As we both began to drift off to sleep, I remembered how I’d woken up that morning. At the very edge of the bed, every muscle tense with fear that I’d move too close to Mitch as we slept. Now our pillows were piled together in the middle, our heads nestled close. He fell asleep with a long sigh, one arm slung over me, cradling me to him. I felt warm. I felt safe. Sleeping in Mitch’s arms was like being under a warm weighted blanket.
Weighted Blanket I’d Like to . . .
I wanted to laugh at the ridiculous thought as it floated through my head. I wanted to tell Mitch, because I knew he’d laugh too. But I was more asleep than awake at that point, and it was easier to close my eyes and slide into a dream. But with the night I’d just had, dreams had a lot to live up to.
* * *
? ? ?
“April.” Mitch’s voice was very far away, but his hand was right there, warm on my shoulder, shaking gently.
“Mmmf.” I turned to bury my head in the pillow, not at all ready for it to be morning.
“Come on.” His mouth replaced his hand, placing lingering kisses on my bare shoulder. “Gotta get up. Brunch time.”
I groaned. “How are you so chipper? I didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night. And neither did you.” But I grinned into my pillow, because what a way to lose sleep. It beat insomnia any day of the week. I turned to peer at him over my shoulder. “Are you always this much of a morning person?”
“Pretty much.” He tugged at the blankets, and I half-heartedly tugged back, trying to burrow under them and capture some of the warmth we’d shared last night. I wasn’t ready for morning. Morning meant our night together was over. “I told you, I’ve trained for this. Now, come on.”
“Nope.” I pulled the sheet over my head, and he tugged it down again.
“See?” His arms went around me under the blankets, tucking me into his embrace. I gave a little hum of pleasure at being his little spoon. Yes. Let’s stay here all day. “I told you the real thing is better than the battery-operated stuff.”
I snorted at that, but also moved lazily against him as his hands began to wander. I wasn’t ready to renounce the contents of my bedside table, but he did have a point. “The battery-operated stuff is less demanding, you know. And lets me get more sleep.” I yawned extravagantly. “Give my regrets to your family, but I’m pretty sure you killed me last night.”
His chuckle was a low rumble against my back. “Sure. No problem. I’ll tell Grandma that you’re too tired to come to brunch from all the banging we did last night.”
“Hey, it’ll help sell the whole fake girlfriend thing.”
I expected another laugh, but instead he was silent, his hands pausing on my body. I turned in his arms, and when I caught his eyes he smiled, but it wasn’t a full smile. It was a smile like he’d had yesterday with his family—the kind you threw at someone when you were supposed to but didn’t feel it. The sight of that insincere smile made my chest throb. I didn’t like that I’d put that smile there, and I didn’t like that I didn’t like it.
“Fine.” I threw the blankets aside and levered myself up, groaning and trying to ignore all the cracks my joints made. That had been quite a workout last night. “I’m up. But you have to soap me down in the shower.”
Now a real smile was back on his face, and that made me happier than I’d expected. “Gladly.”
I gave him my hand and let him pull me out of bed. I wasn’t kidding; I could barely walk. My thighs were stretched and sore, like that one summer in college that I’d learned horseback riding. Which made sense—I’d done a little riding last night. Would anyone notice at brunch? Would it be obvious that something had changed between Mitch and me the night before?
And how was I supposed to forget all of this when I got home later today, and my fake girlfriend job came to an end?
I pushed those thoughts away as I let Mitch pull me into the shower and draw me into a soapy embrace. The weekend wasn’t over yet. We still had a few hours.
Eleven
No one noticed. Which was probably a testament to how well Mitch and I had been faking it all weekend. But me? I noticed everything. I was hyperaware of his hand at the small of my back as we walked in the front door at his grandparents’ house, and the way he absentmindedly trailed his knuckles up and down my spine while we talked to Lulu on the back deck after the meal was over. We stood a little closer to each other, leaned into each other a little more than we had the day before. But if anyone noticed, no one said a word.
The beginning of the ride home was filled with the classic rock station on his satellite radio. Which meant, of course, it was also filled with bad singing along. I won’t say who was doing the bad singing, because what happens in Mitch’s truck stays in Mitch’s truck. As we closed in on the city limits of Willow Creek, Mitch turned down the radio.
“Thanks for this weekend.”
I wanted to snort in response, my mind immediately going to last night’s acrobatics, but he was using his rare Serious Voice, so I refrained. Instead I shrugged, casual. “I got free barbecue out of the deal, so I came out ahead.”
He considered that, then nodded. “That’s fair. Not to mention the mac and cheese. Best part of every get-together, I’m telling you.”
I stole a glance at him, my cheeks heating up as I remembered finishing off the rest of it in bed with him last night. But he didn’t seem to be alluding to anything. Sometimes, macaroni and cheese was just macaroni and cheese. This whole ride home, I’d been wondering if we were going to discuss what had happened the night before. Was it time for an awkward conversation about what this meant for our friendship going forward?
But he didn’t say anything about it and neither did I. I reminded myself of his early morning appointments in his phone, each with a different woman. His mind was probably back on them already, and I was in the rearview. Been there, done her.
So when he pulled into the driveway and handed me my bag after I got out of the truck, I just said, “Thanks.” There was an awkward beat where we didn’t look at each other; instead we both glanced toward my house, and out to my front yard that needed mowing.
“No, thank you,” he said. When he finally looked at me it was like a switch had been flipped and he was the old Mitch I’d always known. Same smile, same cheerful personality. “I’ll see you, right?”
“Right.” Okay. That’s how this was going to go. Back to being friends, like the last couple days had never happened. Like we hadn’t done those very more-than-friend-like things together in the dark last night. I could handle that.
I waved as he hopped in his truck and drove off, and then turned back to the house. Emily’s Jeep wasn’t in the driveway, so maybe she and Caitlin were at the bookstore. Having the house to myself for a bit might not be a bad thing. My brain was still a little wobbly from the events of the past forty-eight hours.
But the television was on when I opened the front door, and Caitlin was sprawled across the couch, scrolling through her phone. So much for alone time. She glanced up as I came inside, and I braced myself for another ten rounds of passive-aggression from my daughter. Instead she gave me a tentative smile.