Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Jeff
I’m in love with Devon.
But that’s not what scares me. She’s curled up in fetal position beside me, the hem of her t-shirt hitched up above her navel so that I can see the way her stomach falls and rises with every breath.
It’s one of those rare times when she’s not snoring, and it makes every thought in my head too loud to ignore.
I need to talk to her—see if she might be in the same boat as me.
Shit, I’d take the same ocean at this point.
There’s a lot to sort through here even if she feels how I feel.
I have six months left in this fellowship—six months until I return home for good to start my career and do what I set out to do.
But the thought of broaching this topic with her makes my pulse skyrocket.
She’s like a feral cat that has started to come around—rubbing against my leg, maybe even letting me scratch behind her ears.
But I know the second I start talking about feelings and a future, there’s a large chance she’s gonna bolt back out into the woods.
One of Devon’s eyes opens slowly, and she blinks fast against the streak of light sneaking in between the blinds. She wrinkles her nose and turns her face into the pillow.
“It’s so creepy when you watch me sleep.” Her voice is muffled but I can hear her smile.
“Is it?”
“Yeah. It is.” She turns back toward me and I touch her cheek. There’s a line there from how she slept on the pillow. “It makes me think you’re planning to make a skin-suit out of me.”
I laugh and trail my finger down her neck.
“You do have nice skin.”
“If I wake up to you moisturizing me, I’m done,” she says.
“I’ll have to be more careful.” I pull her closer, but she giggles and squirms away, sliding down beneath the comforter. I watch the lump move toward the foot of the bed and then disappear when Devon empties onto the ground with a thump.
“You alright down there?”
She pops up.
“All good,” she says.
I focus on her bare legs stretching from beneath the tee she’s stolen from me.
She claims she’s had it since she was sixteen, even has a story about Tara finding it at Macy’s in a nearby mall that has since been leveled for business offices.
She has similar stories for two of my hoodies and half of my store of scrubs.
Apparently, her mall had a scrub supply store called “Doctor Duds.” The creative effort involved in her lies is disturbingly impressive.
She makes her way into the bathroom and reappears with the toothbrush she’s claimed as her own hanging out the side of her mouth. She talks through the foam on her teeth and tongue.
“Before I come back there and you distract me with your hands,” she starts, shifting the toothbrush to the other side of her mouth. “We have some things to discuss.”
I nod and sit up against the headboard to give her my full attention.
This is my chance to come clean—to tell her how I’m feeling and hope she doesn’t scratch my cheek, hiss and run.
I watch her retreat back to the sink. She spits, rinses, and reappears with her best attempt at a serious face.
And I’m suddenly more nervous than my first sitting for the Boards.
“Item one,” she begins. “I know that you and my mother have been texting.”
I let my face go blank. Pretend not to know what she’s talking about.
“I know this because every time I catch her texting you, she tells me to mind my business and I’m fairly certain that there is nothing in this world that’s more ‘my business’ than my mom and my boyfriend. You two think you’re so sneaky, but you should know that I’m totally fine with—”
“Can you back up?”
She takes two steps backward. Smart ass.
“What did you say after ‘my business’?” I ask, folding my hands behind my head.
She blushes, a soft slow spread of pink, and for a gut-wrenching moment I think it was just a slip of the tongue. An old habit. But then she smiles. Shyly. An adverb that rarely follows any action Devon takes.
“My mom?” she tries.
“No, no. After that,” I say.
I’m working hard to keep my face neutral—not let her see how a simple possessive pronoun and a label have just set fireworks off in my chest.
She walks to the edge of the bed and sits, folding her knees beneath her.
“You mean the part where I called you my boyfriend?” she asks, tilting her head so her hair falls to one side. She’s stunning. And she has no idea.
“Yup. That part.”
She purses her lips to the side, pretends to be thinking.
“Maybe, that was the wrong word. Maybe you’d prefer the term ‘side piece’? Wait no! ‘Fuck-buddy’?”
I reach out and grab her around the hips, toss her back onto the pillows so that she’s beneath me.
“I’ll take boyfriend,” I say, barely able to get the words out from beneath the happiness lumped in my throat. “So you aren’t running away?”
She leans up, kisses me until my tongue tingles from the minty toothpaste.
“Nope. Since you screwed up my Achilles, it’s hard to run. But you might after I ask you about item two on the list,” she says when we break apart to catch our breath.
“Can it wait?”
She wraps her legs around my hips and twists so that she’s on top. Her eyes narrow on my mouth and if I hadn’t woken up hard just from being beside her, that look alone would do it.
“Will you be my chaperone in Milan? Because all of my suitors have been asking to go with me and I just can’t hold them off any longer.”
She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth and two tiny ski marks appear between her brows.
Is she honestly worried that I’d say no?
I want to tell her she should never worry.
That whatever she asks me, the answer is yes.
I want to tell her everything. But instead I say, “I’ll agree to that, if you’ll come home with me for a few days before Christmas.
I know you’ll want to be back with your mom by Christmas eve—”
She puts her fingers to my lips, leans over me, her perfect mouth hovering just over mine, her hair falling around my face like a curtain.
This isn’t our first holiday, if you consider the hour I spent with her in the on-call room eating leftovers on Thanksgiving night when I got off my shift.
On-call room holidays—she’d said it was a tradition her father had started with them when they were little.
She’d said it just felt right. Still, her silence is starting to scare me.
“You should know I’m not a great traveler. And last time I went somewhere, I ended up in the ER, spilling my guts to some satanic stranger.”
I bite her finger. She yelps and pulls it away.
“I’ll just keep you away from microphones and we should be good.”
“And stages.”
“Those, too.” I kiss beneath her chin. She rocks her hips the smallest bit and I’m senseless.
“Well, now that that’s all settled, we can handle item three.”
She moves against me and her mouth meets mine, eager and insistent, and I know without a fraction of a doubt that my own items are going to have to wait. Because there’s nothing else in this world beside Devon and item three.