I roll onto my side to face him under light blankets, and even though I wouldn’t be able to see my own hand in front of my face right now, I can sense the distance between us. “Do you want to switch sides?”
“No,” Mike says, and the bed shifts again, dipping close to me. I know for certain that if I reached out even a little right now, he’d be right there. I could touch him.
“Are you sure?” I whisper, and my pillow moves. Mike’s warm breath grazes my cheek when he answers me.
“Yeah.” His voice is quiet, softer than the pillow we’re sharing. “This feels better.”
“Okay,” I say, my skin thrumming with the nearness of him. It waits to be touched—for him to wrap his arm around me, or pull me close, or slide forward until his body is pressed tight against mine. But instead, he lies agonizing inches away, bringing my nerve endings to life with every single breath he takes.
If I didn’t have to leave soon, maybe I would reach out. Maybe I’d find the shirt hanging loose over his hard stomach, and I’d fist it in my hands. Maybe I’d draw him to me and risk rejection to find his lips in the dark. Maybe in the dark, he’d kiss me back.
If I didn’t have to leave.
If I didn’t have to leave.
For tonight, I close my eyes, and on a shared pillow, I let my breath mingle with his, and I try to have sweet dreams.
Chapter 23
It’s almost worse: not getting the call. It means I’m constantly checking to make sure my ringer is on. It means my phone is glued to my hand. It means my nerves are on edge, my head kind of hurts, and my stomach is very unsure of itself.
In Mike’s kitchen, I flip an omelet in a pan and turn my head to the side for a breath of non–egg scented air. This morning, I rolled silently out from beneath his covers as soon as the clock on my phone changed from 5:58 to 5:59 to 6:00, and I helped myself to a quick rinse-off in his hall shower. After brushing my teeth with a toothpaste-painted finger, I sat at his kitchen table weighing all of my options—and then I decided to cook, because cooking is easier than thinking.
Now I’m standing at his stove doing both. I know Danica is playing games, but I have no idea how long she plans on playing them. Do I go on the offensive? Call my uncle and explain things myself? No . . . because what if Mike’s right? What if I’m wrong? What if she’s really not going to go through with her threat to ruin my life?
Yeah, right. Since when has Danica ever missed an opportunity like that? Even if I groveled at her feet right now, she’d use it as an opportunity to stomp my face into the dirt.
“Good morning,” Mike says, and I look over my shoulder to see him scratching his head and yawning as he walks into the kitchen. His hair is sticking up on the side from the pillow we shared last night, and I catalog the image to take home with me: sleepy-eyed Mike Madden with bedhead and slept-in clothes. Then I turn back around before I do something stupid, like walk over to straighten his hair.
“I’m making breakfast,” I announce, flipping the eggs, pushing them around in the pan—anything to keep from glancing over my shoulder again. So what if we shared the same bed? We’re still just friends. He’s still my cousin’s ex. He’s still a rock star. He’s still untouchable.
I still have to move back home.
“You eat eggs?”
My breathing stalls when Mike’s voice sounds from right behind me, and my whole body stiffens when his chest brushes against my back. I glance up at him over my shoulder, momentarily losing myself in those big brown eyes. While I search for my voice, he adds, “I thought vegetarians didn’t eat eggs.”
“Some do,” I manage. “But I don’t . . . These are for you.”
The sleep seems to clear from Mike’s eyes, the sun rising on his expression. “How’d you know I’d be up?”
“I didn’t,” I say, and when I reach over and pop open the microwave, he chuckles. He removes the plate stacked with two already cooked omelets, and then he grabs a fork and butter knife from a drawer and sits at the kitchen table.
“It’s a good thing I’m hungry.”
“They’re probably terrible,” I warn as I flip the third omelet in its pan. “I haven’t made eggs in forever.”
“I’m sure they’re amazing,” he says, and I glance over my shoulder to see him carving off his first bite.
“Would you tell me if they weren’t?”
Mike shovels the bite into his mouth and smiles as he chews, shaking his head no. When he swallows, I ask, “Well?”
“Amazing,” he repeats, and his teasing forces me to turn away to hide my smile.
I stand there wondering if he could do that for Danica—if he could find her in the middle of a storm and make her forget it was raining. And if he could, I wonder why she would ever give that up, why she wouldn’t fight tooth and nail to keep him.
For a moment, I think I can almost understand why she lost her mind and broke my computer and trashed my room yesterday. But the moment passes, and I shake my head, and I remember she’s a psychotic bitch.
“So,” Mike says, and when he hesitates before finishing, I know what’s coming next. “Have you heard from your cousin yet . . . ?”
I must have checked my phone five hundred times this morning—for a call from my uncle, for a text from Danica, for a call from the local fire department letting me know that she burned the rest of my belongings on the front lawn of our apartment. But five hundred times, there was nothing. Except one text, from Dee, asking if I got laid yet. It had a time-stamp of 7 a.m., and since I’m guessing she set her alarm solely to ask me that question, I responded by telling her to go back to bed.
Now, resting the spatula on the counter, I pat my back pockets for my phone. One, then the other. Then the right one again, the front ones, the left one, the back ones a third time. “Shit.” I spin around, scanning the counters, the tables. “Do you see my phone?”
Mike stands up to help me look for it as I anxiously search the living room, the bathroom, the bedroom. When we meet in the kitchen again, both of us are empty-handed.
“Do you want me to call it?” he asks, already moving his thumbs over the screen of his phone.
I take one last look around the kitchen before nodding. “Yeah, I think my ringer is on.”
A couple more seconds pass, and my ringtone begins going off somewhere in house. I head to the living room again and lose its trail while Mike heads down the hallway leading to the back of the house.
“I think it’s in here,” he shouts just before the linen closet clicks open. Just a simple click, and my eyes flash wide with terror.