“That was before you eavesdropped on her getting off.”
“I didn’t eavesdrop! I got the fuck out of there as soon as I realized what was going on.”
“You know Liv will end you if you do anything to hurt Callie. Shit,Iwill end you. You can’t just have a one-night thing with her.”
“I’m not having any kind of thing with her,” Noah snapped.
“This is terrible fucking idea. You know that, right?”
“It’s just a week.”
“Oh, come on. This isn’t going away when the week is over, even if you two stage some kind of breakup. Your mom is over the fucking moon and Mrs. Cole was asking you aboutkidslast night.”
“I’m surprised you could even follow the conversation last night with your hand up Min’s skirt,” Noah grumbled.
Liam flashed a wolfish smile. “She’s an exhibitionist. Who am I to deny her? But the point is, you think your mother is just going to let this go because you guys say it’s over? Fuck, no. She’s going to keep after you to get back together, to find some way to make it work. What happens when you go home for the holidays and you’re both there? This can’t be truly temporary because Callie’s not temporarily in your life.”
Noah shook his head, refusing to believe it. “It’s just a week.”
“Keep telling yourself that,” Liam said.
“What am I supposed to do?” Noah dropped to sit on the ground, his legs bent in front of him as he dug his hands into the soft sand. “It’s too late to take it back.”
“The only way out is through,” Liam said, sitting beside Noah.
Noah watched as the thoughts flitted behind his best friend’s eyes and knew he wasn’t going to like whatever Liam had to say next.
“I know you like to think that none of us are aware of what happened at Liv and Callie’s twenty-first birthday—”
“We’re not talking about that.”
“We have to fucking talk about that. You are sharing a room with her, Noah. Sleeping in the same bed. For a week. While everyone who loves you thinks you’re a couple.” He arched an eyebrow and waited for Noah to nod his assent. “Do you still have feelings for her?”
Noah blinked, his brain unable to process the question. Did he have feelings for Callie? He’d known her since she was born. He’d been there when she was learning to bake and mixed up the salt and the sugar, when she got her braces and the day she’d had them taken off, the day she learned to ride a bike and the day she passed her driver’s test. He’d taught her how to play the piano and how to construct chord progressions, had spent countless hours critiquing her compositions, dreaming with her about the day they were both famous composers. Did he have feelings for Callie? Of course, he did. But those weren’t the kinds of feelings Liam was asking about. And he wasn’t sure he had an answer to that other question.
“Let me ask it a different way,” Liam said in the same tone he used when a student wasn’t grasping a concept in one of his lectures. “If she wasn’t Liv’s best friend, if she was just some woman you met in a bar, would you pursue her?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice low, avoiding Liam’s eyes. He hadn’t admitted it for years, not even to himself—the attraction he felt to Callie, the times he’d thought about that one night six years ago when he’d ignored his own rules and kissed her. “But she’s not some woman I met in a bar.”
“You’re right. You can’t just put her in a cab in the morning and never see her again. And as much as part of me wants to pummel your ass for even thinking about it, there’s another part of me that thinks…maybe it’s not the worst thing.”
Noah couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“What if you and Callie—”
“Don’t. It’s not an option.” Noah threw the handful of sand he’d gathered.
“There was a time you thought it was.” Noah didn’t respond, throwing another handful of sand. Liam continued, exasperation coloring his tone. “Are you just going to be alone forever?”
Noah glared at his best friend, hating the way his question rankled, how it dug beneath his skin.Alone is better than half-dead with grief. Better than failing her when she needs me most. Alone is survivable.
“I’m not trying to talk you into making this thing real with Callie,” Liam said.
“You sure about that?”
“It’s just odd that you overhear her masturbating—” Noah winced and held up a hand in protest of Liam’s insistence on calling the image to mind “—and your instinct is to torture yourself—and me. There was a time when you would have laughed about it.”
Was there?He couldn’t imagine there ever being a time when he could have heard Callie’s soft gasps, the rhythmic sloshing of the water in the bath, her muffled whimper, andlaughed.
