Lily’s presence made him feel antsy and light-headed. They shouldn’t be here together. She glanced at him and sent his mind scrambling again.
“So what are you looking for?” she asked.
He tried to recall the various items he needed. Enough to furnish an entire apartment, basically.
“Just a bed frame.”
“What’s wrong with the one you have now?”
“I don’t have one.”
Lily’s eyebrows quirked. “What have you been sleeping on?”
“My mattress . . . on the floor.” He scratched the back of his neck, waiting for her to make a comment similar to Caleb’s. What grown man slept with his mattress on the floor when he didn’t need to?
But Lily only nodded, all businesslike. She led them to the bedroom section and plopped down on a queen-size bed with a wooden black bed frame and headboard.
“What about this one? It’s nice and sleek. It’ll go with anything.”
Nick looked over her shoulder at the price tag and winced. “Nah, not that one.”
“Okay, moving on.” She stood and approached a gray upholstered bed frame, which sat low to the ground. She plunked down on this bed as well and leaned back on her elbows. Nick struggled to not gaze at the curves of her hips as she made herself comfortable. And he definitely didn’t notice that from this angle, he could see her cleavage peeking out the top of her blouse. “This one has extra storage underneath and that could come in handy since our apartments don’t have a ton of extra closet space.”
Nick shook his thirsty-ass thoughts away and walked around to peer at the price. Even more expensive than the last.
“I don’t know about this one either.”
Lily glanced at the price tag herself and then looked at Nick. “What’s your budget?”
Free.
“I’m not trying to spend a lot,” he said, shrugging. He hated talking about money. He was desperate to change the subject, so naturally, he blurted the first thing that came to mind. “I went to an IKEA once when I was in Squid, Sweden. Weird name for a town, right? I remember I asked an employee if they ever got any of the display items for free and she gave me a look that basically said Fuck off.”
His rambling came to a stop, and he winced. He was being weird. Lily eyed him curiously, smiling a little. Awkwardly, he sat at the edge of the bed, putting enough space between them that they weren’t touching at all, but he could still smell her intoxicating vanilla perfume.
“What do you do?” she asked. “For a living, I mean.”
“I’m in between things.” Technically, that was the truth. He should be writing, but he wasn’t. It was the response he’d given Henry and Yolanda when they’d asked about his job too. “I have a good amount saved, and I’m trying to hold on to it.”
What he didn’t admit was that he was waiting for the other shoe to drop. At any moment his publisher could decide to scrap his contract or the television studio could cancel the adaptation and there wouldn’t be any more money coming in, so he didn’t need to spend what money he currently had by filling his apartment with a bunch of furniture he didn’t absolutely need, when he should hold on to his money for the inevitable moment when all of his good luck came to an end.
If Marcus were here, he would tell Nick that he was overreacting. And he’d probably say that Nick was letting the memory of his old babysitter Ms. Yvette cloud his thinking. Ms. Yvette, with her bitter heart and demon cats, had often looked after Nick when his parents abandoned him, and she never missed an opportunity to remind Nick, a young impressionable child, that he came from a line of bad men who did bad things, and he’d probably grow up to be just like them because the badness was in his blood. It was easy to write her off as someone who disliked his father because he’d stolen from her before, but Nick knew that there was truth to her words. His grandfather had been a fucked-up person and so was his dad. Even when Nick tried to do something good—especially when he tried to do something good—it backfired in some way. How could he trust that the goodness from this book deal wouldn’t blow up in his face?
Nick cleared his throat and glanced at Lily. She was watching him closely, and he wondered what she was thinking. He fought the urge to scratch the back of his neck again, a nervous habit he’d developed in childhood.
“I got you,” she finally said. She hopped up and walked quickly between the beds. Nick watched her pause at a plain brown, wooden bed frame. No headboard, no extra storage or adornments. She waved him over and he went to her automatically, wondering again how he’d found himself here with her.