Page 62 of All of Him
I shook my head, my expression serious, and set my beer on the table.
Amanda took the hood completely off and stared back at me. Neither of us really knew what to do. Drinking was only obscuring my judgment and making me unable to escape her apartment. I bit my lip and stood up, walking over to her slowly. Her hair was all messed up from the hood, and she pushed some behind her ear, just the way I liked it.
“Fuck,” I whispered to myself. I leaned down over her, my hands on the arms of the chair, and let my lips hit her forehead gently. “You’re killing me right now.”
“How so?”
I pulled my face back and looked into her eyes. She was terrified, maybe angry that she’d started the whole thing. One final time, in an effort to get the rest of the tension out, I dipped my face down and caressed her lips with my own. She kissed me back for a few seconds, then pulled away, shaking her head.
“Noah, we can’t ruin this.”
Amanda sat there, a totally different person than she had been ten minutes prior. She was ashamed of what she’d done, pushing me into a physical encounter. She just existed in that moment, willing me to stay away, terrified we were already damaged beyond repair. Sure, we’d made a mistake, and part of me wished she’d kept going. But I had to leave before a bigger, irreparable mistake was made.
“We’re not, I promise,” I answered honestly. “Which is why I need to go. I’m going to take a cab home and leave my keys. Can you drive my truck to my house tomorrow morning?”
She nodded, still scared. I stood up and backed away from her, tossing my keys onto the table. She flinched at the sound of them, but her eyes never left me. It was yet another intense moment from the night that I wouldn’t be able to get off my mind.
“But, hey, Manda?” I spoke, pausing in the doorway. “That was the best kiss I’ve ever had.”
33
Amanda
I DROVE NOAH’S TRUCKcautiously to his house the next morning. I’d driven it once in the past to get paint supplies, but after the night we’d had, I was extra nervous. He hadn’t texted me anything since he had left, so I had no idea how he was feeling. All I knew was that I wanted to get there an hour early, so we could talk it out.
I thought back to the kiss the night before—Noah’s lips running against mine, his mouth on my neck, and his erection pressed against me. Even though I had known I’d regret kissing him, in the moment, after feeling his lips accidentally hit mine, I’d needed nothing more than his mouth firmly pressed against my own.
I sat back in his truck and ran my fingers along my neck, where Noah had left a trail of kisses the night before. It was all becoming so real—our friendship turning into something I couldn’t categorize. But maybe we’d been destined from the start to be more than we were, though what we were already felt powerful. I shivered, remembering that there was still so much to learn about Noah Murphy. I needed to know more about him, dig deeper into his mind. Because my feelings were very real, and if I was ever going to act on them, I needed to know what I was getting myself into.
Delia and Teel had arrived shortly after Noah left and helped me figure out a plan to minimize the fallout. They’d explained that talking about it in as much detail as possible would make it so there was no room for miscommunication. He’d definitely lied to me the night before when he said he “didn’t mean it.” I’d chosen not to challenge that, knowing that opening up that box meant discussing my own feelings, something I wasn’t ready to do—something I wasn’t even clear on.
Can I come in?I texted Noah, hoping he was awake.
I knew he was an early riser, but seven on a Saturday was pushing it after the night before.
You have my keys, he texted back. I had to use the spare last night. In my room.
Right. I unlocked his front door and let myself in. It felt strange to walk in by myself, keys in hand. The kitchen light was on, and I tossed my purse on the island before heading up the stairs. They never seemed to creak as much as they did in that moment.
I got to Noah’s door and took a deep breath, hoping he’d meant that I could come in his bedroom. Without knocking, I opened the door and stepped inside. He looked at me briefly from his bed, his hair a hot mess, then back at his phone screen.
“Morgan sent me a new picture of Jackson,” he said, smiling and holding out the phone.
I walked over and took it from him, only briefly looking at the picture of the baby.
“Sit.” He moved over, so I could sit on the bed. He was still under the covers, shirtless, but didn’t seem to mind my presence.
“I thought we should talk before we work on the house today. Is that okay?”
Noah nodded.
“Everything is fine, Manda,” he said nonchalantly. “Really. I thought about it a lot and it was just a stupid kiss. We’d had too much to drink.”
I ran my eyes over his face for any sign of deceit, but he seemed to be telling the truth—at least about not being bothered by it.
“So, to be clear,” I started, remembering what Teel had told me to do, “I kissed you, you kissed me back, and then we decided to be responsible adults before something worse happened.”
“Right,” he answered, chuckling. “The moment didn’t manage to get me. And it wouldn’t have gone further even if I’d stayed. I just needed to breathe. It’d been areallylong time since anyone had gotten that close.”
