Pull it together.
Now is not the time to lust after Naomi. My sister and that punk are watching me—the exact wrong time to let my dick get hard. Maybe I can make progress here, too. Naomi is giving me another chance to be her…what? Her friend?
I resist the urge to curse as Naomi steps forward. Closer. Our bodies press together so tightly, I can’t help but think of dragging her higher, getting her legs around my hips, her tuxedoed future mayor be damned. I’d fuck you better.
“When I step forward,” she whispers, her face pink. “You have to step back.”
“Right,” I rasp. “Got it.”
She lifts up on her toes a little and I feel her stiff nipples through my shirt. Fuck. A simple, physical response to friction or something more? I can’t tell anything from the way she’s staring at my throat. “We’re moving in a box. One, two, three. Feel it?”
“Yeah,” I say, checking the urge to press my cheek to her hair, like some kind of smitten suitor from the fifties. “I didn’t mean to snap at her.”
“I know,” she responds right away. “Look at her. She’s forgotten all about it.”
She’s right. Over Naomi’s head, I can see my sister frowning in concentration, doing a pretty damn good job of keeping up with her partner, who clearly is the more experienced of the two. I’d like to point out to Mister Toes that Birdie is the one dancing in high heels, but it’s probably better to keep my mouth shut this time around.
My blown-out sigh brings Naomi closer, her fingers flexing where they twine with mine, but I know she’s just trying to reassure me. It’s not what I want it to be. Maybe what we have is destined to be something else. A unique brand of friendship—and I’ll have to learn to be happy with that.
Sure.
*
I wake up with sweat pouring down my face, my chest. Explosives continue to go off above me, sparks pinging the surface of the water. No, not the water. They’re right there in my bedroom, smoke rising on the shoreline. Voices shout, chopper blades whirr above, in place of my ceiling fan. The urge to dive from my bed onto the floor is fierce and I’ve followed through with it many times before, but this time I dig my fingers into the mattress and breathe. One, two, three, four…
By the time I reach ten, the smoke is beginning to fade, along with the taste of gunpowder and sand. As always, there’s a plea repeating itself in the back of my head. Please let everyone have gotten out. Please let everyone have gotten out. Long after I’m grounded in my bedroom, though, the mantra continues because I know somewhere, thousands of miles away, it’s counting for something. I’m meant to be there. I’m meant to be doing my job.
Unlike the reflex to take cover, the need to punish my body with exertion is unshakeable. I’m out of the bed and shoving my feet into sneakers, rifling through a pile of folded laundry at the same time. Towels. All towels. With a growl, I forgo the shirt and move silently through the dark bedroom toward the door. Get out. Get out. Move.
I’m through the kitchen in seconds and twisting the knob to the back door. It brings me out onto the driveway—where I almost mow Naomi down like an ocean liner cutting through a dingy. “What the hell?”
“Oh shoot. Oh Lord.” She presses shaking hands to her chest, which is no wonder since I shouted at her like a fucking lunatic. “You scared the life out of me.”
“What are you doing out here? It’s…” I have no idea what time it is. “Late.”
“Early, actually. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I ran down to my car for…” Her gaze drops to my sweaty chest complete with matted hair. “My yoga mat was in the trunk. Did you just come back from a run? I didn’t pass you…”
My voice is raw when I answer. “No.”
“Do you have the shaky sweats again?” Naomi whispers.
I say nothing. I’m usually through half a mile by now and still nowhere close to normal. Having a conversation is not in my wheelhouse right now. I’m a sweating jumble of nerves and guilt and frustration, while she’s fresh and gorgeous in a baby-blue nightgown. God, she doesn’t even look real, she’s so out of place in my black driveway among my whirlwind of thoughts. But I can’t just blow her off. We’ve started waving at each other through the kitchen window when she passes on the way to her apartment every day. It’s better than nothing. I don’t want to give that up.
Naomi sets down the yoga mat she’s had tucked underneath her arm. I’ve never felt more oversized and awkward as I do watching her carefully tuck her nightgown beneath her tush and take a seat on my back stoop. She pats a spot on the brickwork beside her. “Did I ever tell you about the invasion of Normandy?”