“My pillow smells weird,” she said, sounding disgruntled.
“You’re sleeping on Waylon’s side.” I pulled the pillow out from under her head, then threw mine at her.
“Hey!”
“Better?”
I heard her sniff the pillow. “Better,” she agreed.
“Night, Naomi.”
“Good night, Knox.”
* * *
I woke to a thud,a yelp, and a curse.
“Naomi?” I rasped, unglueing my eyelids. She came into a soft focus at the foot of the bed, where she was performing some kind of gymnastics to get her skirt back on.
“Sorry,” she whispered. “I need to shower before I go to Liza’s for breakfast.
“There’s a shower here,” I pointed out, rising on an elbow to watch her drag her shirt on inside out.
“But I need fresh clothes and mascara. A hair dryer. Go back to sleep, Knox. There’s no need for us both to be walking zombies.”
Blearily I glared at the time on my phone. 7:05 a.m. Four hours didn’t really count as spending the night with a woman, I decided.
The appeal of being a bachelor was the fact that my days were dictated by me. I didn’t have to work around anyone else’s plans or not do what I wanted to do just so they could do what they wanted.
But it seemed unfair even to me that Naomi should have to spend the day running on fumes while I slept in. Besides, breakfast did sound good.
My feet hit the floor with a thump.
“What are you doing?” she asked, trying to right her top. It was now right side out, but backwards.
“No reason for you to walk home, shower, and walk back to Liza’s. Not when there’s a perfectly good shower here.”
“I can’t go to breakfast in my uniform,” she said in exasperation. “Doing the walk of shame to family breakfast is not happening.”
“Fine. Give me a list.”
She looked as if I had just spoken to her in Swahili. “A list of what?”
“What do you need to get through breakfast without shame. You shower. I’ll get your stuff.”
She stared at me. “You’re working awfully hard for just a hook-up.”
I couldn’t say why, but that statement pissed me off. Standing up, I picked a pair of jeans off the floor. “Gimmie a list.” I dragged on the jeans.
She put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “Has anyone told you you’re a grump in the mornings?”
“Yeah. Every single person who’s had the misfortune of seeing me before ten a.m. Tell me what you want from your place, then get your cute ass in the shower.”
Four minutes later, I was headed out the door with an obscenely long list for a Saturday morning breakfast that my grandmother would preside over in her camo pajamas.
I jogged through my backyard to hers and came up on the cottage’s back porch. The hide-a-key had been in the same place since I could remember. In a fake rock in one of the flower boxes on the railing. I snagged the key, fit it into the lock, and found the door was already unlocked.
Great, now I was going to have to lecture her on security.
The cottage smelled like fresh air, baked goods, and lemons.
The kitchen was sparkling clean except for the opened mail on the counter. Naomi kept it in a small upright organizer, probably alphabetized, but now all the envelopes were fanned out in a sloppy stack.
The rolltop desk in the nook off the living room was open, revealing a mostly tidy workspace with Naomi’s laptop, a cup of colorful pens, and a stack of notebooks. The bottom drawer was open a few inches.
Though it was no mountain of underwear and t-shirts, I was glad to see a little disarray. I’d noticed the more stressed Naomi got, the cleaner she became. A little mess was a good sign.
I took the stairs two at a time and swung into the bathroom first to collect the toiletries and hair dryer. Then I hit Naomi’s room and grabbed shorts and—because I was a man—a lacy, girly blouse with buttons.
Haul secured, I locked the back door and headed back to my place.
When I walked into the bedroom, I found Naomi standing in the steamy bathroom with wet hair wearing nothing but a towel.
The view brought me to a sudden halt. I liked seeing her like this. Liked having an undressed, freshly showered Naomi in my space.
I liked it so much that I went on the offensive. “You gotta lock your doors, Daisy. I know this isn’t the big city, but shit still happens out here. Like my brother getting shot.”
She blinked at me, then snatched the bag of girl stuff from my hands. “I always lock the doors. I’m not an incompetent adult.”
“Back door was unlocked,” I reported.
She dug through the bag and laid the toiletries out in a neat line around my sink. I’d brought extra since I didn’t give a shit about the difference between eyeliner and eyebrow pencil.
“I lock the doors every time I leave and every night,” she argued, picking up the brush and running it through her damp hair.
I leaned casually against the door frame and enjoyed the show as she methodically worked her way through her cosmetics. “What is all that shit, anyway?”
“Haven’t you ever watched a woman get ready?” she asked, aiming a look of suspicion at me as she penciled an outline around her lips.
“It’s just breakfast,” I pointed out.
“But I don’t want to look like I just rolled out of bed with you.” The stare she gave me was pointed. I glanced in the mirror and noted that my hair was standing up in all directions. My beard was flat on one side. And I had a pillow crease under my left eye.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because it’s not polite.”
I crossed my arms and grinned. “Baby, you lost me.”
She turned her attention back to a palette of colors and started swiping some of them on her eyelids. “We’re going to breakfast,” she said as if that explained anything.
“With family,” I added.
“And I don’t want to show up looking like I spent the last twenty-four hours having sex with you. Waylay needs a role model. Besides, my parents have enough to worry about without adding a second promiscuous daughter to their plates.”
“Naomi, having sex doesn’t make you promiscuous,” I said, torn between amusement and annoyance.
“I know that. But every time I make a decision anywhere in the neighborhood of what Tina would do, I feel like it’s my job to make it clear that I’m not her.” She put down the eye shadow and picked up one of those eyelash curler things.
I was starting to get a clearer picture of the woman I couldn’t stop thinking about naked.
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?”
She managed to give me a scowl despite the fact that she was using that contraption on one of her eyes. “Not everyone can strut through town, not giving a shit about what other people think.”
“Let’s get one thing straight, Daisy. I don’t strut.”
She crossed her eyes at me in the mirror. “Fine. You sashay.”
“Why do you feel like you have to keep proving to your parents that you’re not Tina? Anyone with eyes and ears who spends thirty seconds with you can tell that.”
“Parents have expectations for their kids. That’s just the way it is. Some people want their kids to grow up to be doctors. Some people want their kids to grow up to be professional athletes. Some people just want to raise happy, healthy adults who contribute to their communities.”
“Okay,” I said, waiting for her to finish.
“My parents were in the latter group. But Tina didn’t deliver. She never delivered. While I was bringing home A’s and B’s in school. She was bringing home Ds. In high school, when I joined the field hockey team and started a tutoring program, Tina played hooky and got busted with pot in the baseball dugout after school.”
“Her choice,” I pointed out.
“But imagine what it was like seeing the parents you love so much get hurt over and over again. I had to be the good one. I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t afford any kind of teen rebellion or bounce between majors finding myself in college. Not when they’d already struck out with one daughter.”
“Is that why you decided to marry that Warner guy?” I asked.
Her face shuttered in the mirror. “Probably part of it,” she said carefully. “He was a good choice. On paper.”
“You can’t spend your entire life trying to make everyone else happy, Naomi,” I warned her.
“Why not?”
She looked genuinely baffled.
“Eventually you’re going to give a little too much and you won’t have enough left over for yourself.”
“You sound like Stef,” she said.
“Now who’s being mean?” I teased. “Your parents don’t want you to be perfect. They want you to be happy. Yet once again, you’re jumping in and cleaning up your sister’s mess. You stepped into the role of parent with no notice, no preparation.”
“There was no other option.”
“Just because one of the choices is shitty doesn’t mean it’s not an option. Did you even want kids?” I asked.
She met my gaze in the mirror. “Yeah. I did. A lot actually. I thought it would be through more traditional means. And that I’d at least get to enjoy the baby-making end of things. But I’ve always wanted a family. Now I’m making a mess of everything and can’t even fill out an application correctly. And what if I don’t want this guardianship to be temporary? What if I want Waylay to stay with me permanently? What if she doesn’t want to stay with me? Or what if a judge decides I’m not good enough for her?”
She wielded a lip gloss at me.
“This is what it’s like living in my brain.”
“It’s fucking exhausting.”
“It is. And the one time I do something that’s purely selfish and just for me, it blows up in my face.”
“What did you do for you?” I asked.
“I had a one-night stand with a grumpy, tattooed barber.”