Page 66 of We Can Do
“I love how you don’t use complex language or name anything most people wouldn’t know.” I tap the page with my pen. “You’re not trying to impress anyone with jargon. You’re actually teaching.”
Reaching across the table, I steal a sip of his coffee. The bitter richness hits my tongue—he takes it black, of course. When I try to withdraw my hand, though, he takes hold of it, his fingers warm against mine, and kisses my knuckles softly.
Then he slides the coffee over to me with his free hand.
“I just wanted one sip,” I protest, but I’m already reaching for the mug again.
“Sure.” He’s staring at me in that dreamy way, eyes hooded, that makes me suspect he didn’t hear a word I said. His thumb traces circles on my palm.
“Whatever,” I laugh, the sound echoing in the empty bakery.
“So what else?” He’s still holding my hand, our fingers intertwined across the table. The late afternoon sun slants through the windows, turning his brown eyes almost amber.Giddiness spirals through my chest, making it hard to focus on the task at hand.
It’s been almost two months since we started dating, since that first kiss in his kitchen with flour in my hair. Each week we’ve spent more and more time together—cooking dinners in his tiny apartment above the bakery, walking along the harbor on his rare afternoons off, falling asleep to old movies neither of us really watches. Even though Noah has to be at the bakery at four in the morning to start the day’s bread, we usually spend the night together at my place or his. It’s more rare that we’re not waking up together, his alarm pulling us both from sleep while it’s still dark outside.
Which I love. Fully and completely. Even the early mornings.
It’s getting hard to even remember life before him. Whatever it was, though, I know that I don’t want it back.
“How is the style?” He prompts, squeezing my fingers gently.
I glance at my notes, working hard to draw my attention back to the task at hand. My handwriting fills the margins—suggestions, questions, little hearts I’ve drawn without thinking.
“I made some notes on places where it would be helpful to break up the sentences. Some of them run on pretty long and don’t match the layman’s terms vibe you’re going for. And I do have some suggestions for where it would make sense to move paragraphs around...”
Thinking about it, I jot down another note about flour types, trying to concentrate on the work. It’s hard to focus when Noah stands, walks around the table with deliberate slowness, and draws me up from my chair and right onto his lap.
“Hey.” I loop my arms around his neck, the manuscript forgotten on the table. “We’re supposed to be working.”
“I know.” He smiles sheepishly, that boyish expression that makes him look younger than his thirty-six years, and holds me closer. His hands settle at my waist. “I just couldn’t resist.”
“I’m not saying I hate it.” Dipping my face, I give him a kiss, soft at first, testing.
His lips pulse against mine, warm and insistent. His tongue encourages my mouth open so that it can slip between my teeth for further exploration. I taste coffee and something sweet—probably from sampling today’s cinnamon raisin batch. Heat coils between my legs, a welcome distraction from the aching pain there that’s been my constant companion.
Unfortunately, I’ve been having symptoms the entire time we’ve been dating. The familiar burning, the pressure, the need to excuse myself too often. Which means we still haven’t “gone all the way”—as the old timers would put it. We’ve found other ways to be intimate, to learn each other’s bodies. In a way, it’s been nice, this slow, purposeful exploration—hands and mouths discovering sensitive spots, building anticipation. At the same time, though, I’m left with an insatiable ache that’s always there. And that’s made worse by the knowledge that if we were to have penetrative sex right now, in the midst of a flare, it would end up with me curling into a ball with an ice pack pressed between my legs.
So, for now, we’re all about every other kind of touch. And Noah has been nothing but patient, nothing but understanding.
Our kiss turns heated and hungry, Noah’s hand sliding up my side, fingers tangling into my hair, tugging gently at the base of my skull. His other hand grips my ass, pulling me closer, and I adjust in his lap so that my knees are on either side of his thighs. The wooden chair creaks under our combined weight. I’m dimly aware of the windows around us, the street outside where people are walking home from work. Even though we’re the only ones in Rye Again, anyone passing by could—if they looked hard enough—see us pressed together like this.
But I almost don’t care. Being torn away from him, even by so much as an inch, feels unbearably painful. My hands frame his face, feeling the stubble along his jaw.
Noah’s phone goes off in his pocket, the vibration traveling through both of us. He groans against my mouth before breaking the kiss. “Sorry,” he rasps, his breathing uneven.
“It’s okay.” I shake my head, trying to calm my own racing pulse, and climb off his lap so that he can retrieve his phone. My legs feel unsteady.
His brows knit together as he looks at the screen. “It’s my agent. Huh.” He glances at me, confused. “I’ll be right back.”
He answers the phone as he walks away, his voice professional but puzzled. “Hey, Andrew. What’s up?” The kitchen door swooshes behind him, his voice a distant murmur.
Taking my seat once more, I smooth my hair and try to refocus. I find the spot in the chapter where I left off—something about protein content in different flour types—and try to concentrate. It’s hard, though, when all I can think about is Noah’s touch, the way his hands felt in my hair, the warmth of his body under mine. My lips still tingle from his kiss.
A few minutes later—longer than I expected—I hear movement coming from the kitchen. His footsteps are heavy, deliberate, each one hitting the floor like a hammer. His face has transformed into something I haven’t seen in weeks—a scowl that darkens his features.
My stomach drops like I’m in a plummeting elevator. “What’s wrong?”
Is it the book? Has the publishing house changed their mind, ending the contract before we’ve even had a chance to get a first edit in?
