Page 48

RUMI

If Ava wasn’t the manager of a successful local coffee shop, she would make a very impressive detective.

The way she is interrogating me right now makes me feel like I did something much worse than fool around with Jack in the back corner of the library.

“Rumi Lillith Matthews, I swear, if you had sex bent over a dusty shelf in that library, I will never let you hear the end of it. Tell me what you were up to when he showed up and whisked you away from me and the Pilates Moms.”

I cover my face with my hands, lucky that we don’t open Hey Honey’s for another five minutes and there are no customers to hear my best friend give me the third degree.

I avoided Ava’s accusatory glances during the author’s read aloud, and she let me off the hook long enough to chat with the author, Lauren, about her process and experience in publishing, telling her about the idea I had for my own children’s book.

After giving me her card with plans to get coffee and chat more next week, Ava and I headed home with Evee.

Ava had to get ready for her date with Anderson when we got home so she didn’t sit me down and ask what I was doing when I was supposed to be sitting with her and Evee in the Children’s Corner of the library.

But sadly, that luck ran out this morning when I walked out of my bedroom to a whirlwind of Ava’s questions.

“We didn’t have penetrative sex,” I say, the words muffled from behind my hands.

“And what the hell does that mean?” Her hands are on her hips when I peek at her through my fingers.

“Oh, I think I hear Evee crying,” I say, dropping my hands and trying to run past her, but she grabs my arm, spinning me around to face her.

“You and I both know she is dead asleep in that Pack ‘n Play. Tell me.” Her grip on my arm tightens, reminding me how scary my best friend can be.

I groan. “Fine.”

Within the five minutes before we have to unlock the doors, and the various lulls we have in our morning shift together, I tell Ava all of the details from my little rendezvous with Jack, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen my best friend this proud of me.

By the time Emerson and Luke come to finish the afternoon and early evening shift, Ava is bursting at the seams to share with her co-conspirators that all their hand work is paying off.

“I’m sick of all of you,” I tell the three of them as I take off my apron, hanging it on my hook behind the office door.

But, in reality, I can’t explain how happy it makes me to have friends that care about this relationship with Jack as much as I do.

I’ve never had friends, let alone friends who wanted to see me—and him—happy and cared enough about us to help make it happen.

“Yeah, yeah,” Emerson says from next to me, grabbing her apron off her hook, and Ava shakes her head at me as she holds Evee and her diaper bag, already ready to drop her off at Jack’s mom’s house tonight for me.

“Who would’ve thought?” Luke chimes in. “Our first Hey Honey’s couple. This might be the start of a Hey Honey’s crew.”

The three of us look at him, raised brows and cocked heads, having no idea what he’s talking about.

“What?” Luke asks, crossing his arm and leaning against the door frame of the office. The mid-afternoon rush has come and gone, so the four of us are taking advantage of the lack of customers to talk.

“Are we just going to pretend what you said isn’t stupid?” Emerson asks, always the first one to say something, especially when there’s an opportunity to call out someone not making any sense.

“Sometimes I forget how much you’re like your brother,” Luke says with a sigh.

“What I meant was, you know what Mia’s brother calls me, Annie, Mia, Eddie, Drew, and Emmett?

The Lennys’ crew? It all started with Drew and Emmett, the first Lenny’s couple.

From there, it all just bloomed into the family we are now. ”

“So?” Emerson says, the three of us still trying to make sense of what he’s saying.

“So,” Luke says, stretching out the word. “The three of you are so close, and now Jack and Rumi are a couple. It’s like you guys are following in our footsteps.”

I open my mouth to correct him—seeing as though Jack and I have yet to discuss him calling me his girlfriend when we went to his mom’s house—but I decide against it, liking the sound of the two of us being a couple.

“Why are you making this so weird?” Emerson asks, and Ava and I laugh, which causes Luke to throw up his hands in frustration, but I can see the grin he’s trying to hold back.

“All I’m saying is, this could be the start of something special. Mark my words.” He turns to head back to the front just as the chime to the front door rings.

The three of us look at each other and let out another laugh, but there’s something about what Luke says that sticks with me, something I can’t stop thinking about on our way home or on my way over to Jack’s for the night.

Maybe this all is the start of something special.

“Wow, you look awful.”

It’s the last thing I expected to say when Jack opened his front door for our first night together, the one we’ve been looking forward to all week is.

His skin is pale and clammy, and dark circles hang beneath his sunken eyes. He clutches his stomach, as he leans against the door, his eyes bloodshot. “I’m so sorry.”

“Now who’s apologizing for something that isn’t his fault.” I hadn’t brought anything over after Jack suggested we could go out before coming back to the house for the night, but, by the looks of it, I don’t think he’s in any shape to leave.

“I meant to call, but I fell asleep on the couch after I got home from my shift this morning.” He runs a hand through his bed head, the dark strands messy and sticking out at odd angles. “I really wanted to spend time with you, but I don’t want to get you sick.”

I wave a hand, stepping through the front door. “I trust my immune system, and you look like you could use some help .” My eyes assess him up and down, his clothes are rumpled and damp from what I can only assume is a fever.

With how sluggish he is as we walk toward his kitchen, he looks like he’s seconds away from falling over.

“Have you eaten?” I ask him, and he shakes his head as he sits down at the chair at his kitchen counter.

“I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to keep anything down.” His eyes roam to the empty high chair at the edge of the counter. “Did Evee make it to my mom’s?” he asks, and I’ll never get over how he is always concerned with Evee, making sure she’s good and taken care of.

“All good. Ava texted me that Em was there when she dropped her off, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Ava is still there.

She texted me how much she loved your mom, and they met literally half an hour ago.

She sent me a picture of the four of them from outside on your mom’s patio.

” I pull out my phone, pulling up the selfie that Ava sent me to show to Jack.

“Good,” Jack says, looking at the picture, but he looks like he’s in pain when he tries to smile.

I set my phone on the table, walking over to the sink to fill up Jack’s water bottle he has drying next to the sink. “Let’s start with getting you hydrated, and then we can revisit the food.”

Handing him his water bottle, he brings it to his chapped lips, taking a few big sips. I see the cold medicine he must have taken when he got home today and push that over to him too. He takes the pills with a couple more sips of water.

Looking down at my dress, I feel overdressed to be a caretaker for the night, so I ask Jack if I can raid his dresser for something cozier to wear.

I brought pajamas over, as well as anything else I needed to spend the night, but I don’t think the tiny silk shorts and tank top fit with tonight’s new agenda.

“You’re telling me I have to look at you, in my clothes, in my bedroom, when I’m too sick to even touch you?”

“Relax, firefighter. You’ll be asleep in half an hour after taking those pills. Hopefully you’ll sleep this off and feel better in the morning.” I turn to head up the stairs to his headroom, but he grabs my hand to stop me.

“I really am sorry about our night.” His voice is soft, his eyes sad, and I don’t like it.

“Things happen. Not to mention, I have a one-year-old daughter. Better get used to our relationship having interruptions,” I tell him, running a hand through his hair, feeling his too-hot skin against my palm. “I’ll be right back.” I give his hand a squeeze before heading upstairs.

Not exactly sure what to expect, I walk into Jack’s bedroom and am pleasantly surprised with how nice it is. I’ve seen glimpses in the background on our nightly FaceTime calls, but this is my first time seeing the whole space.

In the two months Jack has lived here, he’s done a lot of unpacking and making the house much more of a home—even though I thought it felt like one the first week he moved in.

His bed is neatly made with a sleek gray duvet, and the simple wooden headboard gives the room a clean, put-together feel. The dark furniture is a nice contrast to light blue walls, a big TV hung just in front of the bed—one I plan on taking full-advantage of tonight while Jack sleeps.

After finding one of Jack’s T-shirts and a pair of his sweatpants in his surprisingly organized dresser, I throw his clothes on, my sundress forgotten in a pile on the floor.

His T-shirt is soft and smells like him, but his sweatpants barely stay above my hips, even with pulling the drawstrings as tightly as they go.

I pull my hair up in a ponytail, wanting it out of my face and head into his bathroom to wash off the little makeup I have on.

I thought I’d feel more disappointed with the night taking this sort of turn, but it’s nowhere to be found. I’m just happy to spend time with Jack, no matter what it looks like.

There’s this part of me that feels like we have all the time in the world. We’re taking things slow; there’s no pressure to rush anything.

And with all the time that passes, it feels more like this is something that is built to last.

When I head back downstairs, I find Jack laying down on the couch, the cold medicine already kicking in.

“Hey, let’s get you upstairs.” The sun is still high in the sky, the mid-July evening looking like the middle of the day with how bright it is, but he needs to sleep this off.

Jack mumbles something against the couch cushions, but he makes no effort to move. Grabbing his arm, his skin is hot to the touch. I press the back of my hand to his forehead, and he is burning up.

Heading into the kitchen, I find a cloth and wet it with cold water, bringing it back over to Jack and gently placing it on his forehead. He hums as the cool cloth meets his skin, and I dab it on his cheeks as he closes his eyes. “That feels good,” he says quietly.

I shush him, continuing to move the cloth to the hot skin on his neck, but he opens his eyes.

“Look at me,” he whispers, so I do, meeting his gaze.

His hand comes to cup my cheek from where he’s laying down, and I settle beside him sitting on the couch.

“I could look at you forever,” he says, but his eyes have a glaze to them that tells me he’s barely conscious right now, the cold medicine taking effect no matter how hard he tries to fight it.

“We have to get you up to bed,” I tell him.

“The first time I saw you, I knew you were going to be okay. You had to be.” The words seem odd, random even. The first time he saw me, we were in the middle of a coffee shop.

“Okay, firefighter.” I stand up, setting the cloth on the coffee table, trying to reign in my smile at his gibberish. He probably has no idea what he’s saying, maybe isn’t even fully awake right now.

“And I knew I was going to be okay,” he adds as I grab his arms, helping him sit up. “I saw it in your eyes. The peace I only ever found on the lake.”

There he goes again about my eyes. It reminds me of what he said on our way to the drive-in, how my eyes were the same color of the lake he fished on.

“I saw it when I found you.”

When he found me?

He makes running into each other by complete chance at Hey Honey’s that day seem like an act of the universe, like something so simple was bound to happen.

Then again, maybe it was.

Pulling him by the arms, he finally sits up from the couch, slowly standing, so we can head to the stairs.

With an arm around my shoulder, I help him up each stair, holding onto him with one arm and the railing with the other to keep us both steady.

It takes a while, every step Jack puts more and more weight on me, but we finally make it up to his bedroom.

“There we go, “ I say, pulling back the comforter and sheets and helping him to bed.

“I was planning on asking you to be my girlfriend tonight,” he says as his head hits the pillow. I barely hear him with how heavy my breathing is, completely out of breath from helping him up those stairs.

Lifting his tree trunks of legs with all of my strength, I help him under the covers. “Don’t worry about that right now,” I reassure him, grabbing his comforter and pulling it over his body.

“Will you be my girlfriend?” he asks, his voice thick and hoarse and slightly muffled from how he’s laying on his pillow.

I can’t help but laugh. “I’m not sure now is the time you want to have this conversation.”

“Please,” he begs, and the way he says it is something I know he’d be embarrassed about if he was going to even remember this conversation. “I promise I’ll be the best boyfriend you’ve ever had.”

“That’s not really helping your case right now.” I run my hand through his hair as I sit beside him, feeling how hot his forehead is—his fever definitely hasn’t broken yet.

He ignores me, continuing to speak as if I didn’t say anything. “And then I’ll be the best husband, and, if you let me, the best dad to Evee.” His words trail off as the cold medicine takes effect, his eyelids closing as if they weigh a thousand pounds.

What the hell did he just say?