The timeframe for clearing a tree wasn't an exaggeration. It's still there when the clock strikes midnight. So is the storm. It has continued rolling through in waves all evening, leaving the two of us housebound with nothing to do but pass the time. We've played Scrabble. Phoenix gave me a house tour, and then he cooked dinner. We haven't said a word about what we talked about before the tree fell down, even though what came out hangs between us with a life force of its own.
I'm also now aware of something I wasn't before the house tour. There is only one bed in this house, and it's in Phoenix's bedroom. The half-finished room I passed by on my way to the bathroom earlier is the guest room, which Phoenix said he started renovating before he ended up on location in Las Vegas.
I still haven't asked what the sleeping arrangements are. There are other things puzzling me at the moment, as I sit beside him on the living room sofa, pretending to watch a movie. He has been a perfect gentleman ever since we realized I will be here overnight. It's gotten to where I'm convinced I only dreamed about him hitting on me last weekend, and that I hallucinated him holding my hand and brushing away my tears this afternoon.
My mind is in loops, puzzling over what made him back off on the most innocent of gestures like touching my shoulder or arm, or saying anything I could interpret as flirting. We've been sitting together on the sofa for over an hour, a gaping space separating us, like two barely acquainted people who have seats next to one another at a theater. If it's a psychological tactic designed to heighten my awareness of him, it's working.
What's your game, Phoenix?
I sigh without intending to and slump further into the sofa cushions. He glances at me, which is the first acknowledgement I've had from him since a comment about the movie during its opening credits.
"Is everything okay?"
No, everything is not okay. I'm confused, annoyed with myself, and wondering if this storm will ever wrap it up so I can go home and overanalyze why the platonic treatment bothers me so much when it shouldn't.
"Mmm-hmm. All good."
A blinding streak of lightning flashes outside and illuminates the room, like it wants to call me out on my lie. The lamp on the table beside me flickers, and then it and the TV screen go dark.
Wonderful. Now the power is out.
"Maybe we should call it a night and go to bed," I suggest. Sleeping will give us a reason for not speaking, anyway.
"You can have my room," Phoenix offers. "I think I have an extra toothbrush in the bathroom drawer. Let me find it."
He reaches for his phone and turns on its flashlight, then gets up from the sofa. I also get up and grab my phone from the table, then follow him down the hall, into his bedroom. He continues into the ensuite bathroom. I go as far as the doorway between the two rooms.
"Where are you going to sleep?" I ask.
"On the sofa." He rummages through a drawer and pulls out a new toothbrush in its package. "I'll leave this on the counter. Towels are on the shelf in here. If you want one of my T-shirts to sleep in, there are a bunch in the second drawer of the dresser. I just need to brush my teeth, and then I'll be out of here."
"Nix?" The nickname I used to call him tumbles from my mouth, surprising me.
He pauses in the middle of reaching for his toothbrush and meets my eyes in the mirror. I guess it surprised him, too. "Yeah?"
"You could just sleep in here, you know. It's not like we haven't slept in the same bed before."
He studies me in the mirror without saying anything. Thank God we only have the light from his phone's flashlight, because the longer he's quiet, the more my face feels like it's on fire.
"Are you sure you're okay with that?"
"It's totally fine. I'm sure it's a lot more comfortable than the sofa." I sound breezy, but now my brain is cluttered with questions about why he seems hesitant about it or if I'm imagining this, and about why I said what I did at all.
"Okay. Thank you." He glances away from my reflection and plucks his toothbrush from its holder.
His stoic response is underwhelming, but it's in line with the last few hours. I turn away from the door and walk over to the dresser, where I open the drawer he mentioned. The only light in the room comes from a sliver of moonlight that peeks through the open window curtains, but it fades almost instantly when the moon disappears behind another storm cloud. I fumble in the dark to pull out the first T-shirt I find, and then perch on the edge of a chair in the corner to wait for Phoenix to finish brushing his teeth.
When he emerges from the bathroom, he's no longer wearing a shirt. This is normal, since he only wore his boxer briefs to bed when we were together, unless we fell asleep naked after making love. What I didn't expect is the magnetic pull his bare chest has on my attention. My gaze lands on his chest and six-pack abs, then roams a little farther to the V-line that is partly obscured by his pants. His body is still as incredible as it was when I used spend hours exploring every inch of skin I see.
"Do you need anything?"
My head snaps up. He's looking straight at me, which means he knows I was checking him out. Let's hope he didn't also read my mind.
Years ago, if he'd caught me getting an eyeful, I would have replied to his question with something sexy or coy. Tonight, I shake my head and get up from the chair, because I don't trust myself to answer him. I'll return to my senses after I stop ogling him.
"Do you want my phone for the flashlight?" He holds it out to me.
"Thanks, I have mine." I continue past him, into the bathroom.
Washing my face and brushing my teeth gives me the time I need to collect myself. When I change out of my clothes and pull Phoenix's T-shirt over my head, though, the nostalgia nearly knocks me back to where I was when I came in here. I used to wear his shirts all the time, especially in the mornings after I stayed over at his place.
The slate blue shirt is a mini-dress on me, hitting mid-thigh. It's modest enough thanks to its size and my small frame, so I don't know what about it prompts the flutter in my stomach when I pick up my phone from the counter and open the bathroom door.
Then it strikes me: It isn't the shirt at all. It's what wearing it makes me remember.
Phoenix is already in bed, propped up against the pillows and watching something on his phone. I turn my phone's flashlight off as I approach the other side of the bed, and then set the device on the bedside table. He glances at me when I lift the corner of the duvet. For a moment, I swear he tenses up. Whatever is going on with him, my nerves and patience are both too frayed to want to think about it.
He clears his throat. "Are you okay with that side? I just assumed--"
He cuts off his own sentence, perhaps because he was about to make a reference to when we shared a bed more often than we didn't. This is the side I slept on, at least when we didn't end up spooned together in the middle of the bed. And now I have memories of spooning to deal with, too, thanks to my overactive brain. I should have let him sleep on the sofa.
"Yup. It's still the side I sleep on." I keep my tone light as I get into bed and pull the covers over me. "What are you watching?"
"A comedy thing I found on YouTube."
He sits up and reaches for one of the pillows behind him, then uses it to prop the phone up between us so I can see the screen. It gives me a reason to stare at something other than him and his chest and those damn abs. My overstimulated senses welcome the reprieve.
We've been watching what's on his phone for about ten minutes when I finally start to relax. I adjust my head on the pillow and close my eyes, listening to the monologue and intermittent laughter.
"I can turn this off if you want to sleep."
There will only be strained silence if he turns it off now. I can't deal with that. It will get me keyed up again and prevent me from falling asleep.
"I'm awake and listening to it. I'm just resting my eyes."
"Famous last words."
I smile, but keep my eyes closed. He's teasing me, whether he meant to do that or let it slip out by accident. It's the most normal exchange we've had in hours.
"I only used to fall asleep watching something when we were snuggled together," I remind him. "That was on you, because you were like a cozy space heater and it made me super relaxed and sleepy. I miss that sometimes."
I didn't mean to say the last part out loud. If it makes him clam up and become overly polite again, I might scream.
"Me too."
My eyelids fly open at the softness in his voice. He meets my gaze, and I'm reminded of what I glimpsed in his eyes when I got here today.
"Do you want to..." He doesn't finish what he says, but he moves his arm that's closest to me away from his side and raises it so it's up near the pillows, creating an open space for me to lie next to him. Then he looks at me again. "Please don't kick me out if I misread that."
Phoenix is asking to hold me. Less than half an hour ago, he was uncertain about us sleeping in the same bed. I'm so perplexed right now, but I move his phone and the pillow away from the center of the bed and slide closer to him, until I'm settled in the crook of his arm with my head against his chest and my hand resting on his stomach. Now if my heartbeat would just settle down, and if I could stop noticing how good he smells, I might not give away how being in his arms makes me feel.
"You aren't getting kicked out for cuddling." I sound infinitely calmer than I am. "You've made it clear you aren't trying to put the moves on me. You haven't even tried to flirt with me all day. I got the message."
What I technically got was an indecipherable mishmash of hot and cold signals that are doing my head in. It's a message, all the same.
"Do you know why I haven't tried to flirt with you?" he asks after a minute.
"Not a clue, since you were last weekend."
"You thought I was after a one-night stand last weekend. I didn't want you to think the same thing today, especially when you didn't have a choice about staying the night. You gave me another chance to spend time with you. I'm trying not to come on too strong, or scare you, or screw it up, even though I was sure I did this afternoon."
"When you told me about the day you left, you mean?" When you told me you once wanted to marry me.
"Yes, and after that. I felt like I hit a boundary when you left the room, and then when you were in tears and asked to talk about something else. I wanted to respect you and how you felt. It doesn't mean I don't want to flirt with you. I just want to do this right."
His words about wanting to do this right jog my memory back to the first weeks we dated, and I don't know how I didn't remember until now. Phoenix was so careful with me in the beginning, as though I was a diamond he wouldn't risk dropping. On our first date, he held my hand and put his arm around me, and that's as far as anything physical went. Our second date ended with a lingering hug and him gently pressing his lips against my forehead, before we parted ways at my door. He didn't ask to kiss me until our third date. It worked, because I fell for him hard.
This is eight-years-ago Phoenix behavior, even with the history we have. It's the guy who didn't want to move too fast, too soon, or it is if he's telling the truth. As much as I want to protect my heart at all costs, the ice shelf around it is cracking.
"You aren't trying to friend zone me, then?"
"For the record, I am way too attracted to you to want to friend zone you," he assures me. "I'm sorry if that message got mixed up."
"Oh yeah?" I arch an eyebrow, even though I'm kidding.
"Fair warning that if your hand goes any lower than where it is, you'll discover that for yourself and probably without meaning to."
It takes a few seconds for me to realize that I'm tracing circles down his abdomen with my fingertip, and that I'm about to reach the waistband of his underwear. Oh. I don't know whether to be amused by the moderately embarrassed tone in his voice, or to be mortified that my hand is doing things to his body outside of my conscious awareness. Old habits are hard to break.
"Sorry about that." I bring my hand back up to where it was before.
"You have nothing to be sorry for. I'm the only one in this room who needs to apologize for anything."
"Or we could both stop apologizing for a while," I suggest. "It's kind of been a day."
He chuckles at this. "It has, but I'm grateful you're here. I hope I'm still a decent space heater."
"So far, so good."
He holds me closer and I snuggle into him more. I don't know what the morning will or won't bring, but I'm okay with this for now, and maybe that's all that matters.
I watch the gentle rise and fall of his chest until my eyelids feel heavy. The last things I'm aware of before I fall asleep are him stroking my hair, and the hypnotic sound of the rain.
༺â༻ ༺â༻ ༺â༻
Uh oh. Our girl Del is in her feelings now...ð« ð¤
And yes, I'm guilty of rolling with the slow burn... for now.ð¥
For those who've been waiting for the mystery in this story, what it involves becomes more clear over the next two chapters. There has been some foreshadowing that leads up to it, though!