Page 53 of The Lipstick Flip

And part of the work was, well, shopping.

Which was why my phone was constantly blowing up with messages from Noah. Some of them were questions about the house, or decisions he wanted me to make. Are we going with hunter green for the study? Which of these candlesticks do you like? I want a throw that’s got some texture, but is this too much texture?

Answers: Yes, it’s already painted, and we can’t change it, so don’t ask. Don’t care. And no fucking idea what you’re talking about.

But some of the messages were just…Noah. There was the message he sent me one day that was just a photo. He was in a store I didn’t recognize, which probably meant it was expensive. And the photo had been taken low, as though Noah were holding the phone at his hip. The woman standing in front of Noah was carrying a huge purse, and poking its head out of the purse was something that could only generously be called a dog.

It was bad enough that I forgot about this bitch of a light switch that wasn’t working, and I texted, What the fuck is that?

It’s a dog!!! And then Her name is Princess. Isn’t she cute?

She looks like a Chihuahua crossed with a lizard.

Don’t say that! She’s exactly the way God made her.

God was having a bad day.

Howie!!!!!

Another day, it was a picture of Noah wearing a pair of sunglasses that still had the tag on them. The glasses were huge, and the frames were almost an inch thick and studded with rhinestones.

Put them back, I responded.

I like them!

So does Elton John.

Howie!!!

And another day it was just a photo of a tray of food. And I didn’t even have to take a moment because I knew what it was, and I knew why he was sending it to me.

I texted back the throwing-up emoji.

Stop, Noah replied. It’s your favorite.

It wasn’t my favorite. It was turkey loaf. And it was the single worst meal at MagnaCare—everyone agreed on it, the entire building except, of course, Noah. Sometimes, I swear to God, I was sure the only reason I’d recovered from that gunshot wound was because if I didn’t, I was going to spend the rest of my life eating turkey loaf.

I texted back a string of the throwing-up emojis.

I’m bringing you some for lunch, Noah replied.

Bring that shit anywhere near me, and I’ll string you up by that pretty little thong.

And of course that was when he sent me a picture of himself, and the waistband of his scrubs was riding so low on his hips that a lacy red scrap was visible.

When we weren’t working on the house—well, the sex was good.

The sex was fantastic.

I shouldn’t have had time for sex. I definitely shouldn’t have had energy. We were working long days, both of us. I worked until ten or eleven at night, trying to get everything done before the tour, and Noah was there with me. If he had to work that day, he came over after his shift ended—even though I told him he needed to go home and rest.

But somehow, we found time and energy. One night, when it was just the two of us, Noah pressed me up against the wall in the kitchen and sucked me off, jerking himself through an O while he did it. Another day, he came by with lunch, and the next thing I knew, he was straddling my lap, pushing my toolbelt out of the way so he could fish my dick out. He jerked us both off and then cleaned up the come with those shitty fast food napkins. And one morning, he’d barely been there fifteen minutes, the coffee still hot, when somehow I had him bent over the fucking chaise, railing him like I was trying to pin him to the fucking furniture.

It was like nothing had ever gone wrong. Like nothing had ever been bad. How it had been at the beginning. Not just the funny texts. Not just the fucking. Not just the need to have my hands on him whenever he was around, like he was going to turn into smoke if I didn’t hold on to him. The way he sat cross-legged, talking to me while I worked, asking me what I thought about this, or my opinion about that, like somehow I was the smartest son of a bitch he’d ever met. Or the way he jumped and clapped his hands when I finally—finally—fixed that fucking light switch, and he screamed like I’d won the fucking Handyman of the Year award. Or the way he said, at the end of the night, “I had a nice day with you, Howie.” Or “Today was fun.” Or “Thanks for a good day.”

Like somehow I was doing him a favor, instead of the other way around.

It was one of those conversations, with me working on the laundry room door, trying to figure out if I needed to rehang the damn thing or if I could muscle it into place, when I answered a half-heard question with “I don’t know.”