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“It’s strange having money when you haven’t for so long, isn’t it?” Nathan said.
I heard the sound of banging metal in the background and then a young girl’s voice:“Wait, who are you talking to, Dad?”
My heart cratered all at once. “Nathan, I don’t want to be alone tonight,” I admitted. Every fiber of my being hated how weak it made me sound. What was wrong with me? I was supposed to be large, in charge, rich, and independent.
“Oh,” he said, and I could almost hear him processing his surprise in real time. “Oh. Okay. Um, I guess you could… come over here and stay in the guest room, but I’m telling you, my house isn’t big or modern atalland you’re going to have to deal with cat hair galore, and there definitely aren’t any long glass windows—”
“I would fucking love to come over,” I said, cutting him off. It was crazy that Nathan felt like he had to apologize for his house when he was basically serving as a lifeline for me right now.
“Oh,” he said again. “Wow. Really? Wow. Okay. I can text you the address, I guess.”
Already my anxiety was dissipating like rain after the sun came out.
“Thank you,” I said. “Goddamn, thank you. Vivienne’s already got a team of cleaners and a window repair guy coming over first thing in the morning, and all the shit will be fixed or whatever soon. I promise.”
“You’re more than welcome here,” he told me, and hearing those words was exactly what I needed right now.
7
NATHAN
I whipped open the hall closet, grabbing for the hard plastic handle of my decade-old vacuum.
“Is Noodle’s litter box clean?” I called out to Maddy as I hauled the vacuum out into the living room, turning it on too fast to hear her answer. I frantically vacuumed the living room, getting a mountain’s worth of cat hair off of the big, red patterned rug. I hit the kitchen and hallway next, sucking up all the orange tufts of hair and sending Noodle himself frantically zipping away from the vacuum’s roar.
Maddy shouted something else to me from the dining room and I couldn’t hear her. I cut off the vacuum power and shoved it back into the hall closet.
“What?” I yelled to her.
“Isaid, he’shere!” she shouted. Just then, the doorbell rang.
“Shoot,” I muttered under my breath. As I walked back through the hall, I looked down to see that my black T-shirt was covered in cake batter from earlier, more cat hair, and now a white scuff mark from the vacuum.
Kace was here. At my freakingfront door.
Getting hired by Kace Tomlin was already enough to feel like my life had entered some new, dreamlike realm. But having him show up at my front door for a goddamn sleepover? Now I was certain I was living in some bizarro fantasy world.
Maddy was sitting at the dining table, looking down at her phone.
“You know, you’re allowed to answer the front door, too, you know,” I told her, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know this guy,” she said.
“Wait ‘til you see him in person.”
I let out a breath as I reached the front door, swinging it open. Kace was standing there, a polite smile on his face, with a backpack slung on one shoulder and a duffel bag on the other. He was so tall and broad that he filled up the whole doorframe, almost, an impressive presence even just standing on a stoop.
“My man,” he said, reaching forward to give me a hug. “Fucking lifesaver.”
I stood to the side as a professional football player entered my house. Maddy stood up from the table as he walked in, smiled, and said it was nice to meet him.
“How does it feel meeting Kace Tomlin, Mads?” I asked her, beaming.
She looked from me to Kace and back again. “Wait, are we related to him or something?”
“No,” I protested quickly. “God, no. Maddy, this is Kace Tomlin. I’ve been telling you about him all week. He’s a pro football player, and he’s also very famous on social media.”
She blinked. “I don’t watch much football. How was I supposed to know?”
