“Art is…complicated.” He glances over the fridge door like he’s going to say something. “Kinda like baseball.”
“Got it,” he says and shuts the fridge.
Less than ten minutes later, we’re sitting side by side at the breakfast bar, eating the most delicious salmon bowls—the ones that went viral a few years ago but always felt too complicated for me to attempt. Liam threw this lunch together with stuff I didn’t even realize we had in the house.
After we eat, I clean the dishes, then stress-clean the entire kitchen. When my life feels chaotic, scrubbing counters calms me down. Liam offers to help, but I wave him off, insisting that since he cooked, the least I can do is clean.
“I’d hardly call that cooking,” he says, but he gives me my space as he grabs his own laptop and settles back on the couch. “That was more like microwaving.”
I start the dishwasher and put away all the ingredients from our lunch. While I clean, I steal glances at Liam, tapping away on his computer. Sometimes his face is scrunched in concentration, and sometimes I catch him watching me before we both quickly look away.
“What are you working on?” I ask, opening my laptop again after the kitchen is gleaming to my liking.
“I do the taxes for a couple of the guys on the Iron Cats,” he says. “We don’t make a lot of money in the minors, so pretty much everyone has side jobs.”
“You do their taxes?”
“Yeah, Soph,” he chuckles. “That’s my side job.”
I know he doesn’t make a big league salary yet, but he’s doing other guys’ taxes? He alsohasn’t told me why he’s taking a break from baseball, but this is the first conversation in the past week that’s been longer than me asking, “Is this your sweaty shirt?” and him complaining, “Can we please open a goddamn window? It’s a hundred degrees in here.” I also haven’t told him why all my art supplies are still in a heap next to the front door, exactly where I dropped them at 3 a.m. that first night.
That first night. When Liam slid his hands into my panties and asked if he could make me come.
“You okay?” Liam asks, and I realize I closed my eyes and might have been biting my bottom lip.
“Yup, totally!” I squeak, “Well, we should both get some work done!”
We both work in companionable silence for the rest of the afternoon. True to his word, Liam eventually takes a break, scoops up all his laundry scattered around the house, and starts a load. I don’t say anything when he cracks the window again.
“Thanks again for taking the couch,” I say later, when Liam is making up his bed.
“Sure,” he says, fluffing his pillow. “It makes sense, I’m kinda an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person. I blame it on two decades of early morning practices.”
His forearms flex as he tucks the blanket into the couch cushions, the definition in his quads visible through the tight pull of his shorts. I suck in a small inhale.
“Sorry,” he says, turning towards me when I realize I haven’t responded to him. “Do I wake you up in the mornings? I try to be quiet.”
“No,” I shake my head and try to regain my composure. “Living with five people teaches you how to sleep through—” I pause, thinking of Marshall’s orgasm chant the night I left, “—pretty much anything.”
A few beats of quiet passbetween us.
“Okay then,” I say, turning towards Cal’s room. “I’ll let you get to bed.”
“Night, Soph. See you in the morning.”
And for reasons I don’t fully understand yet, I’m actually looking forward to that.
Chapter 7
Liam
Sophie emerges from Cal’s room, all sleep rumpled and wild curls, and walks straight to his overcomplicated espresso machine, which I still haven't figured out. She carries two perfect lattes into the living room, silently placing one on the coffee table in front of me, then settling into the chair, tucking her legs underneath her, and taking a long sip. Her eyes close, and I watch the way her chest rises and falls with her breathing.
Over the past week, we’ve fallen into this weird little rhythm. I make sure she eats something that doesn’t come from a box, and she makes sure we don’t die of dysentery—I swear she scrubs the counters within an inch of their lives every day. I keep track of where she drops her keys and her phone charger. And every morning, she makes me the perfect caffeinated shot without a word, like it’s no big deal. But I kind of think it is.
She opens her eyes, and I quickly avert mine, back to my laptop. She looks around the table. “Do you see my—”
I hold up her ridiculous pink pen that she tucks into her messy bun, but it always falls out when she leans over.
