Book Lovers

8

WE MAKE OUR way out of Poppa Squat’s huddled under Charlie’s umbrella. (I’d called it fortuitous, but it turns out he checks a weather app obsessively, so apparently I’ve found someone even more predictable than I am.) The smell of grass and wildflowers is thick in the damp air, and it’s cooled considerably.

He asks, “Where are you staying?”

“It’s called Goode’s Lily Cottage,” I say.

He says, almost to himself, “Bizarre.”

Heat creeps up my neck from where his breath hits it. “What, I couldn’t possibly be happy anywhere that isn’t a black marble penthouse with a crystal chandelier?”

“Exactly what I meant.” He casts a look my way as we pass under a bar of streetlight, the rain sparkling like silver confetti. “And also it’s my parents’ rental property.”

My cheeks flush. “You’re — Sally Goode’s your mom? You grew up next to a horse farm?”

“What,” he says, “I couldn’t possibly have been raised anywhere but a black marble penthouse with a crystal chandelier?”

“Just hard to imagine you belonging anywhere in this town, let alone so close to a manure pyramid.”

“Belonging might be overstating things,” he says acidly.

“So where are you staying?”

“Well, I usually stay at the cottage,” he says. Another sidelong glance at me through the dark. “But that wasn’t an option.”

His smell is so uncannily familiar, but I still can’t place it. Warm, with a slightly spicy edge, faint enough that I keep catching myself trying to inhale a lungful of it. “Then where?” I ask. “Your childhood bedroom?”

We pause at the dead-end street the cottage sits on, and Charlie sighs. “I’m sleeping in a race car bed, Nora. Are you happy?”

Happy doesn’t begin to cover it. The image of stern-browed, highly polished Charlie tucked into a plastic Corvette and scowling at his Kindle makes me laugh so hard it’s a struggle to stay upright. He’s probably the last person I could picture in a race car bed, aside from myself.

Charlie hooks an arm around my waist as I keel over. “Little reminder,” he says, keeping me moving down the gravel lane. “That is far from the most embarrassing thing one of us has said tonight.”

I get out, “Were you, like, a NASCAR kid?”

“No,” he says, “but my dad never stopped trying.”

I devolve into another fit of laughter that threatens to tip me over. Charlie pulls me against his side. “One foot in front of the other, Stephens.”

“Mutually assured destruction indeed,” I cry.

He starts to lead me up the hillside, and immediately my heel sinks into the mud, pinning me to the ground. I take another step and the other heel punctures the mud too. An indignant half shriek rises out of me.

Charlie stops, sighing heavily as he eyes my shoes. “Am I going to have to carry you?”

“I am not letting you give me a piggyback ride, Lastra,” I say.

“And I,” he replies, “am not letting you destroy those poor, innocent shoes. I’m not that kind of man.”

I look at my mules, and a miserably petulant sound squeaks out of me. “Fine.”

“You’re welcome.” He turns and hunches as I hike up my dress and say a fond farewell to the last remnants of my dignity, then hook my arms over his shoulders and hop onto his back.

“All good?” he says.

“I’m getting a piggyback ride,” I reply, adjusting the umbrella over us. “Does that answer your question?”

“Poor Nora,” he teases, his hands settling against my thighs as he starts up the steps. “I can only imagine what you’re going through.”

A realization clangs through me, chaotic and emphatic as church bells: the reason his smell is so familiar. It’s the same subtle gender-neutral cologne I wear. A cedarwood and amber blend called BOOK, meant to summon images of sunbathed shelves and worn pages. When I found out the company was going under, I put in a bulk order so I could stockpile it.

I would’ve placed it sooner, but it smells different on him, the way Mom’s signature lemon-lavender scent hits different on Libby, a note of vanilla drawn out that was never there before. Charlie’s rendition of BOOK is spicier, warmer than mine.

“Awfully quiet back there, Stephens,” he says. “Anything I can do to make your journey more comfortable? A neck pillow? Some of those tiny Delta cookies?”

“I’d take some spurs and a riding crop,” I say.

“Should’ve seen that coming,” he grumbles.

“I’d also accept a sworn affidavit that we’ll never speak of this again.”

“After the way you disparaged my last contract? I don’t think so.”

When we reach the front steps, I slide off Charlie’s back and try to pull my dress back into place, which is a struggle because I didn’t do an amazing job of keeping the umbrella over us, and we’re both fairly drenched, my dress plastered to my thighs and bangs stuck to my eyes.

Charlie reaches out to brush them away. “Nice haircut, by the way.”

“Straight men love bangs,” I say. “They make women approachable.”

“Nothing more intimidating than a forehead,” he says. “Although I sort of miss the blond.”

And there it is: that mushroom cloud of want low in my belly, a twinge between my thighs. “It’s not natural,” I announce.

“Didn’t think it was,” he says, “but it suits you.”

“Because it looks vaguely evil?” I guess.

He splits into a rare, full grin, but only for a second. Just long enough to send my stomach flipping. “I’ve been thinking.”

“I’ll call a news crew immediately.”

“You should scratch number five.”

“Number five?”

“On the list.”

I palm my face. “Why did I tell you about that?”

“Because you wanted someone to stop you from going through with it,” he says. “The last thing you need is to get mixed up with someone who lives here.”

I drop my hand and narrow my eyes at him. “Do they eat outsiders?”

“Worse,” he says. “They keep them here forever.”

I scoff. “Lasting commitment. How terrible.”

“Nora,” he says, tone low and chiding. “You and I both know you don’t want that epilogue. Someone like you — in shoes like that—could never be happy here. Don’t get some poor pig farmer’s hopes up for nothing.”

“Okay, rude,” I say.

“Rude?” He steps in closer, the searing fluorescent light over the door casting him in stark relief, etching out the hollows beneath his cheekbones and making his eyes gleam. “Rude is declaring the entire dating pool of New York City tainted just because you managed to pick four assholes in a row.”

My throat warms, a lump of lava sliding down it. “Don’t tell me I hurt your feelings,” I murmur.

“You of all people should know,” he says, gaze dropping to my mouth, “we ‘surly, monochromatic literary types’ don’t have those.”

In my head, Nadine Winters’s voice is screaming, Abort, abort! This fits into no plan! But there’s a lot of rushing blood and tingling skin for the words to compete with.

I don’t remember doing it, but my fingers are pressed against his stomach, his muscles tightening under them.

Bad idea, I think in the split second before Charlie tugs my hips flush to his. The words break apart like alphabet soup, letters splintering off in every direction, utterly meaningless now. His mouth catches mine roughly as he eases me back into the cottage door, covering my body with his.

I half moan at the pressure. His hands tighten on my waist. My lips part for his tongue, the tang of beer and the herbal edge of gin tangling pleasantly in my mouth.

It feels like my outline is dissolving, like I’m turning to liquid. His mouth skates down my jaw, over my throat. My hands scrape through his coarse, rain-soaked hair, and he lets out a low groan, his hand trailing to my chest, fingers brushing over my nipple.

At some point, the umbrella has clattered to the ground. Charlie’s shirt is plastered to him. He palms me through my damp dress, making me arch. Our mouths slip together.

The last dregs of beer and gin evaporate from my bloodstream, and everything is happening in high definition. My hands skim up the back of his shirt, fingernails sinking into his smooth, warm skin, urging him closer, and his palm moves to the hem of my dress, shucking it up my thigh. His fingers glide higher, sending chills rippling over my skin, and something like Wait just barely, half-heartedly slips out of me.

I’m not even sure how he heard it, but Charlie jerks back, looking like a man freshly out of a trance, hair mussed, lips bee-stung, dark eyes blinking rapidly. “Shit!” he says, hoarse, stepping back. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

Clarity hits me with a cold-water shock.

Shit is right!

As in, I don’t shit where I eat. Or kiss where I work. It’s bad enough that in a year and a half, everyone I work with is going to think of me as Nadine Winters — I don’t need to add any more potential fuel to my reputation’s funeral pyre.

He says, “I can’t really get involved—”

“I don’t need an explanation!” I cut him off, yanking the hem of my dress back down my thighs. “It was a mistake!”

“I know!” Charlie says, sounding vaguely offended.

“Well, I know too!”

“Fine!” he says. “Then we agree!”

“Fine!” I cry, continuing recorded history’s strangest and least-productive argument.

Charlie hasn’t moved. Neither of us has. His eyes are still inky dark and hungry, and thanks to the light bulb over the door, his hard-on might as well be in a display case at a particularly lascivious museum.

I take a breath. “Let’s just act like—”

At the same time, he says, “We should pretend it never happened.”

I nod.

He nods.

It’s settled.

He grabs his umbrella off the ground, and neither of us bothers with “good night.” He just nods again stiffly and turns and walks away.

It never happened, I think with some force.

Which is good, because my reckless decisions always have disastrous consequences.