She might have nodded off standing right there, because the next thing she remembered was him helping her on with one of his T-shirts and a pair of his boxer briefs and crawling into his bed. Her eyes were already shut when the bedside lamp clicked off, and the last thing she remembered was his arm closing around her middle and drawing her body into his.
The next morning, whenNoah nuzzled her cheek and whispered that he needed to let the dog out, AJ actually felt annoyed. She thought she was being woken from a dream.
It wasn’t until a few minutes later, when she opened her eyes and saw sunlight filtering into the soft gray room, that she remembered. She was at Drew House, and that hadn’t been a dream.
It was the real Noah Drew.
AJ was still in his clothes as she crept barefoot down the hall. She had never been at Drew House so early in the day, and the sunlight painted the entryway like a chapel. The grandfather clock had stopped during the night; as AJ descended the grand staircase, its unwound hands stood fixed at 12:13.
Noah was still out when AJ entered the kitchen. She helped herself to a glass from the cabinet, filled it with water from the pitcher in the fridge, took a seat at the quartz-topped island, and felt her heart rate spike at the intense strangeness of this situation.
So much had been said last night, but nothing had been resolved. They’d fallen on each other like animals, but they hadn’t even kissed. AJ looked around the palatial yellow kitchen and realized abruptly that she knew what lay behind every cabinet door, but not whether Noah drank coffee.
As the countless unknowns swirled up around her, the meanest parts of her brain descended like wolves through a fog.
What if this thing she had yearned for her entire life couldn’t survive the light of day?
AJ suddenly felt sure it could not. She couldn’t name one thing Noah liked to do in his spare time. And their bond hadn’t been the same sinceSNL.The idea of themhanging outfelt utterly absurd.
Fuck.He hadn’t seen her yet. AJ would call Libby and slip out.
As she rose to flee the kitchen, the screen door whinnied and Noah’s head and shoulders came into view. Her adrenaline surged.Fuck.This would be awkward. It would be awkward and awful, and they’d realize this connection they’d cherished was nothing more than a projection and—
Bud was sprinting across the tile floor, so overjoyed to see AJ that her ass was actually wiggling. She was thirteen now, a dowager with tearstains in her pretty eyes, but she moved well for an old lady.
“Aw, what a good girl,” said AJ, stiffly squatting to pet her. Budplayfully swiped her hand away, slowly wagging her tail as if to sayJusttry.AJ burst out laughing.
“That’s how you know she remembers you,” said Noah, grabbing Bud’s water bowl off the floor and walking it over to the sink. “She’s only a ‘good girl’ with people she doesn’t know.”
Bud trotted away from AJ and began to drink as soon as Noah replaced the dish. He straightened up as AJ stood, and the two of them looked at each other.
Holy shit,he was beautiful, his eyes sleepy but bright, his shoulders making the white Hanes T-shirt he was wearing look indecent. AJ froze. Then she felt it—the faintest energetic tug: warmth. She smiled at him shyly. Noah’s eyes creased at the corners.
“You like coffee, right?” he asked.
AJ swallowed. “Yes,” she said. “Do you? I thought you were a health nut.”
“I don’t,” said Noah. “And I am. But every time I’ve seen you over the last six years you’ve been holding a coffee the size of your torso, and I don’t want you to go into some kind of withdrawal.”
AJ smiled. She took a seat at the island and watched Noah reach into the far depths of a corner cabinet to extract a zany geometric metal pitcher.
AJ stared at it. “Is that from Sputnik?”
Noah gave her a miffed look. “This is an Italian espresso pot,” he said, twisting it in half.
“Oh, well then.”
Noah filled the contraption and set it to boil on the stove. As it heated, he began to prepare some extravagant concoction of his own. There was a lot of chopping of onions and tomatoes and cracking of eggs. “What do you like for breakfast these days?”
AJ sat up proudly. “Special K,” she declared, “withRed Berries.”
Noah gave her a disgusted look as he dumped his ingredients into a cast-iron skillet. “No wonder you’re thinking about Sputnik,” he said. “That stuff is dehydrated space food.”
“Actually, it’s a good source of eleven vitamins and minerals,” said AJ tartly. “It’s made withrealberries.”
“It’s shlock,” said Noah, who then had the audacity to peel open a can of sardines and add it to his cauldron.
AJ thought she was going to yak. “You’re one to talk,” she said. “What’s that—Voldemort’s resurrection soup? The witches’ brew fromMacb—”
