“I fell off your roof.” I smile into her eyes.
“Yes, you did,” she says slowly, her worry morphing into something else. Is that her own small smile? “How are you feeling?” Her voice is so gentle, it feels like cool silk fluttering against hot skin. It brings me back to the front seat in her old Subaru, fifteen years ago, when she used that soft, quiet voice to tell me all her dreams. “Concentrate for me, okay? Does anything hurt?”
I try to do what Nomi asks. Why do my thoughts feel slippery and buoyant? Then, I remember—I was really mad about something. Really,reallymad. What was it? I gaze into Nomi’s face, searching, but what could I have possibly been angry about when she’s here, looking at me, talking to me,being with me? There’s no trace of her usual scorn orfrustration, just wide-open concern and relief. Relief that I’m okay. That I made it out of her bush alive.
A laugh rumbles in my chest.
“What is it?” Worry rises on her face.
I shrug, then give her my most playboy smile. “Oh, I just keep ending up in your bush.”
Her eyes widen, and then she bursts out a single, shocked laugh. “I cannotbelieveyou just said that.”
I waggle my eyebrows, unable to stop performing for her smile, her approval, herlaugh. It fills me up, makes me as buoyant as my thoughts. Her happiness feels like food lifted to my starving mouth, and I’m suddenly convinced that if she’d let me, I’d sing for this supper of smiles every night.
Also, I’mstarving. The hunger’s come back with a vengeance.
Nomi helps me to my feet. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”
“Okay, but can there also be food?”
Nomi laughs again as she escorts me through the back door, but it peters out into a sigh as she takes in my broad shoulders, incredible pectorals, and tight, thick torso. “You eat so much pizza, don’t you.”
“Somuch,” I agree as a lazy, punch-drunk grin spreads across my face. I fish out a hundred-dollar bill and crumple it into her hand. “Buy this many, please. A pepperoni one. And banana peppers. And one with sausage. And a veggie one, for balance. And—”
“Are there any pizzas youdon’twant? That might be easier.”
“—AND,” I continue, diplomatically ignoring her ridiculous question, “cinnamon rolls.”
“Julian. Pizza Palace will not have cinnamon rolls.”
“Oh, ye of wittle faith!”
“That is the second time tonight you saidwittle, and I just want you to know, I willnotbe forgetting it.” Nomi quickly orders from her phone,her tongue darting across her lower lip in concentration. I can’t stop staring at it.
She hesitates, then leads me into what must be her bedroom. “I’ll get the first-aid kit. You stay here.”
My eyes drink it all in. I saw her high school bedroom once—covered in band posters, everything in shades of witchy black and lavender. But this room is a dark, emerald green, the color of a winter forest. The curtains are velvet, the mirrors trimmed in brass. The wooden furniture gleams like copper, antique but restored.
It’s so… mature.
“Wow,” I mumble as I sit on the bed, my eyes snagging on the nightstand. “That’s ahugevibrator.”
“What?!” Nomi screeches from the attached bathroom. I lean over, possessed by the need to hold it.
“Oh man, this joker’s a plug-in? This must have some serious horses power.” In my hand, it feels like an old-timey microphone. A gigantic one. I tap it and wink at myself in the mirror. “Is this thing on?”
Nomi appears suddenly, her arms full of medical supplies.
“Put that down!”
“’Cause I’m your ladaaaaaay!” I belt out, pointing to her as she drops the supplies and lunges at me. “And you are my maaaayaaah-yaaah-an.”
“Why are you singing Céline Dion?!”
“It’s our song, don’t you remember? It played when we first held hands.” I wrestle the vibrator away like a toy I’m refusing to share, which, I guess it is. “Whenever you REAAACH for meeeee,” I wheeze out, laughing as Nomi climbs over me, grabbing at it wildly, starting to laugh now, too. “I’ll do all that I caaaaaayaaah-yaaaah-an!”
I finally manage to find the on switch, and itroarsto life just as Nomi sends me sprawling onto my back, fully atop me, breasts smushed against my chest, her hand clasped around mine which is clasped around the teeth-rattlingbehemothshe uses to pleasure herself. The thought rings like a bell through my entire body, stiffening my dick in a delicious rush. My laughter turns to groans beneath her, my body thoroughly confused as to what’s happening right now.
