The water turned on in the bathroom, and I pinched my eyes shut as I imagined her washing her face, then changing into whatever it was that she slept in before she slid between the sheets of the bed that was normally mine.
Nothing here felt normal.
And most disconcerting of all was how much I wasn't bothered by it.
There was no checklist and no schedule.
No rules to follow, other than the self-imposed ones. That lack of structure should have made me feel uncomfortable. But instead of discomfort coursing through me, it was restlessness.
An edgy sort of energy that had no outlet. It was the way I felt before a game. On those days, I could strap on pads and my jersey, tape my fingers and tie my cleats, knowing I'd work myself to exhaustion on the turf. I'd tackle and run and hit and find a safe place to put everything that I kept locked down so tight during the week. And those sharp bursts, like a gunshot going off, kept me calm and steady once I was done.
But this … this was torture.
At least thirty minutes had passed before I heard the slow turn of the doorknob.
My heart took off, and I held myself as still as possible. Maybe she wouldn't see me standing in the dark, given only one small lamp was still left on over the stove.
I tried not to breathe, tried to meditate or calm my energy or whatever that one yoga video tried to teach me to do to relax. Because if Molly saw me, she'd speak to me. If she spoke to me, if I spoke to her, I might touch her.
And if I touched her, I'd lose the tiny, fragile grasp I had on my control.
When had she frayed it down to nothing?
I was around for all of it, every interaction, and I'd hardly noticed her severing each individual strand.
Her soft footsteps padded toward the kitchen when she inhaled sharply.
"Noah," she whispered. "I didn't see you at first."
I dropped my chin to my chest and breathed deeply. "Sorry."
Go back to bed, go back to bed, go back to bed, I wished feverishly in my head. I couldn't turn. I couldn't look at her. Not even for a second.
My whole body tensed as the sound of her bare feet came closer.
"I-I couldn't fall asleep."
What strange intimacy was created in moments like that one. Something about a dark room and whispers. Knowing that no one could see us, knowing that she had already stripped herself of the confines of the day, ratcheted that tension coursing through my body higher and higher, something bright and fierce.
My eyes were pinched closed so tightly as she stopped next to me that I saw bursts of white behind my eyelids.
I probably looked ridiculous.
"Don't you want to know why?" she whispered. "I could hardly sit still wondering if you were out here, if you were alone."
"Molly," I begged. I didn't even know what I was begging for.
Touch me.
Don't touch me.
Give me permission to do this thing.
Lock the door on your bedroom so I'm not tempted to splinter it to shreds for getting between us.
"Look at me," she begged right back.
Slowly, I peeled open my eyelids and looked down at her. Her face was bare, and her hair, that glorious hair that I loved so much, was in messy tumbles around her bare shoulders. Bare, save for thin straps of a white tank top. Her legs, bare, save for impossibly small white and pink shorts.
She wasn't wearing a bra.
My lungs, they'd stopped working properly at the sight of her.
"Doesn't it feel like …" She stopped to lick her lips. "Like this is inevitable?"
"What?" I rasped. She was so beautiful in the dim light that my vocal cords stopped working too. I wanted to devour her.
"You and me," she answered quietly. Her eyes were huge in her face, and they searched mine so deeply that I felt it in the slow turn of my heart. "Even if it's just … here."
I blinked. "Here?"
She laughed quietly. "This may be the dumbest idea I've ever had, but I was tossing and turning in that bed, trying to figure out a way to make this make sense in my head. You and me, thrown together like this. And now, in this place that's so far removed from every complication. I can't stop thinking about that kiss, Noah, and whenever you look at me, I know you can't either. I don't see how it's possible to leave it at just that. Not with how good it was."
My hand lifted slowly, and I slid it against the silky skin of her neck, allowing my fingers to tangle in her hair as I cupped the back of her slender neck.
"What are you saying, Molly?"
Molly lifted her chin and hit me with the full force of her gaze, the full force of whatever decision she'd come to before she walked out the door.