia asked, and Noah twisted to look up at where she sat cradling a large yellow bowl of fresh popcorn.
The hot, buttery smell wasn’t quite enough to erase the fruity scent that seemed to cling to her skin.
It was somehow both sharp and sweet—which made sense when he considered the girl wearing it .
He propped one arm up on the couch, his fingers only inches from the bare skin of her leg. He itched to touch her just to see what she’d do. If Jake and Lexie hadn’t been there, he might have.
“A little bit of everything, to be honest,” he said.
“Once, I filled the showerhead with red Kool-Aid powder, and Conner reenacted that famous scene from Psycho . Then he filled the air vents in my car with glitter, so I changed all the contacts in his phone to ‘Bob Dylan,’ and he accidentally sent a questionable text message to his mother. Then he left a life-size blow-up doll in my bed.”
“While you were sleeping,” Jake added, and Olivia laughed out loud.
“Yeah, I almost wet myself when I woke up,” Noah admitted with a sheepish grin. “But Melinda is a wonderful girl. You should come meet her sometime.”
“ Melinda? ” Olivia barked, a handful of popcorn frozen halfway to her mouth. “Don’t tell me you still have it?”
“ Her ,” Noah corrected, “and, absolutely, I do! I’m gonna prop her up by the altar at Conner’s wedding.”
Jake snickered. “You also duct-taped his bedroom door shut and then assaulted him with a paintball gun when he got out of the shower,” he added.
“Yeah, I did do that,” Noah replied, still keenly aware of the pressure of Olivia’s leg against his side.
“Okay, so explain the snake,” she cut in. “First of all, why?”
“Because my manager is a menace,” Noah said, as if this were the most obvious answer in the world. “Keeping him humble is my service to society.”
“And how do you still have a job?” Olivia asked.
“Because I didn’t just waltz into the store with a rattlesnake over my shoulder,” Noah explained. “There is no video evidence of me ever having said snake in my possession on store property. He can’t prove I left it there, and he knows it. He’s been trying for nearly a month.”
Olivia nudged her foot against his ribs again. “Sounds like you’re the menace.”
“I prefer ‘vigilante,’” he replied. “Much more mysterious.” Then he gave in to temptation and brushed the tips of his fingers against the side of her knee, but Olivia didn’t blush or giggle.
She also didn’t move away.
Interesting , Noah thought.
He shifted onto his knees and leaned his forearms against the couch beside her, intentionally invading her space—just to see. But she didn’t give an inch. “Can I have some of that?” he asked, peering down into her snack bowl.
“No.”
The answer was quick—decisive—and from somewhere behind him, Jake barked out a laugh.
“I’ve seen this on Animal Planet,” he said in a loud stage whisper. “She won’t share resources, so he’ll try to establish dominance... Then, she’ll eat him.”
Noah reached past Olivia and grabbed a throw pillow before chucking it over his shoulder in the general direction of the couch. There was a surprised yelp that must have come from Lexie.
“That’s my cue to take the beast home,” Jake answered, and Noah turned to see Jake and Lexie rising to their feet.
Jake looped an arm around Lexie’s shoulders as they made their way to the door.
“Five minutes, and then I’m leaving you here,” he added, giving Noah a pointed look, though Noah thought he saw the corners of his roommate’s mouth twitch with barely suppressed laughter.
They walked to the door, and Jake held it open while Lexie went out first .
“Liv is serious about her popcorn,” she called over her shoulder. “You’d have better luck laying an egg.”
“Bakaw!” Jake shouted, imitating a chicken, and Lexie laughed as the door clicked shut behind them.
The apartment fell silent, and Noah turned back to where Olivia was still sitting motionless on the couch, her bowl clutched protectively in her lap and a bemused expression on her face.
He didn’t know why, but winning a piece of her treasure suddenly felt essential—like earning the trust of a dragon.
“You know, my mama taught me to share,” he pointed out, leaning even closer.
“I asked if you wanted a bowl. You said no.”
“Well, maybe I’ve changed my mind! That’s not impossible, you know.”
Olivia lifted her brow but said nothing, and Noah fleetingly wondered how she could be so unaffected. He was completely inside her bubble now, his face only inches from hers, and yet she barely seemed to notice.
“Here,” she finally said, a trace of laughter in her voice.
She retrieved a single fluffy kernel from her bowl and held it out to him, but instead of accepting it outright, Noah opened his mouth and waited.
After a moment, Olivia rolled her eyes and tossed the kernel inside. “Now, go home,” she said.
Noah crunched her gift happily before rising to his feet. “You’re somethin’ else, you know that, Pix?”
“Yeah, I’m aware,” she said lightly. “And you’re out of your league.”
Oh, challenge accepted, sweetheart , he thought as he turned toward the door, but his entire body tingled, as if protesting the adding distance. He’d faced the dragon and lived to tell the tale, but he wasn’t totally sure he’d come out unscathed.
He also wasn’t sure she was wrong.
“Alright! Start talking,” Lexie demanded, plopping onto the end of Olivia’s bed only moments after Jake’s truck left the parking lot.
Olivia shook her head, somewhat in awe that her friend had even made it back in the door before starting on the third degree.
“What is there to say? I met a guy at the grocery store, he was cute, and it turns out he’s Jake’s roommate.
End of story,” she said, fishing through her dresser for a tank top and a pair of pajama pants.
“End of story? Seriously? He has a pet name for you!”
Olivia started to change, not caring that Lexie was still in the room.
They’d lived together for four years; there were very few secrets left.
“He was making fun of that monster bag of Pixy Stix I bought during the Colt debacle, so, really, that part is your fault,” she pointed out, watching her friend’s reflection in the vanity mirror.
Lexie crossed her arms but didn’t respond.
“Plus, it’s nothing. Is he cute? Yes. Is he fun to flirt with? Also yes, but that’s the end of it. He’s not my type,” Olivia said as she pulled the soft flannel pants up her legs.
“ Not your type? ” Lexie repeated. “Let’s go through the checklist, shall we?” She began to tick items off on her fingers. “Sense of humor. Unfazed by your attitude. Taller than you. Pretty eyes. Ambitious...”
Olivia lolled her head in Lexie’s direction and raised one eyebrow .
“Shut up,” her friend objected, though Olivia hadn’t said anything out loud. “He’s planning to be a physical therapist. That’s not nothing,” Lexie went on.
Olivia made a noise of concession. Her friend was right, as much as she hated to admit it.
“Plus, he’s got that James Dean look you like,” Lexie said, a teasing note to her voice now. “And there’s no reason you had to sit with your leg against his back all night. You just wanted to touch him.”
“Objection!” Olivia grumbled. “He was also very warm.”
Lexie clapped her hands in delight. “So, you admit I’m right?”
“I admit you have a promising list,” Olivia conceded as she ran a brush through her hair.
“But he’s also the class clown, he knows how good-looking he is, and he’d bat his eyes at anything in a skirt just to get a reaction,” she said.
“Maybe he does check the boxes, but I’m not interested.
In a few years, after grad school... maybe. But right now, I have things to do.”
“You can do more than one thing at a time, you know,” Lexie pointed out. “What is it you told me recently? ‘Don’t punish yourself for finding something good?’”
“I’m not punishing myself; I’m just being practical,” Olivia countered. She climbed onto her bed and reached for the TV remote.
“Maybe you should be a little less practical... Pixie .”
“Shut up,” Olivia muttered, though it was without conviction.
She settled herself more comfortably against her headboard and tried not to think about the way Noah’s gaze had kept dropping to her mouth and how that fact had made her chest tighten.
A warm flush crept up the back of her neck, and she hoped with all her might that Lexie wouldn’t notice.
Nothing her friend could say would change the fact that Olivia was right: Noah Campbell was a distraction she didn’t need.
Exhibit A? He was already causing trouble, and he wasn’t even there.