Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Birdie! Time to rise and shine!” Viv’s voice bounces down the hallway, her voice all cheer and singsongy.
I jolt awake, nearly rolling off the bed like a log off a truck, my arm flailing until I manage to smack myself in the face. Elegant. I groan as consciousness sets in and I realize three very concerning things in quick succession:
My mouth is glued shut by my own dried drool.
The beachy, care-free curls I went to sleep with abandoned me overnight and now hang like limp linguine against my forehead.
Noah.
Noah is still here.
Sprawled gloriously across the mattress like a Roman god slumming it in suburbia.
He’s on Owen’s side of the bed, because of course he is, and he’s shirtless, the sheet barely covering enough to keep this scene PG-13.
His dark hair is mussed, his body warm and solid, and I hate how much I want to crawl back under the covers and continue what we did last night.
I also hate that I’m about five seconds from being caught by my friends with a literal mailman in my bed.
“Um, hang on!” I shout toward the door, scrambling like a raccoon caught in kitchen lights. I smack Noah’s bare back with pure urgency. “Get up.”
He groans, groggy and infuriatingly unconcerned. “What’s going on?” His voice is thick with sleep, and there’s a dreamy little smile on his face.
“I forgot to have you sneak out before the crack of dawn like a teenage boy whose boots are on the wrong porch,” I hiss, yanking the sheet off him and tossing it toward my feet.
“Viv and Marin and Harper are back, and if they see you here, I’ll have to explain, and I’m not sure I’m ready to explain. ”
I blink at him, taking in the warm, gloriously male shape taking up Owen’s side of the bed, which feels both symbolic and mildly sacrilegious, and my stomach does a weird lurch. Guilt, lust, panic, maybe gas. Too early to tell.
“Shit, shit, shit,” I whisper, scrambling to untangle myself from the sheets. “You weren’t supposed to still be here.”
Noah groans and rolls onto his stomach. “So? Didn’t we already establish they’re fine with this?”
“So?” I throw on my T-shirt and gesture wildly. “There’s a picture of my dead husband staring at us from the nightstand, and you’re lying there like you own this bed. I’m emotionally compromised, Noah.”
He pushes himself up on one elbow. “Birdie—”
“I haven’t moved that picture since the funeral,” I snap. “I’m not ready to explain what this is or how I feel about any of it, because the truth is—I don’t know. I just know it’s too soon to be caught with you in Owen’s spot. And I don’t want to hash it out with them over scones and kombucha.”
The hallway creaks.
“Window. Now.”
Noah blinks. “It’s the second floor.”
“You deliver mail. You climb porch steps for a living. You can handle one measly trellis.”
“Again, I thought they were fine with this?”
“Yes.” I pull on yesterday’s T-shirt and try to flatten my hair with the palm of my hand. “But they’ve been fine with a lot of things lately, and I haven’t had coffee yet, and I’m not emotionally stable enough to deal with Viv’s face when she walks in here and sees you half-naked in Owen’s bed.”
He frowns, finally sitting up. “It’s your bed.”
I pull my hair into something that might resemble a ponytail in certain lighting. “It is and it isn’t. I’m not—God—I’m not ready to have a post-hookup brunch while my dead husband’s toothbrush is still in the drawer.”
Noah sits up, rubbing his face. “B…”
“I like you.” I press my palms into my eyes. “And that’s the problem. It felt good. Too good. And I’m scared that if I let it keep feeling good, I won’t have room for the grief anymore. I’m scared that if you stay for coffee, Owen will disappear completely.”
A beat passes.
Then, he places a gentle hand on my back. “Take a breath. You’re okay. This was a big step. It’s grief, and it’s normal. But he’s not disappearing.”
I flinch like he’s touched an open wound.
“Don’t—” I pull away, wrapping the sheet around myself like armor. “Don’t try to make this neat. It’s not normal. It’s not okay. I woke up with you in his spot, Noah, and I couldn’t breathe.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. Then he exhales through his nose and scrubs a hand through his hair. “I know. Believe me, I know.”
He stands, gathers his clothes in one hand like they’re shame made cotton, and walks to the window with a stiff sort of grace.
“You’re not cheating on your grief, B.” He’s not looking at me. “You’re surviving it.”
“Don’t do that,” I snap. “Don’t give me permission to feel better. Don’t offer some bumper sticker wisdom and pretend this doesn’t change everything.”
He turns, finally. His eyes are tired, and there’s something raw in his voice now. “You think I don’t feel sick about it? He was my best friend. He trusted me.”
“And I was his wife.”
The words slice through the room like glass, and for a second, neither of us moves. The morning light turns everything soft and golden, and I hate how beautiful it is in here. Like the world should pause while I try to untangle what the hell I’ve done.
Noah swallows hard. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” My voice is barely more than a whisper. “You can’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be standing there looking like you want me to say it was okay.”
His jaw tightens. “I don’t want you to say it was okay.”
“I wasn’t supposed to fall in love with you.” He presses a hand to the windowsill. “I was supposed to protect you. That’s what you do with your best friend’s girl, right? You keep her safe. You hold the line. And instead… I crossed it.”
Silence. It roars between us.
“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he adds, almost to himself. “But that doesn’t make it better.”
Viv’s footsteps are coming down the hall now. “Window.”
Noah stares down at the dew-slicked roofing. “No.”
“Yes,” I whisper-shout. “You’re going out the window. If you hurry, you can sneak down the trellis and be halfway over the yard before she makes it to the door.”
“I’m not a squirrel, B.”
“No, but you are a man with an incredible ass and no pants. One who was born to go down this trellis to save me from having to explain to my daughter why her mother is having sex in her dead dad’s bed with the mailman.”
That gets him moving. He shoves both feet through his boxers, before stuffing his arms into the shirt discarded on the floor. After searching for a few more seconds, he whispers, “I can’t find my pants.”
“Do it without pants.”
He raises both his eyebrows, gripping the window’s edge with mild suspicion. “This feels dangerous.”
“You bike in traffic for fun.”
“I also wear a helmet.”
“Great, next time, I’ll leave one by the window.”
As he starts inching his way onto the roof like an overgrown cat burglar, I scramble to gather the only sock I can find, tossing it out the window like a dramatic ex in a romantic comedy.
Noah’s head pokes back through the window. “This is ridiculous.”
“Noah,” I beg, “Please.”
He sighs, but I watch him inch his way further out onto the roof, the dew-slick shingles gleaming in the early morning light.
That’s when I hear it, the unmistakable bark of Frank losing his mind on the back porch.
I rush to the window in time to see Marin and Harper standing on our back porch below, coffee mugs in hand, staring straight up at Noah mid-treacherous descent.
They say nothing.
Just blinking. Watching. Like spectators at a weird, sad Cirque du Soleil performance.
Noah looks down. “Morning.”
Marin raises a hand in an awkward half-wave. Harper sips her coffee slowly, then murmurs, “Bold strategy.”
Frank is barking so hard he’s spinning in circles.
Noah loses his footing slightly, flails, grabs the gutter. I yelp. Viv barrels into the room behind me.
“Good morning, gorgeous!”
Viv is in full performance mode, holding a steaming mug of coffee. She doesn’t even turn her eyes toward the open window or the unmistakable thump, followed by an “ow” with a casual “I’m fine!” tacked on at the end.
“I want to hear everything about how it went last night.”
Before I can physically shove her out or pull the comforter over my shame, she strolls right to the window and removes something from behind her back.
Is that—
Oh, God.
It’s Noah’s jeans.
“You forgot your dignity! Want me to toss it down with your pants?” Viv sing-songs as she flings the denim projectile out the window like a bridesmaid tossing a bouquet.
“It’s a shame to cover up such a fine specimen,” she calls after him, “but we can’t have the HOA getting involved.”
“Uh, thank you,” Noah’s voice rings through the window.
Viv sips her coffee. “Next time, leave a tip on the nightstand and call it even.”
I groan and cover my face with both hands.
Viv sits down on the bed beside me, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t worry, honey. The first pancake is always a little messy.”