I ignore her jab. “Need to get it stripped down more. Need to see what I’m working with still.”
“But it’s already stripped pretty far down. We need to go deeper?”
Go deeper.
Pale-pink lace. Red hearts. A matching bow.
I take another swig of water. She didn’t mean a damn thing by those words, but my head is still so twisted up that it doesn’t matter.
I nod. “Yep. Redoing the roof completely. Don’t want it coming down while everyone’s doing the Electric Slide, do we?”
“Okay, first of all, we willnotbe doing the Electric Slide at all, becauseew. There will be no group dances.”
“I did group dances at my wedding.”
“Yeah, and look how that turned out,” she says, referring to my divorce.
I try not to laugh. There’s no love lost between me and Chelsea, and if I were allowed to have been involved in the wedding planning, I wouldn’t have had group dances either. “Fair enough.”
“Secondly,” she continues, “it didn’t look that bad to me. Are you sure we need to strip it naked?”
Strip it naked.
Naked.
I take another drink, hoping she doesn’t notice the shake of my hands. “Yep. I’m sure.”
She shrugs. “All right. Then let’s finish this up. Apparently we have work to do.”
So that’s what we do. We finish our lunch in silence. I clean up the kitchen while Odette runs to the restroom.
The second she’s gone, I breathe a sigh of relief, and my shoulders drop from my ears.
I had no idea I was holding such tension until now. I knew I was keyed up, but damn. This seems a bit extra.
Get a grip, Noah,I tell myself as I rinse the crumbs off our plates.She’s Izzy’s best friend. That’s all she’ll ever be.
I inhale a long, calming breath, then exhale it just as slowly, trying to get myself back in the right headspace and definitelynotthinking about Odette Chambers in ways I shouldn’t.
I’m just about done loading the dishes into the dishwasher when I hear my name hollered from across the house.
I spring into action, dropping the plate I was holding and taking off toward where Odette is calling for me.
“Noah!”
“What? What’s the matter?” I yell back, skidding to a stop in front of the closed bathroom door.
“There’s a spider!”
Holy fuck. Is she serious?
“Seriously?” I say through the door. “That’s why you’re screaming like someone’s trying to axe murder you?”
“No, I’m screaming like someone’s trying to axe murder me because there’s no toilet paper, so I can’t even wipe and escape this beast before I get eaten alive!”
Shit. I completely forgot to restock the downstairs bathroom. Now she’s stranded in there, panicking if the sound of her harsh breathing is any indication.
“Uh, can’t you drip-dry or something? Then I can come to kill the spider?”
