He ignored them all. “What if we got married?”
3
Mia stilled as her mouth dropped open. “What if we what?”
Noah’s throat worked as he swallowed. His hands gripped his knees, but his ice-blue gaze remained steady on hers. “We could get married.” He said it in the same way he might say “next week let’s get tacos instead of chicken wings.”
Her pulse tripled, and she frowned at her body’s reaction. She just stared at him.
“I could put you on my insurance, and you could accept the scholarship. Go back to school.”
“As yourwife?” she squeaked.
“Yeah.”
She remained frozen for a split second, then blinked several times, shaking her head slowly. She’d been confident Noah would come up with a plan, but never in a million years would she have come up withthat. “Noah.”
“Mia.”
“You can’t be serious.” She knew he was, though. He’d one hundred percent do that for her, because that’s the kind of friend he was.
He just looked at her. He knew she knew he was serious, too.
“I would never ask you to do that.”
“You didn’t.”
She groaned. “Okay, I couldn’t let you do that.”
“What’s the big deal? It would just be on paper, and it’s not like it would be forever. You said yourself you could get a kidney any day. Then you wouldn’t need the company’s coverage anymore, and we could get a divorce. Or an annulment, I don’t really know how that works. And either way, it’s only for two years max, right? Once you have your degree and license, you’ll get a job as a dietician somewhere and have your own insurance again. We’d separate then.”
“Two years, Noah? We can’t do that. You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“What if you meet someone you want to date between now and then? You run into a nice girl at a bar and want to ask her out, but oh, wait.” She smacked the side of her head with her palm. “Can’t. You’re already married.”
He shot her a look eerily similar to the one he gave her whenever she said an outfit didn’t look good on her. Full of disbelief and borderline annoyed. “I care more about you than I do a few potential dates. What’s two years? This is your dream, Mia. Your career. Being a dietician is always what you’ve wanted to do. If I’d known you were considering going back to school, I’d have suggested it a long time ago. An opportunity like this won’t come around again. You have to take it.”
She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. How could he be so blasé about this? “I... No, Noah. It’s too much. You’re so sweet, but—”
He held up a hand. “Stop. Just think about it, okay? I mean this. It’s not an empty offer.”
She laughed a little. “Right. You’ve clearly given the idea of marrying me a lot of thought. Five whole minutes of it.”
“I—” he began, then seemed to think better of it. He clenched his teeth together, a muscle in his jaw flexing. He leaned forward and rested his forearms on his knees. “I know I caught you off guard.” Something about the way he said it made her think it didn’t feel the same for him. “But just consider it. Please.”
“You’re insane.” She stood and gathered her things. “You’re my best friend and I love you, but you’re insane.”
He remained where he was and let out a frustrated breath. “I’ll give you some time to work through the idea. Are we still on for Claire’s birthday tomorrow?”
Mia wanted to laugh at the routine question, slid into the ridiculous conversation they were having. “Yeah. Claire has to work, but she still wanted to go out. She’ll meet us there at eight.”
“I’ll come by your place at seven thirty to pick you up,” he said. He rose and walked to the door, opening it for her. “I mean it, Mia. Just think about it, and be ready to give me an answer.”
That night, Mia dreamed about Noah.
She’d had the dream before...several times. In reality, it wasn’t so much a dream as a memory of that night in college. She did her best not to think about it and did a pretty good job avoiding it while awake. But when she fell into unconsciousness all bets were off, and it seemed to be one of her brain’s favorite scenes to replay, sending her back in time to that party at the Sigma Chi house.