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  I sit up. My hands gently shake her shoulders and I ask her over and over what’s wrong. She shakes her head and catches her breath. I wait to turn on the light, knowing that the truth is easiest told in the dark.

  “I . . .” she cries, “I slept with two people.”

  Her words slice through me like her cries slice through the darkness, and as if I’ve been burned, I suddenly don’t want to be near her.

  My instinct is to run. To get far, far away.

  My stomach aches and she cries again, trying to cover her mouth. She reaches for a pillow and presses it to her face to keep herself quiet. Regardless of my pain, I can’t stand to see her like this. And so I do what I always do. I put my feelings on hold. I pack the anger down. I tell my desire to run off without me. I reach for the pillow and remove it from her face. I toss it to the floor and lift her into my arms and lay us both down, an intertwined pair.

  “I’m so sorry,” she chokes.

  Her cheeks are soaked with tears and I thumb at them, catching them before they roll down her face. Her shoulders are shaking, and I can feel her pain, or guilt maybe, or our lost history, and it’s throbbing inside of me, too. I gently push at her shoulders to keep her still and raise my hand to her forehead. I brush back her hair and gently caress the strands, rubbing her scalp.

  “Shhh,” I say.

  “Today is over,” I say.

  “We’ll deal with this tomorrow,” I say. “Get some rest.”

  I continue to massage her head until she falls asleep.

  If she wants to work this out, I’m willing to listen to her. There has to be some explanation that makes sense, and now that she’s told me the truth, she’s going to be okay with telling me what happened. As soon as she wakes up, she will explain everything.

  Except she didn’t.

  When she woke up, she snuck out of my apartment without a word.

  chapter

  Sixteen

  WHEN I WALK OUT OF my room, I’m quiet so as not to wake Tessa. I know she’s going to want to discuss last night, but I need coffee before attempting any such thing.

  As I tiptoe down the short hallway, I glance at the square picture frames that Tessa spent hours hanging up, making them all perfectly parallel with one another along the wall. Inside of each frame is a portrait of a cat dressed in different types of hats. The one closest to me is a tabby, its gray panama-style hat streaked with black and brown to match the wearer’s fur. A big white feather sticks up from the front.

  I’ve never really paid attention to the portraits, but in the strange mood of this morning, I feel a pull to examine them, and find them really pretty entertaining. I had noticed that they were cat-related, but that was the extent of it. The next cat is another tabby, but instead of gray and black, it’s all orange and cream. It’s fat, this one, and I chuckle at the bowler hat it’s wearing. A tuxedo cat exhibits his top hat, naturally. These are pretty clever and I want to shake the hand of whoever created them for taking something so simple and making it quirky and giving me the perfect distraction this morning. I glance at the rest of the pictures and stay as quiet as possible as I reach the end of the hall.

  I’m a little surprised to find Nora sleeping on the couch. I had thought maybe she’d go home now that she knew Dakota and I weren’t over at their place.

  But there she is, her arm hanging over the edge of the cushion and her fingertips dangling just above the wood floor. Her dark hair is pulled up high on her head, and her knees are folded up, her lips parted slightly as if in a sigh. Her eyes are closed tightly. I walk by on my toes; my soft socks barely make a sound as I pass through into the kitchen.

  After I realized that Dakota left before the sun came up, I went back to sleep for a while. I wasn’t actually surprised that she left. I was mostly disappointed that I let any bit of me actually believe I would wake up to her next to me. She was being silly last night, being the old version of herself that loved to be around me, the silly girl who I’ve loved half of my life. Now the sun has come up and she’s disappeared from my bed, taking the light with her.

  The wind must have picked up sometime in the night, and it howls through the open kitchen window, making the yellow curtain flap against the glass. I can hear the rain picking up as I draw closer. And when I look out of the window and down at the sidewalk, I see a garden of umbrellas amid the downpour. Green-and-White Polka Dots is walking faster than Tan-and-Army-Green, and Red is the slowest of them all. The umbrella tops sort of look like flowers from here, and I’m surprised by how crowded the sidewalks are, even in the rain.

  I glance over at Nora and quietly close the window before the noise of the rain and wind wakes her. I was going to make something for breakfast, but that’s too noisy, so I’ll probably just walk down and grab a bagel from the shop on the corner.

  Though . . . if I leave now, I might not be here when she wakes up, and I would like to talk to her about last night. I want to apologize to her for being so quick to leave with Dakota, without giving her a proper explanation. She’s not really the type of woman to be jealous of another; I’ve heard her ramble about shows like The Bachelor and claim that she would be the ultimate contestant precisely because she isn’t jealous. Not that I want her seething with jealousy, but I would hate to think it didn’t matter to her at all that Dakota inadvertently crashed our date and I ended up being a jerk and leaving with her.

  On the other hand, of course, I don’t want her to feel any pain or discomfort around me, and I want to make sure she’s not upset over last night. It was a big misunderstanding and I’m sure she gets it.

  But do I get it?

  Actually, I don’t think that I do get anything that has happened between me and either of these two women in the last twenty-four hours . . . at this point, I would probably kill to have both of them explain our situations to me in layman’s terms. I do not understand dating in this city despite the fact I always hear that men have some sort of “upper hand” here.

  I try to break everything down in my head while staring at the bright yellow curtain covering the window.

  One, Nora touched my stomach after she found me in the shower, then she kissed me, then she invited me out with her friends.

  Two, I left with Dakota in the middle of our datelike thing, in front of her friends; even if she doesn’t like me like me, that couldn’t have been good for her ego.

  Three, she watched Dakota walk into my room last night, most likely heard at least some of our conversation, and most likely assumed we had sex.

  This is so damn awkward. I don’t even know if Nora likes me—she’s a huge flirt.

  I sigh, wishing that I had a clue about women and their minds.

  I open the fridge slowly and wince when two root beer bottles clink together on our wobbly door shelf. I grab the one closer to me and steady it, resting the refrigerator door on my hip. I grab a two-day-old take-out box, noodles with some sort of peanut sauce and chunks of questionable chicken, and close the fridge.

  I turn and Nora is standing there, her eyes sleepy and her hair messy. I jump in surprise and nearly drop the leftovers, but she just smiles up at me. Her smile is a lazy-morning smile and her eye makeup is smeared around her eyes.

  “You woke me up,” she says, and rolls the sleeves of her sweatshirt up her forearms. Her black shorts are so short that when she turns around and walks toward the fridge, I can see the curve of her ass where it meets her thigh.

  She tugs at them, trying to cover more of her body, but there just isn’t enough fabric.

  No complaints here.

  I look away when she opens the fridge and bends down. Half of her ass has to be hanging out of those little shorts, and I have to force my feet to stay planted here, not to grab a handful of her. This is something new for me, this urgency, this gnawing throb from my chest to my groin. She pulls out a red Gatorade and I raise my brow to her. I point my index finger at her.

  Nora smiles and pulls a straight face and covers the bottle’s lab
el with her hand.

  “Two th-things,” I begin, awkwardly clearing my throat when my voice breaks.

  Now that she’s up, I don’t care so much about being quiet. Tessa’s probably been lying awake in her bed since seven, anyway. I toss the box of dicey leftovers into the trash and open the fridge again. I grab a carton of eggs and a container of milk and set them on the counter.

  “Make that three,” I correct myself. “Do you want an omelet?”

  I open the egg carton and look at her. She glances toward the living room and back to me like she’s looking for someone.

  “She went home,” I say.

  At least, I assumed it was home. She’s not here and doesn’t have many options that I’m aware of. But given how little I know about her new life, she probably has an entirety of things I don’t know about. For example, she could be hiding a Hippogriff in her apartment and I wouldn’t even know—because I’ve never even seen her apartment building, let alone been inside of it.

  “Oh,” Nora says, seeming surprised. “Last night—” she begins, but I want to finish my three things, or I won’t remember them later.

  “Wait.” I hold my finger up between us. She smiles and dramatically closes her mouth. “First things first. Omelet?”

  I reach into the cabinet in front of me and grab the frying pan with one hand while turning on the stovetop with the other. Honestly, it’s the smoothest, most coordinated move I’ve made in the past twenty-four hours.

  “Yes, please,” Nora responds in a voice that sounds like it should still be in bed.

  I can hardly imagine how it would be to wake up to this woman every morning. Her hair would be messy and probably tied up on her head. Her legs would be smooth and tanned and I bet she doesn’t even have a tan line.

  “I’m a vegetarian, though. So only cheese for me.”

  “I have some onions and peppers?” I offer.

  She nods, giving me an impressed smile. “Don’t talk dirty to me so early in the morning.”

  Her smile is contagious and I’m impressed that I caught on to her kitchen humor. Though my two-egg omelet won’t be very brag-worthy, it will be competent, and as a pastry chef, she likes when men can stand their own in the kitchen. Or so I assume.

  Using a small bowl, I crack two eggs on the side.

  “Now, for my second thing.” I look at her to make sure I have her attention.

  Her eyes are on mine as she lets her hair down. It falls in thick waves of deep brown around her shoulders, and when she shakes her head, I’m convinced that I’ve been thrown into a shampoo commercial.

  Would it be weird to say that? Will I sound like a guy who’s trying too hard?

  I choose not to say anything. Comparing her to a shampoo commercial can’t be a normal compliment, and I really don’t need to dredge up any more reasons for her to think I’m lame.

  Instead of taking a chance on being a creep, I dive straight into the pile of things I would like to figure out between us.

  “I didn’t know you two were roommates,” I begin to explain. “I didn’t know that Dakota would be at the bar. I’m sorry if me leaving there embarrassed you in front of your friends. I really was looking forward”—my throat is dry and I may cough midsentence but keep going—“to spending time with you. I don’t know how much you know about Dakota and me, but—”

  Nora holds a hand up. I shut my mouth and pour a splash of milk into the bowl of beaten eggs and open the fridge again. Nora walks over to the stove and turns down the heat. That’s probably a good thing.

  She looks at the floor and then up at me. “I know you didn’t know. And I had no fucking idea that you were the guy she was talking about. She never told us anything about you that would even make me begin to think that you knew her at all. She didn’t even mention your name.”

  And when she says that, there’s something in her tone that I’m not sure I want to figure out. She lifts herself onto the counter a few feet away from me. Her feet dangle over the wooden cabinets.

  “But I’m not mad or anything.” Her tone is flat, paper-lying-under-a-pile-of-books flat. “So don’t worry about it. I get it and it’s fine.”

  Nora is being incredibly understanding, but she has that look glazing over her face again, and it’s disconcerting. The one where she looks bored enough to pick at her nail polish.

  Oh, and what do you know, there she is, one thumb beginning to pick at the other, trying to chip away her black polish.

  “We aren’t back together,” I tell her.

  The sting of Dakota’s confession still burns at me, nagging at my mind.

  Nora grins, looking up from her hands. “It wouldn’t be any of my business if you were.” She shrugs her shoulders as if I just told her the sky is blue, and I cock my head to the side.

  The eggs are cooking now, hissing at me from the steaming pan, and the cheese is nearly melted, so I grab her veggies and a slice of ham from the deli bag.

  “Meat.” She makes a disgusted face. “And lunch meat, at that. I was starting to get a little too impressed. Good thing you brought out the Hillshire Farms.”

  When she laughs, I realize I don’t think I want to let her change the subject. I want to know why she thinks my relationship is none of her business.

  Were we not out together last night? Everything was fine for five minutes, before you-know-what hit the fan. Also, this meat isn’t your typical packaged lunch meat. It’s cut from the deli. I pay an extra three dollars a pound for that difference written in red ink on a yellow sticker—this is worth mentioning.

  “That’s how you stay so fit, then?” I point to her body with the spatula that I just used to flip the omelet. “Not eating processed lunch meat?”

  She nods, shrugging her shoulders. She scoots a little closer to me.

  “No, I don’t eat meat, but I still have to watch what I eat. I could easily gulp down this entire bag of cheese and I may do just that,” she says, pointing to the cheese on the counter.

  I finish up her omelet, then drop it onto a paper plate and start cooking up my own. All the while I watch as she mentally adds another demerit to my score sheet, that list that women make inside of their heads when they first meet a guy.

  Cuteness: 8 points. (Realistically anywhere between 6 and 10. I would say I’m a solid 7.5.)

  Height: 8 points. (For some reason, at five-foot-eleven, I get eight points.)

  Cooking skills: 5 points.

  Using lunch meat in his omelet: –2.

  Paper plates: –1.

  I’m electing to ignore the fact that I had to lose at least ten points for last night. More than likely, I’m close to a two-point average right now.

  “But I realized as I got older that to stay in shape, I have to work a little harder than most people do.” She pokes at her leg and I get distracted by a small freckle in the center of her thigh.

  Her shorts are so short, and my eyes follow the freckle, up to another one, to another one. It’s like the brown speckles have aligned perfectly to form a trail to the edge of her shorts. It’s only human nature to follow the dots.

  She turns slightly and looks at her own ass and thighs. “But I like to keep some things the way they are.”

  I’m sweating.

  I may pass out from the rise in temperature induced by the pushing of her ass out slightly, subtly. And because now I’m staring at the back of her thighs. Her hand grabs a chunk of her own flesh of her ass and she looks at me.

  I look away, I have to.

  I should speak.

  I should say something cool back to her.

  Problem is, I can’t think of anything remotely cool to say, and I don’t want her to think that I’m thinking that she’s thinking . . .

  Dammit, I’m overthinking again.

  “Especially when I bake for a living and a hobby,” she continues, as if she had not just discombobulated my brain. “I would rather go without Wi-Fi than sweets.” She turns back to me, and somehow I manage to not return to the f
reckles on the front of her thighs.

  Her declaration is serious and I can tell by the way she’s bugging her eyes out and pursing her lips that she means business.

  I almost pretend that I’m one of those trendy techy people who immediately ask for the Wi-Fi password wherever they go, but after last night, I don’t have the energy to pretend much of anything.

  “You make it sound like this is life or death,” I tease.

  She grins at me wholeheartedly . . . and then I make a U-turn in our conversation: “Second thing, part B: if you want to talk about Dakota, we can.”

  Nora shoots me an annoyed glare. I ignore it. I want her to know that I’m not one of those guys who doesn’t tell you what’s on his mind and makes you guess, and by the time you figure it out, you’ve already forgotten what the problem was in the first place. That guy is not me.

  I was raised by a single mom, and I credit her for my communication skills.

  I don’t just swallow half-truths, and I don’t give them out. I wouldn’t just leave with my ex and not want to explain everything to the girl I was actually on a date with. I don’t want her to create this version of me that she thinks she knows. I want her to base her opinion of me on facts and good experiences.

  But so far, I haven’t given her a great example of what type of man I am. I wipe out the pan and spray the nonstick spray onto the nonstick surface. Neither product actually works completely, but still, only half of my meals get stuck to the bottom of the pan. That’s a win, the way things go for me.

  “Come on,” I say, trying to guide her into the conversation.

  Nora eyes me tentatively. “Since I get the feeling that you aren’t going to let this go, I’ll talk about how insane it is that she’s my roommate and you’re Tessa’s roommate. Talk about a small fucking world.”

  She tilts her head back and shakes it.

  It is such a small world—too small, if you ask me. I’m so curious as to how it could be possible that my ex-girlfriend ended up rooming with my . . . friend Nora.

  “How did you meet her? If she’s in the ballet academy and you’re a baker—”