Page 48 of Irresistibly Us
God fucking dammit. His grin should be illegal.
Standing back, he gestures to the door with a wink that makes my knees literally weak. “Go ahead.”
Reaching out, I turn the knob and fling the door open, striding into the room. It takes approximately five seconds for my brain to catch up to what my eyes are seeing, and when it does, I come to a screeching halt, briefly considering the fact that I have stepped through a portal to another dimension. Because logically, I know I’m in Tyler’s house. In his guest room. But it doesn’t look like his guest room. It looks like my room. From my house.
My pink padded headboard and the purple comforter spread over the bed. The piles of throw pillows in every color of the rainbow. One turquoise wall, the painted tables I use in place of nightstands, the jeweled knobs on my dresser, and the pink neonSophiesign hung above the bed. As if on autopilot, I walk over to the dresser and open drawer after drawer, seeing neatly folded stacks of clothes—my clothes, somehow, right down to the collection of T-shirts I’ve stolen from Tyler over the years. The ones that were drowning in a flood only eleven hours ago. And when I open the closet, everything that’s in it belongs to me.
Turning back to Tyler, I stare at him for a beat, words eluding me for probably the first time in my entire life. “Okay, so when you said you would take care of everything…” I trail off as my eyes bounce around the space again.
“I wasn’t fucking around,” he finishes.
Goddammit again.
Without warning, tears prick my eyes, and I blink rapidly to get them to go the fuck away before Tyler notices, but he didn’t become a Super Bowl winning quarterback by missing the details. Without a word, he moves to stand in front of me and opens his arms. “Bring it in, Sal.”
With a watery laugh, I lean into him, wrapping my arms around his waist and resting my head on his chest, my ear right over the strong and steady beat of his heart as he tangles a hand in my hair. I breathe him in, and rather than adding to my fluttery feelings, this hug settles me right down to my deepest depths. I can’t explain it and I don’t understand it, but I kind of never want to let go.
I sigh, setting deeper into his hold. “Sorry, it’s really been a day.”
Tyler chuckles, dropping a kiss on top of my head. “You don’t need to apologize for getting emotional about me being the greatest best friend in all of human history.”
Rolling my eyes, I shove him away, but I can’t help the smile on my face. “Are you magic?”
“Yes,” he says seriously, but as always, he can’t hold the somber expression for long before that grin is spreading over his face again. And those fluttery feelings come roaring back. “I just wanted you to be comfortable, Soph. I know you stay here all the time, but this isn’t just every now and then when you’re too tired to go home after movie night. This is until your very broken house is fixed, and I want you to have everything you need. I don’t want it to feel temporary…I want it to feel like your home.”
“But how?” is all I can manage through the flood of emotion the wordhomeevokes. Because I like the idea of having a home with him. Too much. I like it far too much.
“How what?”
“How did you do all of this? Like, dry out my clothes and paint a wall and get all the things that used to be in my room? I saw my bed and everything this morning. Most of that was not salvageable.” Which means he either got it all restored in record time or he somehow found duplicates of basically everything I own between the time I left to go to work and now and that seems…well, kind of impossible actually.
He shrugs. “I’m not sure if you’re aware, but I’m pretty famous in this city.”
I mock gasp, only half-joking, because Tyler has an ego the size of Texas and the football skills to back it up, but he’s always been weirdly uncomfortable with reaping the benefits of his fame. “You used your fame for me?”
This time his face goes serious and stays that way. “I would do anything for you, Sal. Literally anything.”
Our eyes stay locked as silence falls between us. But this isn’t the easy silence of friends. The kind of silence I’m used to. This silence is something else. This silence is heavy and a little bit charged, and my heart thuds in my ears as Tyler studies me like he’s never seen me before, and I think maybe I look at him just the same. For the second time today, we draw infinitesimally closer and closer still until I can feel the heat of his body, see hiseyes grow dark and intense, my brain racing withWhat is thisandYes, pleaseandFucking finally, oh my god.
The second the words flit through my brain, I smell it. The acrid scent of something burning wafts into the room, and a split second later, the fire alarm downstairs starts to shriek.
“Fuck!” Tyler rockets away from me and flies out of the room, thundering down the stairs with me right on his heels. We stumble into the kitchen where smoke is curling lazily out of the oven. Stabbing the button to turn it off, Tyler grabs an oven mitt and opens the door to a cloud of black smoke. Waving his free hand to clear the air, he reaches in and grabs a sheet pan holding what looks like the charred remains of garlic bread and dropping the pan onto the empty half of the stove before tossing the oven mitt onto the counter.
The fire alarm is still shrieking as Tyler stands frozen, still facing the oven. His back rises and falls rapidly, and his right hand opens and closes at a steady pace.
Taking a step away, I grab the broom from the small closet in the corner of his kitchen, using it to hit the button in the middle of the smoke detector to stop it. The second the kitchen quiets, I reach over and link my finger with his, squeezing gently. Tyler inhales sharply, his breath a little shaky as he lets it out, his finger squeezing mine back as he starts to take deep, deliberate breaths.
For almost our entire adult life, I’ve watched Tyler manage these little bouts of anxiety. The ones that pop up without warning and often depart just as quickly. The triggers vary and have changed as we’ve gotten older, but I’ve figured out the pattern by now. Loud noises. Unanticipated changes in his routine. During his games when he’s waiting for the next play to start. I’ve long suspected before games too, but since I’m not in the locker room, I’ve never been able to confirm it.
He’s never mentioned it, and I’ve never told him I notice. I don’t think he’s ever told anyone else either. It’s the one thing we never talk about, but I do my best to help quietly. Linking ourfingers when he goes quiet and his hand clenches and releases and I know his brain is spinning. Texts before all his games so he knows I’m thinking about him. Always going to home games and recruiting our friends to do the same whenever I can so he has familiar faces in the stands.
I did these things long before I fell in love with him, and I suspect I’ll do them forever. We’ve always had special ways we care for each other, and this is one of mine.
Unlinking our fingers, I take a step away and open the freezer, smiling when I see the can of Dr Pepper I know will be the perfect amount of frosty. I have no idea how he does it, but even though he routinely puts Dr Pepper in the freezer for me, they’re never completely frozen. Instead, they’re icy and delicious, just the way I like it. Rounding the island, I drop onto a stool and pop the top of the can. “I don’t have all day for you to be burning dinner, Harry. Some of us have shit to do.”
Dumping the charred garlic bread into the trash and reaching into his breadbasket for the other half of the loaf, Tyler turns to me with his habitual smirk, gratitude I don’t even think he’s aware of shining in his eyes. “Simmer down, Sal. You’ll be fed. Perfection takes time.”
“Well, while you do perfection, I’m going to change and probably stare a little more at the room you made me.” I pause, waiting until his eyes meet mine. “It really is perfect, Ty. Thank you.”
