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“Psh.” Her mom took both pies out of the fridge and set them on the counter. “You’ve gotten a bit of sass with age, haven’t you?”
“It runs in the family,” Bridget said.
Her mom removed two plates from the cupboard and cut into the last of the pumpkin pie.
Bridget laughed as she rinsed the last plate and set it in the dish strainer. “I said I didn’t want any!”
“Who said this is for you, madam?” Her mom sniffed, cutting a piece of the chocolate and setting it on the other plate. She set both of them on the kitchen table with two forks. “Maybe I’m just hungry for pie.”
Bridget dried her hands and sat down at the table. “There are two forks, Mom.”
Her mom sat across from her and grinned. “Are there now?”
Bridget shook her head, reached for one of the forks, and cut a small bite off the chocolate. She didn’t really want it — where were Nolan and Will? Why hadn’t they called to let her know they’d made it out of Seamus’s? — but it was chocolate after all.
“There you go now,” her mother said, like Bridget was in a high chair deigning to eat pureed carrots. “Are you in for the night?”
The question was her mother’s way of navigating the minefield of her work with Seamus. Bridget wasn’t going to take the bait. Not now.
“I think so.”
“Good. We can watch Queer Eye and you can get a proper night’s sleep.”
“Yes.” Bridget ignored her mother’s dig about the morning she’d snuck in after her night with Nolan.
Her phone buzzed from the counter and she got up so fast her chair almost tipped over. The text was simple, and not from Nolan, but from Will.
OUT.
She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw the thumbs-up emoji, slid her phone in her pocket, and forced herself to sit down at the table, fighting a surge of relieved energy. She couldn’t help wishing the text had come from Nolan, but he’d probably left it to Will to keep up the charade of disinterest they’d been maintaining with Seamus, just in case.
She had a million questions, not the least of which was whether they’d found what they were looking for, but it would have to wait until she saw them in person at Foley’s. It had become their regular meeting place and Bridget had slowly started to feel like they’d stepped back in time, Nolan playing straight man to Will’s irreverence, Bridget playing levelheaded schoolmarm to them both. The only thing that was different was that she and Nolan were still careful around each other — careful not to show affection, not to stare, not to touch.
The night she’d spent in his bed had broken the dam on the sexual appetite she’d managed to stifle in the four years they’d been apart. Now she often found herself standing in line for coffee or idling at a light that had already turned green, images playing in her mind like an endless movie.
Nolan’s head between her legs, his hair wound in her fingers.
His cock emerging from her body only to disappear inside her again.
His face in her hands, his eyes full of questions she couldn’t answer.
She spent all day, every day vibrating with need, both desperate and terrified to be back in his arms and his bed, knowing that every night she spent with him would pull her deeper into the lie she was telling by not telling the truth.
“Everything all right?” her mom asked.
Bridget nodded. “Everything’s good.”
She said it even though she knew it wasn’t true. Falling back into her relationship with Nolan wasn’t good. Neither was Nolan and Will breaking into Seamus’s house.
But things were moving. Changing. She didn’t know where it would lead, but the fact that she wasn’t standing still anymore had to count for something. Now that Nolan had what he needed, everything would be okay.
She repeated it in her mind again and again until she almost believed it.
20
Nolan lifted a hand in greeting as Christophe, looking puzzled and uncomfortable, walked into Dona Habana, a Cuban restaurant in a strip mall in Roxbury. Nolan would have found it funny if the situation with Seamus hadn’t been so intense.
Christophe sat down and looked around, taking in the vibrant coral walls and the giant mural covering one wall. “This is… interesting.”
