He chuckled. “Climb into bed. I’ll get the curtains.”
He tossed his damp towel over the back of my desk chair before drawing the curtains over the one-and-only window in my room, and then he climbed into bed with me, wrapping me up against his chest.
“This feels like a dream,” I murmured, sighing at the warmth radiating from his body.
“Maybe it is.”
“I hope not,” I whispered.
The second my eyes shut, exhaustion took me under.
Somewhere in the space between sleep and awareness, I thought I felt Liam press a kiss to my forehead.
But when I woke less than an hour later to the sound of Angela making coffee in the kitchen, he was already gone.
The Art of Mixed Signals
I tossed and turned in a fitful sleep the rest of the morning, and I didn’t actually peel myself out of bed until just after noon. Even then, I felt like I could sleep the rest of the week and still not feel rested enough.
But as exhausted as I was, I still had a sleepy smile stuck to my face as I padded barefoot into the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee from the carafe.
Angela was singing along to a Salt-N-Pepa song as she worked on a to-scale model of what looked like a skyscraper of some kind.
“It’s cold now,” she said. “You’ll have to nuke it.”
I popped the mug into the microwave and set the time for forty-five seconds, leaning a hip against the counter as I turned to Angela. “Good morning.”
She arched a brow. “Good afternoon. How are we feeling?”
“Tired,” I croaked. “But… inspired.”
“I bet,” Angela said with a snort. “You missed class.”
I smiled. “I did, huh?”
“I, on the other hand, woke up around six this morning and got to work on my project.”
“Early for you.”
“Mm-hmm,” she agreed. “Imagine my surprise when I came out of my room to find Liam Benson sneaking out of yours.”
I flushed, biting back a smile as the microwave dinged. I used it as an excuse to turn my back to Angela, carefully removing the mug and adding a couple spoonfuls of sugar before I stirred it all up.
“Care to tell me what happened?” Angela asked when I didn’t respond to her initial observation.
I giggled. “No.”
“Too bad,” she said, placing a block into the model she was working on before she dusted her hands off and joined me in the kitchen. “Because less than twenty-four hours ago, you hated that boy. So you’ve got a lot of explaining to do to take me from that, to him being in your bedroom at an ungodly hour this morning.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
Angela gave me a look.
I laughed. “I’m serious! I ran into him last night, not too long after I left. He asked me what I was doing, and I told him and… he said he wanted to be my Yes Guide.”
“Your Yes Guide,” Angela deadpanned.
I nodded. “So we ate some weird stuff and stumbled upon some free tickets to a concert and, you know…” I shrugged. “Other things.”
“Other things like…?”
I smiled, sipping my coffee.
Angela huffed. “Did you have sex?”
“No.”
“Did you hook up?”
I looked up at the ceiling. “Define hook up.”
“Alright, brat,” she said, grabbing me by the arm and steering me into the living room. I laughed as I focused on balancing my cup of coffee, and when we were both seated on the old couch, Angela smacked my thigh. “Spill. I want to hear everything. The whole night, starting from when you walked out that door. No corners cut.” She looked at the dainty watch on her arm. “And you’ve got about forty-seven minutes before you’ve got to head to the museum, so talk fast.”
Talking fast was out of the question for my sleepy brain, but I did start from the beginning of the night and told Angela everything. Well, almost everything — I kept what Liam had shared with me about his past to myself. And by the time I wrapped up the story, Angela’s jaw had hit the floor at least a dozen times.
She followed me into my bedroom as I got ready for the afternoon at the Uffizi, spitting questions at me like a machine gun.
“So, he kissed you?”
“He did.”
“In the shower.”
“Indeed.”
“You were both naked.”
“That’s usually how showering works.”
“And he just kissed you?”
“Yes.”
“Like… just on the lips? Nowhere else?”
I laughed, spraying a little perfume once I had my uniform on. “Yes, you perv.”
“Well, can you blame me for being confused?” She threw her hands up. “You were both naked. And hot. And wet. And naked. And he just… kissed you?” She shook her head. “I don’t understand straight people.”
I snorted.
“So, what now?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… are you friends? Are you… dating?”
Her question made my smile slip for the first time all day, and I swallowed, ducking into my closet long enough to grab my sneakers.