Page 70 of First Love, Second Draft

“Mmm, I’m pretty sure there was a little lip action too. A car’s headlights got in my way, so I couldn’t tell for sure. But I do know this—buddies don’t look at each other the way they were looking at each other. Trust me.” Noah dipped his chin and hit Gracie with a tender, un-buddy-like gaze, before filling his mug with the coffee she’d brewed after he left when she needed something to do other than go crazy while she waited for an update. When that hadn’t been enough, she’d started baking brownies.

“Wow,” she murmured. “He was looking at her like that?”

“Like what?” Noah set the pot back on the burner.

“Uh, nothing.” She shook her head.Stop.One little tap of the lips that lasted hardly a millisecond, and now she was imagining smoldering looks from her ex-husband.

Husband!

No wait, she had it right the first time. Ex-husband.

“I’ve always thought those two would be perfect for each other,” Gracie said, needing to get her thoughts back on Matt and Rachel and far away from herself and Noah. “I was shocked when he asked Aimee to go to prom with him.”

“He didn’t ask her.”

“Of course he did. I took pictures of them before the dance.”

“But he thought he was going with Rachel.”

“Why would he think he was going with Rachel if he was going with Aimee?”

“Because Rachel set him up with Aimee. He thought she was setting him up with herself, but no, turned out to be Aimee. The whole thing was a disaster. He was crushed.”

“How do you know all this? He never said anything about Rachel or being crushed. I mean, good grief, he dated Aimee for what? Five years? He couldn’t have been that crushed.”

“He told me about it the other day. Said he never loved Aimee. He’s always loved Rachel.”

“So then why isn’t he doing anything about it? Rachel’s wonderful.”

“He is doing something about it. Or at least he’s trying to.Sometimes these things take time. Especially when there’s a strong-willed woman involved.” He hit her with another one of his smoldering, un-buddy-like gazes.

She really needed to figure out how to make him stop doing that. The smolder. The lip contact. All of it.

Maybe if she treated him more like a buddy, she’d douse these unwanted sparks.

Maybe the buddy system would also help them navigate the rough terrain they still had to cover in his memoir too. Instead of arguing, they could just be two platonic friends on a sole mission to finish the memoir.

Well, maybe their sole mission tonight could be to finish making brownies and work up a plan to help Matt and Rachel move beyond the platonic to something special.

But after that, first thing tomorrow—the memoir and only the memoir.

41

Matt didn’t know how long he had slept. An hour? Two? Twelve?

If he didn’t have to use the bathroom, he would have gladly gone on sleeping another hour, two, or twelve. Sleep had never felt so good. Not nearly as good as kissing Rachel had felt, but... yeah, pretty close. Which was more of a reflection on how badly he needed the sleep.

He blamed the headache for his sluggish response in the car. When she leaned across him to fasten his seat belt, all he’d wanted to do was drag her onto his lap and kiss her senseless. His brain didn’t know what to do when she plopped onto his lap and started kissinghimsenseless. By the time he realized what was happening, she was leaping off him like he was on fire—well, he sort of had been—and looking for any excuse to wipe her hands clean of him.

Why did it always look so easy for men like Noah? A few days after coming home and he was already hanging out with Aunt Gracie just like old times.

Matt shuffled to the toilet and relieved all the fluids the hospital had pumped into him during his short stay. Thoughts of Rachel were going to be much harder to get out of his system. What was it about her? No matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t shake her.

Granted, he hadn’t really tried all that hard. But still. Even now, he could still taste a hint of her cinnamon gum on his lips. Feel her soft hair beneath his fingertips. Hear her trademark snort-laugh.

Wait.

He finished washing his hands and paused. Hedidhear her laugh. Her voice. Here. Now. Downstairs.

---