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I can feel him adjust a little behind me, making sure the blankets are pulled up tight before he lets his arm fall over the top of it, resting above my hip. I should remind him that we are friends, and friends may share a bed but don’t necessarily spoon, but the warmth of his body quickly spreads through me, and I wiggle back into his embrace. It isn’t long before his breathing evens out and he’s fast asleep.
I let myself soak in that moment for a few hours, but when I wake and peek at the bleeding numbers on the clock, I know Emmett’s alarm will be going off soon. I take one last look at his handsome face, knowing that I can’t let myself get used to this.
With heavy reluctance, I slide out from under his arm and force myself out of bed. I quietly tiptoe out of the room and down the stairs, shuffling into my jacket and boots, making sure to lock the door behind me as I quietly disappear into the dark morning.
Chapter Sixteen
Idon’t have a foot on the first step when Emmett swings the front door open. The light from the house glows warmly behind him, illuminating the fresh blanket of snow dusting the front porch.
“What on earth is all this?” he says, eyeing the two giant tote bags tucked under each of my arms.
He takes a step back and moves to the side, ushering me in past him. Once I’m in arm’s reach, he grabs the handle of the larger bag and eases it off my shoulder.
I set the other on the floor, making sure to kick the snow off my boots before I step off the mat.
Over the last few weeks, now that Lainey is officially settled, and we have a travel nurse helping out, work is so much more manageable. I have real days off. It only took a week to catch up on sleep, laundry, and the few puny errands I’ve put off before I found myself miserably bored, so I casually asked Emmett if he needed a sitter for Allie at all during the week.
He was more than happy to keep her home from daycare on the occasional basis, only if I swore that I wasn’t doing it out of guilt. I truly want to hang out with her. And when he said it felt good to go to work, knowing Allie was in her own home with someone he trusted, it surprised me how good it felt to know someone considered me a positive influence around their child.
I shiver once I pull my jacket off, hanging it on the hook next to both of theirs.
“I love living in the city, but I hate the cold winters.” Days like today, when it’s barely above zero degrees, make me miss working in Texas.
Emmett takes both tote bags off of the floor and follows me into the house as I go into the kitchen, immediately walking toward the cabinets to grab a coffee mug. “It’s not even December yet,” he points out. “We have a long way to go before winter is over.”
“Do you have to be such a Debbie Downer so early in the morning?” The house is quiet, no cartoons blaring on the TV, no Allie running around, princess cape flowing behind her. “Allie is still sleeping?”
He nods, taking the mug from my hand and crossing over to the coffee pot. “Probably for another half hour or so.”
He pulls the carafe from its warmer, the smell of fresh ground beans filling the air. I watch as he drops two sugar cubes into the cup, the muscles flexing under his long john shirt as he twists to open the refrigerator door to pull out a specialty mocha creamer. He pours a Jenna-sized amount of creamer into the mug before stirring and sliding the cup on the counter toward me. I bring the mug to my lips, taking a slow, luxurious sip, watching his eyes drift over to the giant bags I brought with me.
“Let me show you my haul,” I tell him as I start to rummage through the larger one. “Did you know there is a craft store in this area? Nearly every item is less than three dollars, and they have an entire section dedicated to little kids!” I pull out paintbrushes and modeling clay, colorful painting sets and pipe cleaners, tossing each package on the kitchen island as I go. “They have the cutest little painting kits! They were only two dollars each, and the canvas is chintzy, but they will be such an easy project, and you know Allie will dig it.”
Emmett picks up to inspect each little package I toss onto the pile. His eyes glaze over the more I empty my bag.
“They had all Christmas-themed crafts, so I stocked up on those. We have a Santa with his bag, a reindeer—oh shit,” I run my finger over the cheap wooden ornament. “I think an antler is broken . . . but we can glue it. They had so many little wooden ornaments to color, I couldn’t choose. Your tree will have quite the assortment this year.”
While googling fun activities for toddlers, I came across something we can make called slime. It’s only a few basic ingredients, the biggest one being glue which seems a little sketchy, but we can add all sorts of ridiculous little plastic toys, glitter, or foam pieces. I couldn’t choose one, so naturally I bought them all.
“Hope you don't mind your kid playing with glue. It’s non-toxic and I’ll make sure she doesn’t eat any.”
Emmett is still quiet, strong fingers filtering through the pile that’s accumulated on the counter, his expression flat.
“We can always skip the slime,” I tell him, wanting to find an activity he approves of.
I get to the bottom of the first bag and find my pile of rocks, so I dump the bag over. Half of the rocks tumble off the counter and ping to the floor.
“Shit,” I hiss, scrambling to pick them up, not wanting to take Allie just yet.
Emmett bends with me, gathering a few in his palms before standing and gently setting them on the counter.
“She told me the other day she wanted to paint rocks, is that something she’s done before?”
Her speech can be a little hard to understand sometimes, and I’ve quickly learned that toddlers can say the most random stuff even if it isn’t true, but she told me several times she liked painting rocks. When I confirmed with her that we were thinking the same thing when she said the wordspaintandrock, I knew I could make that dream come true.
But with a foot of snow on the ground, I had to buy rocks for us. Then came the question of what size? What kind of rocks? I hope Allie will settle for decorative rocks meant to sit in the bottom of a flower vase. “Is this okay?”
Emmett hasn’t said a thing through this entire show of emptying my bag, and I start to wonder if I overstepped. It’s easy to be the one that brings small, messy projects over, plays with the kid and leaves. Maybe Emmett doesn’t want to have this mess around his house: paint smeared on the kitchen island and the possibility of stepping on tiny plastic stars every day in his future.
