Page 33 of When in Rome

Noah lets out a breath almost like he’s relieved. And then pulls that classic little notebook he was writing in from his back pocket and sets it on the table between us. “You should write down a few things you want to do while you’re here. So we have a plan.” It’s adorable how awkward he is right now. He won’t make eye contactwith me and it’s painfully obvious that talking with me this much has him wanting to crawl out of his skin. I should let him off the hook and tell him he doesn’t have to spend time with me. But I’ll die before I do that, because even though it’s the worst idea in the world, I want to spend as much time with him as I can while I’m here.

“Because you’re my tour guide,” I say, taking the notebook.

He fights a smile. “Because I’m your tour guide.”

I’m already busy trying to think of everything I want to do while I’m here. Do I want to be restful or adventurous? Do I want to hide or see more of the town? I think some combination of all ofit.

“Oh, but just one thing.”

Annnnnd here it is. The catch. The hammer. The thing he wants in return. I knew it was too good to be true.

Noah leans slightly toward me and lowers his voice like maybe all the Peeping Toms outside the window will hear us or read his lips. “The other night. When I told you I wasn’t on the market.” My cheeks flush a little at the memory. “I meant that. And I think it’s best if right out of the gate we get things straight. This isn’t going to turn into anything romantic between us. It’s just…friendship.”

I should be disappointed that my summer camp crush isn’t interested in me. But I’m not. Because little does he know, friendship is exactly what I want. What Ineed.

“Perfect,” I tell him, feeling lighter than I’ve felt in years.

And then there’s a firm knock on the window, making us both jump and look over our shoulders. Mabel has her nose pressed into the glass, and her brows pulled together sternly. “Noah Daniel Walker,” she says, sounding slightly muffled from the glass. “You better open up. You know I get low blood sugar.”

He sighs at her nose print on the glass. “Batshit crazy town.” He smiles, and it’s clear that he means that as nothing but affectionate.

That’s when I notice the slice of pie sitting in front of him covered in plastic wrap. “Were you planning to eat that?”

“No,” he says, standing from the table. “It’s for someone else I’m meeting just as soon as I take care of these loons.”

“You know? I can’t help but feel it’s completely unfair that you’re allowed to have so many secrets when I continue to spill mine.”

“Sounds like a you problem,” he says with zero smile but amusement running through his voice, straight into the pit of my fluttery stomach.

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Noah lets me borrow his truck to drive back to his place, and with the windows down and a smile on my face, the strangest thing happens to me. I catch myself singing along to the radio. Something I haven’t felt like doing in a while.

Chapter 15

Noah

I haven’t seen Amelia since this afternoon at The Pie Shop. Our meeting was cut short (which I was glad of) because this town can’t hold their horses. Geez. Having to wait five minutes nearly killed them. After Mabel shoved her nose onto my glass window, she pretended to faint. Miraculously, when I opened the door, the smell of pie revived her.

I let Amelia take my truck home and I borrowed Annie’s for my lunch date. I know Amelia was eaten up with curiosity about who I was meeting, but I’m not ready to tell her yet. Maybe never. We’ll see. She also looked shocked that I’d lend her my truck. She assumed I was doing something special for her, but the fact is, that’s just how we are around here. I let Phil drive it the other day when he needed to go into the larger town an hour away to pick up some things for the hardware store, and then Mabel took it last Friday when she walked into town and then got too tired to walk home. So she took my truck and then I borrowed Annie’s to go home and she ended up swapping with…I can’t remember. It was a shit show the next day, too, when none of us could remember who had the other one’s truck and all had to meet in town to sort it out.

Anyway, Annie gave me a ride home from work a little while ago and casually mentioned that Amelia had spent her afternoon at Mabel’s bed-and-breakfast, helping her repaint the lobby. If I know Mabel, she didn’t lift a finger, but propped her feet up on the reception desk and stuffed a little umbrella in her drink while she watched Amelia push a roller across the walls all day. The mental image makes me smile. Is helping old ladies paint their small-town inn customary behavior for celebrities? I don’t thinkso.

Unfortunately, it didn’t help that my head was already full of charitable thoughts of Amelia when I got home and realized she was in the shower. My shower. The one right down the hall, so close to me that I could see the steam coming out from under the crack in the door. She sings in the shower, and let me tell you, I’m not one to spout poetry, but the sound of her voice sliding through the door had me writing sonnets in my head. People pay hundreds of dollars to hear her perform and I got a free front-row seat of listening to her sing “Tearin’ Up My Heart” by NSYNC. Seems unfair.

I needed a distraction from her voice and the thought of her body and the smell of her shampoo filling my home, so I turned on the TV, and now here I am watching an old black-and-white western where men are being shot off horses to a playfulpew pew pewsound.

It’s the perfect distraction until…holy shit,I shouldn’t have come home from work at all. I’m going to have to move out and let Amelia have this house, because the sight of her turning the corner in my blue pajama bottoms but with only her black camisole covering her top half is too much. The bottoms swallow her whole so she has them rolled down at the waist a few times and that camisole doesn’tquitemeet the top of the pants. There’s this enticing little band of skin showing all the way around her body. This woman looks like a fantasy come to life. Plucked straight out of my best dreams and placed right in my living room. The audacity of her.

I keep very still as Amelia pads her bare feet across my living room; her damp hair is draped over her shoulder, so long it nearly touches her waist. It hangs in this loose, easygoing way that’s somewhere between wavy and straight. A drop of water clings to the end of a lock of hair, and I watch closely as it lets go, dripping down the side of her bare arm. She belongs on a beach in Hawaii with a flower in her hair and sand clinging to her legs while a photographer snaps photos for a glamour magazine. She shouldn’t be in my tiny, unimportant living room smiling at me in a way I definitely don’t deserve. And yet, I find myself wanting to trace a line around her smiling lips so I can always remember the shape of them. I want to wind her long thick hair around my hand and wrist. I want to brush my fingers across her accentuated collarbones.Shit, none of that is good.

She opens her mouth but I bark first. “Where’s the top of those pajamas?”

Amelia’s eyebrows raise. Her face is clean of makeup right now, and unfortunately, she’s somehow prettier this way. “In my room. Don’t worry, I haven’t lost your precious Christmas gift pj’s.”That’swhat she thinks I’m worried about?

Amelia sits down beside me and I stand up. We look like we’re on a seesaw. “Wait, where are you going? I wanted to show you this.”

I don’t know whatthisis because my back is to her. I slip around the corner where I find the thermostat and turn it down to 60 degrees. My old AC unit turns on with a roar and only then do I feel comfortable enough to take my seat again on the couch. Far away. Nearly sitting on the armrest.

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