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“What’s your name?” Naomi asked.
Hope left him at the mercy of Naomi and went into the kitchen, hearing him tell her his name and explain that he was Luke’s brother and Libby’s friend.
She huffed a silent breath as soon as her back was turned to him. It was the first time she had seen him in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans, and by God, it didn’t make matters easier. All the muscles she had felt under the fabric of his shirt with her eager palms were now exposed and were in every way as mouthwatering as she had imagined they would look. And just where the sleeve of his blue tee ended, over his left bicep, was a tattoo. A wave rising and curling in black and grey ink.
To battle her unwarranted attraction to him, especially in light of what had happened, she had told herself that he was just a slick-talking Ivy League and Ivy life champion who was circling way out of her orbit, crashed against her accidentally, caused a little earthquake, and regretted it immediately. Somehow, though, a tattoo made him seem so … down to earth.
Silly as it was, it had now become an intervening variable in her experiment.
She took the key out of the top drawer, internally smacking herself for not taking it with her before she had gone to change, which would have saved her from letting him in.
Entering the living room, she stopped in her tracks at the sight.
Jordan was standing by the dining table, and Hope had to suck in her lips and bite them from the inside so she wouldn’t laugh. With all his height and width, and with Naomi looking up at him intently, barely reaching his hip, he was trying to jam a straw into a juice box, but the thing kept bending, and he was cursing under his breath.
He looked up from his task. “We have Siri and Alexa, but these things are still around?”
“You’re doing it wrong,” she said, hardly able to contain the laughter that bubbled inside her. Approaching him and reaching for the box, she took it from him and easily jammed the straw in. “There,” she said, smiling first at him then at Naomi.
“Thanks,” Naomi said, taking her drink and rushing back to her dolls on the other side of the living room.
“It was nice meeting you, Naomi,” Jordan called after her. “Sorry I couldn’t help with the straw.”
“That’s okay,” Naomi replied in a comforting tone. She then waved at him with the Barbie that she had lifted from the carpet.
“Seems I’m forgiven,” Jordan said as they both turned to look at each other.
“Naomi goes easy on people,” she said, wondering if they were talking about Naomi or something else.
Avoiding looking directly into his face now that she stood closer to him, she stared at his chest and neck. It was either that, which wasn’t easy, given how well that shirt wrapped him, or looking at his lips and remembering what they felt like on her skin.
“Great craftsmanship, by the way,” Jordan said. “It went right in.”
“Experience.” Her eyes met his for a brief second as she smiled. “The key,” she said, handing it over.
“Thanks.”
They just stood there for one drawn-out moment, eyes locked together, before he spoke again. “You did this?” He pointed at the orange- and red-glazed, shallow bowl in the middle of the round dining table, which she used for her keys, used batteries, spare change, misplaced scrunchies, and lost dice of old board games.
“Yes.”
“It’s pretty.”
“Thanks. Sorry about the mess.” She chuckled nervously as that bowl was surrounded by open textbooks and stacks of papers.
“It’s a family home,” he said.
She sneaked a peek at his face, feeling his eyes boring a hole into hers.
Eric, who had never lifted a finger in his parents’ home, and had them pay for a cleaner when he had attended college, had wondered at first why things hadn’t magically found their place. “It’s a family home,” she used to say. “Not a museum.”
“Did you leave that class?” Jordan suddenly asked.
“I’ll take it again sometime.” She broke eye contact. The memory of Blake and what had followed made her apprehensive, and she really wanted Jordan gone.
“No one should be deterred from doing something they like and are good at because of others’ shitty personalities.”
He looked like he was going to say more, but just then, Hannah came strolling into the living room. It was Saturday morning, and Hope was less stringent on the weekends, letting the girls stay in their pajamas until lunchtime if they wanted. Growing up, she had hated having to be up and ready, her bed made, even on Sundays, so she was lenient in her own home. Now she kind of wished she had made them change, because both girls were in their long unicorn nighties, their hair unbrushed.
