Chapter 23
The side-eye Nick’s sister gives him when he gets home from Ramona’s late Sunday night is so intense, so all-knowing, it ought to be caught on video. Played on loop inside a museum. Studied for future generations.
“Just friends, huh,” Lexi says from where she’s folding laundry in the living room, and he lobs a clean towel at her before he disappears into the guesthouse, still grinning.
The good mood lingers in a way he hasn’t trusted goodness to do in a long time. His head and heart are so full of her—not just the sex, but falling asleep next to her, making brunch together, even if Ramona’s main contribution was operating the banana slicer, and all the ways she let him in.
Nick tries not to focus on all the reasons this can’t work and instead on all the reasons it already is.
They can do this. They just have to be careful.
By Monday, it seems the chatter around campus has quieted down. The Us Weekly article, published over the weekend, was a nothing of a piece, meriting only a forward and a well-handled email from the dean. A fellow psych professor ribbed him about it when they passed each other in the hallway.
“Now the readers of Us Weekly know how committed you are to upholding grading standards,” he said with a chuckle, and Nick found it easy to join in.
And when another email shows up in his inbox, from some anonymous gossip account, all he does is hit delete and try his best to forget about it.
Which turns out to be surprisingly easy when his first class is Ramona’s.
When she arrives, she lingers by his desk for only a moment, the press of her hand on the smooth wood so slight, it could be accidental.
But the way her eyes catch his, the subtle bite of her lip—that’s all on purpose.
“I have your essays to return today,” Nick says when class starts, facing a collective groan. “These were quite impressive, actually.”
He passes back Ramona’s paper with a more than respectable B+ circled in red at the top, along with a sticky note:
You want to come over tonight and see my vinyl collection?
The thrill of it zips up his spine. There’s something psychological going on there, he knows—to be so worried about the risk while also getting off on it. He’s never done anything like this, always prided himself on being the guy who follows the rules.
At the base of it is this: How can it be wrong when she makes him feel like he’s the fucking sun? When being around her makes him certain he’s been sleepwalking through the past few years of his life?
He has to bite back a smile as he watches her read it, a gorgeous flush on her cheeks.
When she turns in a pop quiz later, she’s written him a note back.
That is highly inappropriate! I am appalled!
Also: yes.
—
Nick rushes home from school, spending the whole afternoon tidying up. It’s not that his place is a mess—he’s just very, very aware of the way it’s going to look in comparison to hers, though there is significantly less space to tidy.
Maybe he even bought a couple new throw pillows on the way home.
Lexi and Audrey are out to dinner and then a parent-teacher night, so the big house is empty when Ramona’s Range Rover pulls up to the curb and parks, barely looking out of place.
Nick lets her in through the gate, then indulges a brief panic over whether to kiss her hello. It almost feels too casual, and he doesn’t know where she’s at with it—if she even likes PDA, if this is even that P. Jesus Christ, it’s like he’s never dated before in his life.
In the end, he settles for a quick hug, and immediately regrets it when she looks a little disappointed.
Shit, he should have kissed her.
“Nice area,” she remarks, and the small talk settles like a rock in his stomach.
“Can I take your coat?” he asks as he lets her inside. She’s not even wearing a coat, just a knitted cardigan. Still, she shrugs out of it, exposing a navy silk tank top and her bare shoulders, as if she knows just how much he likes the freckles there.
He’s hit with a wave of peach shampoo.
“So, I experimented with some mocktail recipes and found a few that are pretty decent, though most of them are really sweet. Or maybe that’s a good thing?
” Nick opens the small fridge in his half kitchen.
He doesn’t have much here to impress her, but he’d really rather she not come away from this thinking he’s a complete loser.
“I also have some sparkling cider, if you prefer. And seltzer, obviously! Or if you’re hungry, we could order something, but we should probably do it soon since the apps get busier the later it gets. ”
Ramona’s just staring at him, mouth kicked upward. “Nicholas Navarro,” she says, and the sound of his full name in her voice is sheer poetry. “Are you nervous right now?”
He exhales a shaky puff of air. “What gave it away?”
“You don’t have to be. You’ve already seen me naked.”
“And I’d really like to again, so…”
Now she laughs. “You’re so fucking cute, I can’t stand it.
” Then, as though it really is that easy, she steps between his legs, tilting her face up to his.
His hands knot at the base of her spine, and when he draws her close for a kiss, he practically melts into her.
He can’t believe it’s been less than twenty-four hours since the last time they did this—he missed it.
“Hi,” she says when they move apart, breathless.
“Hi. Can I interest you in a mocktail?”
And, still laughing, she agrees to try one.
They sit on the couch with their drinks, a modest charcuterie spread on the table in front of them. Nick tries to relax. Ramona is here, in his temporary home, and if she didn’t want to be, she definitely wouldn’t keep it a secret. It’s one of the things he likes most about her.
He did make the drinks a bit too sweet, but if Ramona minds, she doesn’t say anything. “Is there a reason for it?” he asks. “The not drinking? Not that you need one—I’m just curious.”
“It’s not very dramatic,” she says. “It just seemed to make people do a lot of things they didn’t want to do, and I already had enough of that in my life. I didn’t want to have too much and suddenly the next day I was all over the tabloids.”
“I get it. The first and only time I got absolutely shit-faced, this happened.” He turns his head and taps his earring. The one she seemed to really, really like yesterday.
Ramona runs her thumb along it. “Oh, I need to hear that story.”
He’ll try his best, since now she’s dragging her fingertips into his hair in the most soothing massage.
“It was in college. A bunch of friends and I drank some forties and decided to get tattoos.” When she lifts her eyebrows at this, he holds up a finger.
“I’ve never loved needles, so I bravely volunteered to go last. Watching my buddies go through it…
well, it did not look fun. I chickened out at the last minute and had them pierce my ear instead. ”
“Just the one.”
“Just the one. I couldn’t handle a second.”
She leans in, kissing the underside of his ear, drawing out a shudder as her tongue flicks the hoop. “My sweet, anxious boy.”
The words are almost too intimate, tinged with the closeness of a couple that’s been together for a long time. He knows Ramona’s joking, that she doesn’t mean anything by it.
That he’s not really her anything.
In the silence that follows, Nick realizes he forgot about the music. Leaping to his feet, he heads to where his records are stacked in milk crates.
“Wow. I can’t believe showing me your vinyl collection wasn’t a euphemism.”
“Some of it’s still in boxes,” he says. “So this isn’t all of it, but…
yeah. Here it is. The product of fifteen years of record shops, thrift stores, and tracking down rare LPs online.
” He kneels down, picking up a vintage Joni Mitchell.
“The artwork really gets me. The tangibility of holding your favorite songs in your hands. And of course, the way it sounds.”
“I love all of that too,” she says quietly, and he gets a sudden, horrible flash of all those records stacked in her off-limits room.
“If it’s too painful for you, we don’t have to—”
She gives a firm shake of her head. “For a while, I couldn’t listen to anything I used to like. I got really into jazz, and then podcasts. But I’m not going to let my past life ruin music for me.”
“I’m very glad to hear that.”
She looks through the records, skimming her hand along the covers.
“Pick something,” he says, and she lifts her eyebrows, as though accepting this for the challenge it is.
When she hands him a Tom Petty album, a dreamy look comes over her face. “ ‘Wildflowers’ was one of the first songs I learned on guitar,” she says as she strums an air chord. “So I guess not all nostalgia is bad.”
Nick slides the record from its sleeve and drops it onto the player, then offers her his hand.
When they start to sway, it’s not like Halloween at all.
That night he was tense and wound up, electric-shocked by every touch.
Now dancing with her has the same calming effect as a mug of tea on a stormy evening.
A highlighted passage in a favorite book.
At first Ramona hums along, then opens her mouth and starts to softly sing—and he realizes he’s not sure he’s heard her sing before. Not in real life.
There’s none of the production or Auto-Tune from her recorded tracks, and she’s a little shaky at first. But there’s a loveliness to her voice, one that he likes even more. This precious, quiet thing she’s sharing with him.
He’s almost too afraid to speak in case it pulls her out of the reverie, but it feels wrong not to say something when she sounds like this. “You have a really beautiful voice.”
She buries her nose in his neck, and he hopes the compliment feels the way he intended, without any of the baggage from her career. “Thank you.”
And then she keeps singing until the song changes.
The evening is already too nice. His nerves have settled, so there’s only the soft course of adrenaline through his veins that never seems to quiet when he’s around her.
“Your place isn’t how I pictured it,” she says.