13
I CRAWL OUT of the bed with a groan and grab the oversized sweater hanging off the edge of my doorway. It’s a miracle that Luka managed to ignore it and not fold it into submission and tuck it into the proper bureau drawer as soon as he entered the room. He’d have a heart attack if he checked my closet and saw the sheer amount of things stuffed in there.
I slip the cardigan over my shoulders on my way to the front porch, elbowing my way out the front door, the floorboards freezing cold under my bare feet. I hop up and down in place until Luka nudges an old pair of rain boots in my direction, the inside lined with thick flannel. I slip into them gratefully. Luka’s boots are unlaced, a ferocious yawn opening his mouth wide as we both stare blearily into the late morning sun. I glance briefly down at the front of his sweatpants. He notices and gives me a rueful look.
“Like I’d walk onto your front porch with a boner,” he grumbles.
“Morning.”
I jump at Beckett’s overly cheerful voice at the edge of the porch. I don’t know how he infuses so much innuendo into a single word, but he manages, standing in front of his tractor with the cats perched atop him like he’s their king. Prancer has claimed her usual spot in the curve between his neck and shoulder, the three kittens fighting over the front pocket of his flannel.
I squint and wrap my sweater tighter around me, crossing my arms over my chest. I wish I had grabbed a pair of pants too. The wind is cold against the backs of my knees. “Why are you serenading me with your tractor horn this morning?”
Beckett smirks at me, stomps up my steps, and hands Luka a kitten.
“Didn’t want to interrupt anything.”
Comet gives Luka a curious look, tiny head tilted to the side, likely trying to figure out if he can be trusted or not. They stare at each other, brown eyes on gold, blinking in consideration. Luka’s hair is wild from sleep, sticking in every direction. I wish I had the opportunity to sift my fingers through it, thread and pull and tug. Comet seems to be of the same mindset, because after a moment’s consideration, she lets out a plaintive meow and scampers
up his arm to curl atop his head.
I understand the impulse.
“You didn’t want to interrupt anything, but you proceeded to work your way through an early nineties Christmas hits catalog via your horn.”
Beckett shrugs and looks pointedly at my bare legs. “I didn’t want to see anything.”
I grumble. “Nothing to see.” There would have been, maybe, if he had been twenty minutes later.
I shiver as I scoop a sleeping Cupid out of Beckett’s shirt into the palm of my hand.
Only Luka’s eyes move as he tries to get my attention, the rest of his body held unnaturally still due to the kitten using his hair as a nest. “I still don’t understand where these cats came from.”
I hold out my arms to Beckett for the rest of the little family. Prancer gives me the same distrustful look as yesterday, pulling her mouth back in a hiss. I actively resist doing the same. Instead, I shush her gently and attempt to extricate her from Beckett’s grip, her claws holding on to his shirt for dear
life.
“It’s all right.”
One of the babies, at least, has decided I’m worth trusting. Vixen walks herself up my arm from Beckett’s pocket and sits primly on my shoulder, tail tickling at my ear. Cupid purrs into my hand, still asleep and unbothered by all of the commotion. Prancer, meanwhile, is shredding the front of Beckett’s shirt in her anxiety. I curl my hand around her and try to pull. “Easy, you’ll be back with your true love soon enough.”
“They’re the raccoons from the barn,” Beckett explains to Luka, gentling my grip on Prancer and curling his large hands around her. He pulls her up
and nuzzles her nose once with his, her grip releasing on his shirt with a tiny meow of farewell. It is sickeningly sweet, and I’m absurdly disappointed my phone is still sitting on my nightstand.
I just watched Beckett give a cat a goodbye kiss. I feel like we should put a plaque on this front porch. He watches me as I tuck Prancer into the crook of my elbow, the longing clear on his face. It’s both comical and endearing.
He shuffles his feet, rocking back on his heels once with his hands deep in his pockets. “I can pick them up tonight if you want?”
I tell myself to look solemn, to not make fun of the man for cat separation
anxiety. “Do you want to?”
“It’s nice to have the company.”
I soften at that. It’s hard to think of Beckett as anything other than stoic, but I recognize the shades of loneliness in him the same as me and Luka. It’s another reason I’m grateful for this farm and the weird little family we’ve pieced together. We’re all a bit less alone.
“Pick them up whenever you want. I’ll be in the office.”
He nods and heads back to his tractor, still rumbling in my driveway behind Luka’s crossover. We watch him go, Prancer declaring her disgruntlement with her claws in my hair.
“Okay, but they’re not raccoons, right? They’re cats.”
“Correct.”
“Still so confused.”
Luka reaches above his head for the dozing kitten and cradles her in his arms, following me into the house. I drift into my thoughts as I work to set the kittens up on a pile of old blankets in the corner, and Luka reheats the coffee, pulling down two mugs with winking Santa faces. Comet saunters her way over after she leaps out of Luka’s arms, settling into her new blanket home with her family. They tuck themselves together in a happy pile of content meows, dozing in the sunlight painting patterns across my hardwood.
I suppose I should be more tangled up about what happened this morning, but the truth is simple enough. I want Luka. I’ve always wanted Luka. And this morning felt like just the type of indulgence everyone is always telling me I need.
Didn’t Layla say I should enjoy my time with him? Didn’t I do exactly that?
I glance over at him standing at the sink with his hand curled around a mug of coffee. He’s been stirring with the same spoon for close to a minute now, the metal clinking against the ceramic every rotation around the cup. I watch as his lips turn down at the corners, and he shakes his head slightly, just once, like he’s having an argument only he can hear.
“Should we—” I swallow around my hesitation and watch as Luka blinks back to himself. A jolt in his shoulders as he straightens. “Do you want to talk about this morning?”
He pauses and then sets the spoon in the sink, the split second of indecision lodging my heart firmly in my throat. I don’t want him to hesitate with me. I never want to lose the ease between us.
He meets me in the living room, extending a hand to help me from my crouched position on the floor. There’s no jolt of electricity when our skin touches, just the sweet, settling warmth I always feel. Like the first bite of pie after waiting for it to cool on the racks next to the oven, tart and delicious. Or clothes fresh out of the dryer in the middle of winter. Steady and sure. A familiar comfort.
He pulls his hand away and tucks it into the front of his sweatshirt, flipped back to the proper direction at some point this morning. His knee shakes up and down, and he takes his hand out and runs it through his hair instead. He looks up at me from under his lashes, reluctant, and settles his hand on the back of his neck. “Uh, do you want to?”
“I think we should,” I say quietly, dropping onto the cushion next to him.
Another hesitation, and I tuck my feet under his thigh. His entire body collapses at the movement, shoulders curling in with relief, a sigh escaping from somewhere deep in his chest. His hand finds my ankle and wraps around it lightly, thumb over ring finger. It’s the same way we’ve always fallen together on this couch, and there’s a reassurance in that. He gives me a sheepish smile.
“I didn’t—” He squeezes my leg once. “I didn’t make you uncomfortable, did I?” When I don’t answer right away, his hand squeezes harder at the back
of his neck, knuckles turning white. “I didn’t expect for that to—”
“No, I wasn’t uncomfortable.” The opposite, actually. “I just—” I think of how he moved against me, the way his bottom lip dragged against the skin at the back of my neck. I clear my throat and wrap my sweater tighter around my torso. “We haven’t done that before.”
We’ve hugged. We’ve cuddled. We’ve twisted ourselves around each other on the couch watching movies. But we’ve never panted into each other’s skin. Moved together to chase friction and heat and wanting.
“No, we have not,” he says, a little bit shy. He finally releases his neck and smiles into his coffee. I like this version of him, almost as much as I like the version of him that sits with his legs spread wide in my rocking chair, saying the word fucking. “Was it weird?”
I’ve been waiting all morning to feel the awkwardness, the panic. To feel weird about my best friend whispering into my ear about the noises I make.
But I’ve felt only the same bubbly feeling of contentment I’ve felt since he kissed me in the barn. I don’t know, maybe I’ll have a breakdown about it later, but right now, I feel—I feel okay. Good.
“It’s weird that it wasn’t weird, I think. Does that make sense?”
He straightens a bit at that. “That makes sense,” he offers. “We’ve been friends forever, and that was—” A knowing smile hovers on his lips, and I practically feel the drag of his gaze over the hollow of my throat. “I was dreaming of you, and when I woke up, you were warm and soft, and . . . I guess I couldn’t resist.” One finger strokes against my ankle bone. “That’s
been a temptation for a while.”
I blink at him. “What has?”
“Well, I mean, not specifically grinding against you in bed,” he says quickly, and then pauses, tilting his head back and forth in consideration.
“Actually, I guess, yeah. Specifically grinding against you in bed.” He gives me a cheeky smile, color rising in his cheeks. I pinch at his ribs.
“Be serious, please.”
“I am being serious.” He laughs, pulling himself out of pinching distance.
He comes right back to me, though, when I settle into the couch and reach for the kittens, stroking their tiny heads with my knuckles.
“I think—” He shifts in his seat, places his coffee on the table, and grips my ankles, maneuvering my legs so they’re tucked at his side. “This social media person arrives Monday, right? And she’s here for a week?” He rests
his chin on my knees.
I nod.
“A recap, then. We don’t feel weird about this morning. And it’s weird not to feel weird. But it’s a good weird?”
I nod again and he smiles, a dip of sunlight catching in his hair. I glare at it, half expecting a family of bluebirds to fly in through the crack in the window and settle on his shoulders.
“Okay, so how about this. We’re supposed to be pretending anyway.
What if we use this week as a trial period? For me and you. See how it goes.”
“A trial period?”
“Yes.”
“See how it goes?”
“Are you just going to repeat back what I say to you?”
I rub my thumb into my temple. “I think I need you to explain it.”
“Okay, so”—he narrows his eyes and tilts his head—“like how we’re acting in public. What if we tried that when we were alone, too? Take this morning as an example. We wanted to try it, so we did. And we’re still okay.
I think—I think if it feels right, we should follow it.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning if we’re here, and I want to press you into the countertop and see what you taste like, then I can try that.” My stomach swoops low. He
nuzzles my knee. “If you want.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Obviously.”
It is not obvious to me.
“Like a friends-with-benefits situation?” I don’t like the idea of that.
He shakes his head, making a sour face. It reassures me. “No. I think—I think we both feel the tension between us, yeah?”
I nod. I can’t believe I’m admitting that I’ve thought about him like that, about us like that.
“Then this will just be, I don’t know, a week of actual dating and all that entails. We don’t have to turn it off when we’re alone.”
I consider it. I’m not sure how I feel about a seven-day-guarantee approach to the most important relationship in my life. “And we’ll still be
friends? No matter what?”
He nods firmly. “No matter what.”
“Do you promise me?”
I need a promise. In fact, I’d prefer a legally binding document with our names signed in blood at the bottom. I know Alex at the bookstore notarizes documents from time to time. I wonder if he’d be willing to press a seal to something written on the back of a take-out menu. This feels like an oversimplification of a complicated addition to an irreplaceable relationship.
I’ve watched enough romantic comedies to know this is probably going to end badly for one of us, and my money is on me.
Luka tugs at my bottom lip with his thumb until I release it, tracing the indents left from my teeth. He is earnest, open, and I’m grateful that he seems to be taking this as seriously as I am.
“I promise you, Stella. Cross my heart.” He makes a little x over his chest.
“This is as low pressure as it gets. No expectations. We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do.”
That’s the problem. I can’t think of many things I don’t want to do with Luka, and I’m not so sure indulging in a week before cutting myself off forever sounds like a good plan. I once tried to give up caffeine cold turkey.
Layla found me shivering in my office in the middle of summer, chewing frantically on sticks of gum. I don’t know if they make gum strong enough for Luka withdrawal.
“Right at this moment though, you know what feels right?” He leans forward until the tip of his nose drags against my cheek, and my heart leaps to my throat, that same delicious tension from earlier this morning pooling low in my belly when his hands drag up my shins, over the outside of my thighs. He lingers there with his palms cupping my bare skin, fingertips just barely brushing under the hem of my shorts. I can think of plenty of things
that would feel good right now, starting with me pressed out flat against this couch.
Luka smiles at me, one side of his mouth hitching up, then the other. I stare at the pattern of freckles just under his left eye. “Omelets with bacon,” he whispers.
WE EAT OUR omelets at the table like civilized human beings, a respectable 2.5 feet of solid barn wood table between us. Despite our decision on this new aspect of our relationship, there is no more lingering in each other’s space. There is no kissing or touching or even heated glances. There’s just me and Luka, a half-empty carton of almost expired orange juice, a stack of crispy bacon, breakfast potatoes, and his fork on my plate every other bite, trying to steal my cheese.
“I don’t understand why you don’t just put cheese in your omelet.” I pull my plate out of his reach again and grab a slice of his bacon for good
measure. He’s driving me nuts.
“I don’t like cheese in my omelet.”
His wandering fork says differently. He reaches for the orange juice and gives it a good shake before topping off my glass and his. He looks more rested now, the faint circles under his eyes gone. The restorative properties of dry humping, I guess. He catches me staring at him.
“What?”
“Why did you leave the city so early?” I fork another bite of egg into my mouth. I don’t know how he manages to get the bacon so crispy once it’s inside the omelet. Witchcraft, probably.
He shrugs but looks away from me, frowning at his egg whites and spinach. Eyes full of longing slide over to my plate. Eggs with cheddar and bacon and Old Bay. I tug it closer to my side of the table. If he wanted a delicious omelet, he should have made one for himself instead of the health prescription he has loaded in front of him.
“Wanted to,” he mumbles. Pink touches the tips of his ears. “I missed—I missed home, and I couldn’t sleep, so I just drove back.”
I don’t like the idea of Luka not being able to sleep. I frown. “Does your mom know you’re back?”
He nods toward the coffee machine. “Where do you think I got that
from?”
“You stole your mom’s coffee?”
“No, she had it sitting out with a bright blue sticky note that said, ‘For Stella,’ along with some creative threats in Italian if I took any liberties with your coffee.” He leans back in the chair and hooks his arm around the back of it, feet kicked wide. It shouldn’t look so indecent. All he’s doing is sitting in my kitchen chair. But the sheer amount of space he takes up with his body and remembering how much space he took up in my bed—it has me shifting in my chair. “I saw it and figured I’d just come over. Crash on your couch.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
One dark eyebrow jumps on his forehead. “Crash on your couch?”
I nod and he smiles. He looks down at the tabletop and then back up to me, bashful with a touch of heat. “Yeah, me too.”
We settle back into silence as I think through my list of what needs to be done today. One of the kittens is investigating the orange juice, another weaving through the salt and pepper shakers. Prancer and Vixen haven’t moved from their cozy spot by the window, bathed in a halo of sunshine. I’ll return them to Beck tonight, and it’s likely he won’t volunteer to ever bring them back. I guess our shared custody agreement is officially over.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and the following day our official holiday season is open. We’ve had some customers here and there, mainly people from town visiting Layla for their sugar fix. But we’ve had a couple of people come for trees too. One family in particular, with a beleaguered-looking dad and two overexcited preteens hopping up and down in their matching winter coats. They had declared it Christmas at the start of November, apparently, and were tired of waiting for their tree.
“I don’t think I’m going to stay in New York much longer,” Luka says.
He partners that bombshell statement with a sip of his orange juice and a
crunch of bacon. Comet skitters away from the condiments and hurries back to her pallet of blankets and sunshine. He shrugs a little bit. “I’m not really happy there.”
I blink at him and think through some of our recent conversations. Didn’t he spend forty-five minutes the other day explaining the superiority of good public transit? I’m pretty sure he composed a poem about that halal chicken cart in front of his apartment.
Stupidly, that’s what I fixate on. “I thought you liked your street chicken.”
He ignores me. “There’s a start-up in Delaware that’s been trying to recruit me. They’re small, and it’s really different from what I’m doing now.
Less client-facing stuff, but I’d be closer. And I could—I could work remotely more.”
Luka in Delaware. That’s only—I can drive to the Delaware border in twenty minutes. There’s even a fish taco stand on the way if I head toward the coast and take the scenic route. We could meet at the beach on summer mornings and have coffee with our toes in the sand. I tamp down the rush of excitement and try to channel the part of me that’s supposed to be an impartial best friend, a sounding board for big decisions like this.
“Is that what you want to do?”
As far as I know, New York has always been his plan. Working at a big marketing agency, leading the data team—it’s always seemed like something he’s happy doing. He scratches at the back of his head and meticulously extricates a piece of spinach from his omelet with the tip of his fork. He gives it a look like it’s insulted his mother. “I’d be happy being closer. I don’t know. I don’t think the city is for me anymore. It feels too big. And my mom says she’s tired of taking the bus up for visits.”
She has never once taken the bus. Luka always books her a ticket on the fancy Acela train that runs up and down the coast, and she’s delivered to New York in less than two hours, tipsy off mini bottles of cheap wine. She says the train reminds her of Italy, but instead of the rolling golden hills of Tuscany vineyards outside her window, she’s forced to look at a wasteland of
capitalism.
“But would you be happy? In Delaware?”
The tension slips from his shoulders, and his hand loosens its grip on his hair. He gives me a look, a half smile curled across his lips. There’s a secret there, hidden in the lines of his face. “I think I would, yeah.”
I can’t help my grin. It spills out of me like the sunshine making my kitchen glow. I let myself indulge in the fantasy of it for a moment, the possibility of Luka close by. “You know there’s a—”
“Fish taco stand, yeah.” His fork finds my omelet again, but this time I let him. I’m feeling magnanimous. “It’s not street chicken, but I think I’ll manage.”
I push my plate in front of him and let him have at it. All I wanted was the bacon anyway. I pluck the rest of his from his abandoned plate. “While we’re on the topic of living arrangements, we should probably figure out this week.”
He doesn’t look up from where he’s shoveling food in his face. “I’m supposed to bring you to Thanksgiving tomorrow by any means necessary,” he says around a mouthful of potato. “My mother specifically said that she doesn’t care if you’re unconscious at the table, just that you wake up in time for pie.”
“That’s . . . violent, but not what I was talking about.”
“Oh.” He sits up and drags his thumb across his bottom lip, catching a bit of ketchup before popping it in his mouth and licking it off. I am sufficiently distracted. “What are we talking about, then?”
“Evelyn thinks we own this place together. If you’re staying at your mom’s while you’re here, she’ll probably think that’s weird.”
Luka nods and spears a leftover breakfast potato. “Then I’m glad I brought the good coffee, roomie.”
