Page 93 of How to Say I Do
We made it upstairs with only a little dancing. I wanted to show off how I could tap dance on the stairs like Fred Astaire, and the sounds my boots made were pretty cool, I thought. And I had to tell Noël about his hat. “I like that your hat is right there. It means you’re comfy enough to put it there, you know?”
When we were finally all the way upstairs, Noël steered me into my bedroom and started stripping me. T-shirt over the head, jeans unbuttoned and dropped to the ground. I tried to shuck them before I got my boots off, and I ended up in a heap and trapped in denim. Noël called me a lush and kissed my forehead after he helped me to freedom.
I flopped into bed like an oak tree being felled. The mattress squealed, the bed frame creaked, and Noël flinched and froze like he was waiting for the whole thing to collapse like a bundle of match sticks. Outside, Garth Brooks was wailing away about his many friends in low places.
I held out my hand across the mattress. Noël hadn’t turned on any lights. The glow from the yard flickered through the curtains. Noël was a specter, a silhouette composed of soft sparkles and incomplete places. I caught the curve of his shoulder, the straight line of his jaw. The tight, slim profile of his midsection, and the slender run of his bare back as he stripped off his own shirt. He seemed otherworldly, like the perfect man I’d conjured up out of my adolescent daydreams had come to life by some magical spell, and then a tornado had picked him up and dropped him at my doorstep.
He slithered into bed and cuddled close. I shifted one of my legs between his slender thighs and ran my hand from his knee to his hip. He dipped his thumb into my bellybutton and drew circles on my lower abdomen until I was twitching with the pre-tickle flutters.
I captured his hand and tangled our fingers. “I’m real glad I bought you that burger.”
He studied me, the glitter from the lights outside floating in and out of his eyes. Maybe what I’d said was insensitive. The reason I’d bought him that burger, after all, was because he’d looked like his life had just ended and he might’ve appreciated a little bit of saving, or at least a carbohydrate or two. There was something there, though, some connection my wine-soaked brain was trying to make. Me trying to save Noël from a bad day, him turning around and pulling me out of my cloistered life. Me saving him, him saving me.
Noël scooted closer. “I’m glad you did, too.”
“And then you insulted me.”
He scrunched up his nose like he’d just bit into a mustang grape. “I’m sorry—”
“Don’t be,” I laughed. “I started falling in love with you that second.”
He trailed his fingers up my cheekbone and into my disheveled hair. “You have strange, strange tastes, Wyatt McKinley.”
I wanted to explain to him all of my whirling, muddled thoughts, tell him that he had always been the man for me, that my taste had always been him, that I’d dreamed of him since I was sixteen and had sneaked looks at the pages ofThe Wine Enthusiast. Sure, okay, Noël didn’t know a thing about wine when we met, and maybe I’d shot off into impossible dreams after only two days together, and maybe we were never meant to be more than a vacation hookup, but… but but but—
But here we were.
I buried my face in his wrist, inhaling the scent of his skin. He was so real against me, so solid and alive. “It means everything to me that you came today. I was scared to ask you to fly out.”
Noël brushed his lips against mine. I groaned, and he deepened the kiss, his hand cradling my cheek as I fell into the taste of him. When we finally drew apart, he looked right into my eyes. “I’m very glad you did.”
“I feel bad you’re missing things. The stuff that you do in New York is so much bigger than this place—”
“Stop. That’s not true. What I do is ridiculous. It’s all superficial nonsense.”
“Not all of it. You help people, like Tessa and London. That’s important.” Noël’s thumbtap-tap-tappedagainst the highest point of my cheekbone. “I don’t think it’s ridiculous.” My eyelids were drooping. Consciousness was slipping away. “Some of thosecelebritiesare ridiculous…”
“Oh, they are. They definitely are.”
“Love you,” I murmured. “So happy you’re here.”
Noël’s lips landed on my forehead. “Nothing could have stopped me, Wyatt. Not the entire fall line of Prada delivered to my closet. Not even Beyoncé.”
I cracked open one eye. “Would you have driven?”
He cringed. “I’m sure I could have found a very eager Uber driver hungry to experience all the natural beauty of… What’s between New York and Texas?”
“Well, you got the Mid-Atlantic, Appalachia, the Midwest…”
“Okay, Smarty, with the geography show-offs.” He mock-shoved me. I bear hugged him tighter and smiled.
“What if I said I needed more almond milk? And only you could drive it to me?”
I felt his laughter, and the soft exhales of his breath against my neck. “Go to sleep, cowboy.”
“Mmm, okay. Love you.”
And I did.
