7. Macey #2
“Huh,” was all he said. But once I slipped off his sock, he jolted. “If you wanted me to take off my clothes, all you had to do was ask.”
Noah’s words were flirtatious, but his tone was quiet, hesitant. Like he was trying to use a flirty remark as a shield, instead of addressing my help.
I started to wrap my spare KT tape around his ankle. Good thing I was a running nerd and always had supplies on me. As I did so, the ends of his hairs stuck up. I ignored it, asking, “If not a fight, then what happened to your ankle?”
“Achilles tendonitis,” he answered, wiping a bead of sweat off his brow. “I’m a glutton for running injuries, apparently.”
“Oh?” I tightened the wrap, and he squeezed the edge of the bench with one hand. “What other injuries?”
“Tendonitis, knee sprains, stress fracture,” Noah rattled off like he was collecting injuries as one would souvenirs.
I hummed, cutting the edge of the tape and finishing the wrap. “Have you ever considered that you get so many injuries because you don’t give yourself time to rest in between? ”
“No.”
Eye roll.
I was thankful I didn’t have to look him in the eye when I said, “I have asthma.”
“…Okay?”
Right, so I wasn’t great at connecting the dots for people. “What I mean to say is that I love running. But this disease that I’ve had since I was a kid gets in the way sometimes. That doesn’t mean I stop running. It just means I learned how to live with it, even if it means taking breaks.”
And it meant that I always carried an inhaler with me. Even now, it was tucked into the corner of my bag. Another one stayed in the fanny pack I took running. Sometimes the most unexpected thing set me off, but I knew how to manage my asthma now.
“Yeah. I see what you’re saying.”
Lifting his ankle, I inspected my work. Damn. I should be a nurse in my next life. He reached for his sock, but I beat him to it, stretching it over the wrap and fitting it snugly against his skin. He willingly accepted my help with the shoe, and I took my time lacing it up again.
I finished the bow, then gently placed his foot back on the ground. His breath shuddered and the artery in his neck pulsed with a tattered rhythm.
“Noah.” The signals of his body gave me a boost of self-confidence. “Do I make you nervous?”
No response.
I placed one hand on each of his knees, rising up on my own knees to force eye contact.
“You know, everything you post online makes everyone think you’re this scary bad boy.
” Leaning forward, close enough to see the flickers of yellow in his eyes, I said, “I don’t think that’s true at all. Do you? ”
Constellations of freckles shimmered around his nose. I wished I had a permanent marker to connect them all.
Who would have thought that one of the most notorious bad boys of Instagram would be frantic with nerves, near shaking under my touch? I thought he was the king of game, but in this moment, he had very little. I’d never seen Noah Hansley speechless before. It was endearing.
He looked at me with awe. With confusion, too.
“I know what a man like you wants.” I leaned in an inch closer, keeping my hands solidly on his knees, and whispered seductively, “What you need .” Noah wasn’t breathing. I waited a second and said, “New shoes.”
A smile cracked the frozen expression on his face, and I moved away. On the bench next to him, I held out a hand expectantly. “Give me your phone.”
Noah found his voice again and asked, “Why?”
“I’m giving you my number,” I said, pleased when he handed me his unlocked phone. “I need to approve the next set of shoes you buy.”
He leaned back into the bench. “I can Google shoes, you know.”
“Or you can ask me.” I typed away at his phone, saving my number. I paused on his background; it was a picture of him and Daphne, standing side to side in the middle of a field. “You and your sister are really close.”
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “It’s been the two of us for a while.”
“She mentioned something about that.”
I expected him to be upset that I knew, but instead, he let out a small laugh. “Yeah, she’s not a very good secret keeper.”
“It’s a secret, then?”
“Of course not.” His eyes—no longer laced with nerves—peered at me. “I just don’t advertise it to the world, that’s all.”
“I’m not the world. ”
His expression warmed. “No, you’re not.”
Noah examined me, a thoughtful expression on his face.
It was the first time I had seen that look, and it made me uncomfortable.
Like he had already let his image drop and now leaned in entirely to this version of himself, the one who was more boyish and sweeter than anyone could have assumed, considering it was typically hidden beneath a layer of swagger.
I cleared my throat, anxious to change the subject. “Anyways, we should talk about Aruba. Are you packed?”
Disappointment flickered across his expression, there and then gone. It must have been a fluke. There was no way Noah would want to sit on a bench in the cold, discussing family and health problems with me.
“I’m more of a throw a bunch of clothes in a bag in the morning kind of guy,” he said.
It was a fact universally acknowledged that for every woman who wrote a detailed packing list, there was a man who would throw a handful of clean underwear into a bag at the last minute and call it done.
“Can’t relate,” I said. “It took twenty minutes to decide which bathing suits to bring.”
He chuckled. “Which ones made the cut?”
“You’ll have to see,” I said with a small smile.
Noah’s phone vibrated in my hands. I glanced down, checking the familiar notification. “Oh perfect, your Uber’s here.”
He looked confused. “I didn’t order an Uber.”
“I did”—I shoved his phone into his hands and pulled him up by the elbow—“on your behalf.”
“What the hell, Macey?”
No amount of protesting could hide the way he leaned most of his weight onto his right leg.
Throwing on my backpack and holding my reusable water bottle in one hand, I nudged him toward the trail exit. “The Uber will only wait five minutes before you’re charged. C’mon, I know a shortcut.”
“I shouldn’t be paying for an Uber at all,” Noah protested, followed by another push to his shoulder blades. “How are you this strong? You’re like five feet tall.”
“Five-three. Show those three inches some respect.”
We walked through a path of trees to the nearest exit.
It took exactly four minutes, so Noah should be thanking me for saving him a late fee.
We could have made it in three, but Noah must be in more pain than he originally let on.
That, coupled with adjusting to a new wrap, made him slower than usual.
In the distance, a sleek black car honked at us. I waved at the driver and felt a little like a divorced parent dropping their kid off.
“There’s your ride,” I said.
“You’re not coming?”
“Unfortunately for you, we don’t live together.”
He flushed again. Teasing him was really more entertaining than it should be. “No, but he can drop you off at your apartment.”
Pass. I knew I shouldn’t be embarrassed about where I lived or the apartment itself—Kira and I had turned it into a comfortable home—but compared to his, it was tiny. I didn’t need to make it any more obvious that as a large influencer, he made considerably more money than me.
“It’s fine,” I insisted. “It’s not too far a walk back to my place.”
Actually, it was. Thankfully, Chicago public transport would get me there fast.
Noah blinked a few times, his eyes casting down. He was debating how much he wanted to reveal, watching me from beneath long lashes. My heart hammered in my chest.
“What?” I asked .
“No one…no one’s taken care of me in a long time,” he finally admitted. “Thank you.”
Satisfaction and pride flushed through me. I didn’t think I was particularly good at taking care of people—the only person I’d ever taken care of was myself—but maybe there was a part of me buried deep down that instinctively knew how.
The Uber driver beeped again.
“You better go,” I said. He waved a hand goodbye.
Later that night, when Noah posted the photo I took of him and gave me photo credits, I smiled for a full minute.