Nora’s neck rolls and she holds up her hand. “I’m not a baker. I’m a chef.”
Her tone lets me know that she gets that a lot and she doesn’t care for the generalization. Oops.
“Anyway,” Nora continues, “my old roommate from college, Maggy, posted an online ad for a third. Dakota showed up one day with one bag around her arm and the biggest attitude I’ve ever seen.”
I can tell by the face she’s making that she regrets saying this in front of me. “No offense,” she adds hesitantly.
“None taken.”
I feel as if I should be defending Dakota, but I don’t want to just yet. Nora’s entitled to her own opinion of her, and I’m in no place to be her defender. Who are the two guys she slept with? Do I know them? It’s more than likely that I don’t. I know a handful of guys in New York and she’s been single the whole time she’s lived here. I don’t want to begin to consider that she slept with anyone we knew in Michigan.
“Well, it’s just my luck that I tried to go on a date with my ex’s roommate. I’m sorry,” I say with a laugh, aiming to lighten up the energy in the room.
Her expression tightens and she shrugs her shoulders again. “It’s fine. It wasn’t much of a date. I don’t really have the time to date anyone anyway. So what was your third thing? There’s the omelet, the uncomfortable date not-date, and then there was something else.”
When I pause for a moment to remember, she leans over and pokes at my cheek. My heart leaps. “What. Was. The. Third. Thing?”
She leans back and rests her head against the cabinets, then opens the top of her Gatorade bottle and takes a sip. Perfect timing.
“This!” I point to the red perpetrator in her hand.
Nora closes her mouth, cheeks full of Gatorade, and widens her eyes.
“You hated it just the other day and now this!” I tap the bottle with my fingers as she swallows a huge gulp.
A dribble spills down her chin as she tries to hold it in, and I laugh, leaning across her. Her thighs separate and she doesn’t move away when I take the towel from the counter and gently dab at the corner of her chin.
I’m between her thighs now and my entire body couldn’t be more aware of it. She swallows, then reaches up and holds on to my forearm with both hands. Her fingers press into my arm and I lean closer. My chest is touching hers now and her ankles are wrapping around my legs. I’m so damn attracted to her that it hurts. Physically and mentally, in every place it could hurt, it stabs at me—want and need mixing together into a cocktail of confusion.
She’s no longer a silly, giggling girl sitting on a countertop batting her lashes at me. She’s a seductive, sensual woman wrapping one of her arms around my neck, letting her nails drag along behind her smooth fingertips. Goose bumps rise on my skin, and there’s no way she didn’t just feel me shiver, and there’s no way I’m letting that bother me when she’s wrapped around me like this. I’m only a little taller than her when she’s sitting on the high countertop, but when I look down at her, she’s breathing heavily, her lashes dark, resting on her cheeks as she looks down.
I move my hand to her chin, lifting gently until her eyes meet mine. She inches closer. Her breath whispers into my mouth and I grip her thighs with my hands on instinct. Only it shouldn’t be an instinct because I’ve only touched this woman once, yet I can’t seem to convince my body otherwise. It has a mind of its own and I’m in no shape to stop it.
She breathes my name and I take it in, appreciating the way her tongue seems to wrap my name in sugar. My hands move up, and up, until they reach the side of her thighs where her ass begins. In the wake of my hands, red streaks blotch her smooth skin. Her breathing accelerates again when she looks down at her thighs and up to my eyes. I gently nudge her cheek with my jaw and she turns her head. My mouth delicately touches her neck in small pecks of admiration and need.
She moans; her legs tighten around my waist and she reaches up and grips my hand. She rocks her body against mine and I move my mouth to her ear, drenched in lust for her. It’s coating me, covering me.
She puts her hands on mine and presses them into her legs. She moves both of our hands closer to the apex of her thighs and the drawstring on my sweats rubs against her. She moans again, her nails press into my hands, and I’m in a daze. This woman who I know close to nothing about has me dry-humping her on the kitchen counter with Tessa at home in her bedroom, after Dakota skipped out on me this morning, and despite these things, I am completely at her mercy. It’s like I’m sucking in laughing gas, like I can’t tell black from white, or innocent touches from sexual advances. This kiss is strong enough to bring me to my knees. She looks like a dark angel through my hooded eyes, and though I’ve never been religious, now I’m a devout Nora-ite.
I shouldn’t be doing this, and she shouldn’t be doing this, but I want to keep doing this. I desire this, I need to do this. On this counter, on the kitchen table, even on the kitchen floor.
I feel her pull away when my teeth brush against her ear.
“This . . . is . . .” she breathes. “This is bad for me. For both of us.” She pushes her hand against my chest and I back away.
“Good God.” She touches her hand to her chest and takes a few deep breaths. “You are soooo bad for me. And I’m even worse for you.”
She jumps down from the counter and tugs at her shorts in frantic desperation to conceal her body from my eyes.
I try not to stare, knowing that with every second that passes she’s letting doubt creep up her spine and is checking off the list of reasons why Tessa’s loser roommate isn’t good enough for her. She’s trying to tell me something, and I’m doing that stereotypical man thing where I stare at her instead of listening to what she’s saying.
Except I’m not. I’m trying to keep a good grasp on reality and what’s happening between us. Good thing I’m not completely clueless, and I’m fully capable of looking back up at her eyes and listening to her list of the reasons why we can’t jump each other’s bones every time we are alone in the kitchen.
chapter
Seventeen
IT’S THE KITCHEN,” I add when she touches on the third reason we can’t sleep together.
I missed the first two reasons she stated because I couldn’t stop being one of those guys who stares, the category I was just claiming to be excluded from. In my defense, she was fumbling over words strung together as excuses while adjusting her bra. It was hard not to stare at her soft tits pushing one way, then the other.
“The kitchen makes us crazy,” I say, then turn and crack two eggs into the bowl and stir them with a spoon.
If she doesn’t want me to kiss her, I won’t kiss her. The way my body aches for her can be ignored.
It can.
I’m pretty sure.
Nora watches me, looking pleased that I’m continuing with breakfast after all. I reach over and grab a third egg. When I oil the pan, she walks over and takes the milk jug from the counter. She adds at least a half cup more to the bowl and opens my silverware drawer. She grabs a fork and stirs the eggs with it. Her fork moves much quicker than my spoon and I back away, bowing slightly to her chef-ness.
She appreciates my gesture and laughs, although the rain outside nearly drowns out the sound. I wish it would stop so I could hear her cute laugh better.
Nora opens the top of one of the plastic containers of precut vegetables. She adds a handful of onions to the pan, then peppers, and waits to add the eggs. While she’s effortlessly outperforming me in the kitchen, she leans against the counter and looks at me.
“Tessa’s my friend, and if this gets too messy, it could ruin that.”
That was reason number four? Or maybe five?
“We have too much baggage, both of us,” she adds.
Seven, maybe eight if we count our scores separately?
“How many reasons do you have, ten?” I say lightly. “Or would you like to come on my run with me so you can finish telling me all of the reasons why we
can’t be friends?”
“I wasn’t saying we couldn’t be friends. I was talking about all of this,” she says, and waves her hands around in front of herself.
I imagine her running beside me, listing off reasons word by word. I have a few, too; I’m just not as eager to say them as she is. She’s still waving between our bodies. I decide to fuck with her, just a little.
“The air? You mean the nitrogen and oxygen—”
Reaching her free hand over to me, she clamps it over my mouth and gives me a shut-the-fuck-up-you-adorable-bastard look that shoots through me like Cupid’s arrow.
Yikes, good thing I didn’t say that out loud.
“I meant the making-out. The heavy petting.” Her eyes glance over to my lips and stay there.
“I fail to see how petting animals is a problem—” I start, but the hand goes right back over my mouth.
“We can’t keep doing that and keep everything from getting out of control. Your ex is my roommate, she lives with me, she knows where I sleep.” She smiles, and I think she’s only half teasing. “I was only thinking we could take each other’s mind off of whatever baggage we had—Tessa told me about your breakup.”
Her eyes fill with sympathy . . .
And I sort of hate when people feel sorry for me.
But I nod. “I understand. I wasn’t sure what you were thinking, how you were feeling, and I was trying to get over Dakota,” I explain.
She nods her head. “I’m glad you were. But let’s just agree to be friendly. No touching, no kissing”—her voice slows and her eyes glance away from me—“definitely no thigh-grabbing . . . And no ear-nibbling, no throat-kissing . . .” She clears her throat and straightens her back.
I clear my throat, too, and look for a towel to wipe my sweaty palms on.
I’m getting caught up in her words and whirled back to two minutes ago when I was possessed by one of those guys in romance novels. She was about one more moan away from me saying things like I shall ravish you in my best attempt at a seducer’s voice.
A list of romantic comedies pops into my head, guiding my thoughts. “The next step in this agreement is for you to propose a friends-with-benefits type of relationship, and then we bicker over it for about thirty seconds before we agree,” I say. “One month later, one of us will be in love and it will be messy. Cut to another month later, we have ourselves a perfect relationship or a complete disaster. There’s no middle ground. It really is an indisputable fact that the movies have proved.”
I like that I can be completely unfiltered around her. I’ve made a fool out of myself more than once, so she should be used to it by now. There’s no history, I don’t have any expectations placed on me. She laughs and nods. Her omelet is browned now and my kitchen smells amazing. She slides it onto the plate and blows at the light puff of steam coming from the dish.
“Agreed.” Nora tucks a lose strand of hair behind her ear. “We can easily avoid all of that mess now and agree to be friends. I don’t have time for catfights in restaurants with twenty-year-old girls who shouldn’t even be drinking in public in the first place.”
Somehow the way she says that makes her sound much older, and I feel like a child being scolded by his mom.
“I’m building a career in a thriving city and I don’t want to fuck that up for some cute college kid.”
Her use of the word kid stabs at my already wounded ego. I’m nearly twenty-one and I have more in common with the people my parents’ age than I do with college “kids.” I’ve already been stopped twice on campus by students who thought I was a professor; I have that mature look. It’s true—my mom says it, too.
Ugh. Using my mom as a standard—maybe I am just a kid. That hurts a little.
I wouldn’t have thought Nora would see me as anything other than a peer, but apparently to her, I’m just some college kid who was going to be her distraction from whatever.
“Friends, then.” I deliver her a smile and she nods. From here on out, I will be only friendly to Nora and Dakota.
I will not let things get messy.
No chance.
chapter
Eighteen
IT’S BEEN TWO WEEKS since I’ve heard from Dakota. She hasn’t reached out to me once since she slipped out of my bed in the middle of the night, nor has she answered either of my calls or the two texts I’ve sent. Maybe I’ve overdone it, bothering her too much when she obviously doesn’t want to talk, but I want to make sure she’s okay. No matter how many times I try to remind myself that that’s not my job anymore, my head just won’t listen. Or maybe it’s my heart, possibly both. I know Dakota well enough to know that when she needs her space, she will take it and no one can change that.
The unfamiliar part is that I’m not used to being the one she needs space from.
Since we decided to be friends I’ve seen Nora twice, but only spoken to her once. Friends without kissing. Friends don’t kiss and friends definitely don’t think about kissing.
I’m still working on that part. She hasn’t started to come around less; she’s just leaving earlier and I’m coming home later than I used to. I’ve been staying a little later at work to help Posey close. She’s been picking up so many of Jane’s shifts lately that I have a feeling she could use the help. She seems overwhelmed. I don’t want to be too pushy and probe too much into her life, but I’ve always been pretty good at reading people. We have become something close to friends during our long shifts together, and she’s been sharing more and more of her life with me while we scrub dishes and clean coffee grounds from every nook and cranny of Grind.
I’m enjoying the extra hours and her company. I’m lonely and soaking our conversations up like a sponge, like the details of her life somehow make me feel more involved in the wider world. She was born and raised here—a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker, something millions of people in this city strive to imitate. Her family used to live in Queens, and when she was fifteen, her mom passed away and Lila and Posey moved to Brooklyn to live with their grandma.
It’s nice having someone to talk to about random stuff. It’s nice to hear about someone else’s life and opinions and thoughts when I don’t want to think about my own.
I don’t want to think about Dakota, and I don’t want to miss Nora. Am I a bad person for liking two people?
Really, though, I don’t know if I like Nora or if I’m just attracted to her. I don’t know enough about her to compare to my feelings for Nora . . .
I mean, Dakota.
Shit, I’m a mess.
Am I being too hard on myself by keeping my distance from both of them? I’ve loved Dakota for years; I know her inside and out. She’s my family. In my heart of hearts, she owns half the real estate.
Nora is another story; she’s wishy-washy and hot and cold, and undeniably sexy and flirtatious. I’m half-attracted, half-curious about her, and I keep having to remind myself that we killed our potential relationship before it ever had a chance to bloom into anything anyway, so I can’t sit around moping over losing something that wasn’t mine to begin with.
So it’s been two weeks of avoidance of the women in question: picking up later shifts at work, joining more study groups, or staying home and watching cooking shows with Tessa. She’s obsessed with them lately and they provide good background noise when I’m doing my schoolwork. I can pay just a little bit of attention to the shows, but I don’t care enough to have to give my full attention to them—and I’m not convinced that Tessa does either.
One night during Cupcake Wars, my phone buzzes on the leather couch and Hardin’s name lights up on my screen. Tessa’s eyes follow the noise and flash at the sight of his name. Her eyes dart back to the screen and she pulls her pouty bottom lip between her teeth.
She’s freaking miserable and I hate it. Hardin’s miserable, and he deserves it, but I still hate it. I don’t know what kind of mountain Hardin will have to move to earn her forgiveness, but I know damned well he would even build a mountain if he had t
o—a whole row of them with her face carved into them—before he would live his life without her.
That sort of desperation, that kind of burning, throbbing love—I haven’t known it.
I have loved slow and deep with Dakota . . . it was—still is—a steady kind of love. We had our share of complications and fights, but nine times out of ten, it was her and me fighting against the world. It was me, sword drawn, cannon loaded, ready to charge at any enemy who crossed a line. Mostly the foe was her dad, the biggest, nastiest troll of all. I spent many a night rescuing my princess from the yellow-stained walls and worn Cinderella-printed curtains tacked over the windows of her house. I climbed the dirty, sun-damaged siding and opened the dust-covered window, and pulled her to the safety of warm chocolate chip cookies and the soft voice of my mother.
Times were rough at her house, and when Carter was gone, even the best cookies, the softest voices, and the tightest hugs couldn’t comfort Dakota. We shared pain and pleasure, but the more I think about it and the more I compare it to the relationships I see around me and the ones I read about in my books, the more I realize that while Dakota and I were family, we were also nothing but kids.
Is someone even supposed to spend his whole life with the one who helps him grow? Or is that person simply a stop along the way to who he will become, their role ending when he learns what he needs to make it to the next stop? I once felt like Dakota was my entire journey and my destination, but I’m starting to feel like I was no more than a stop along the way for her.
Do I, Landon Gibson, Amateur Relationship Participant, even know what the hell I’m talking about?
I grab my phone as it goes to voicemail. I call Hardin right back and he answers on the first ring.
“Hey,” I say, looking at Tessa as she pulls the blanket up to her neck like it’s protecting her from something.
“I’m about to book my flight. It’s next month,” he says, loud enough for Tessa to hear. And with every word from Hardin’s mouth, she visibly shudders.