Crazy Stupid Bromance (Bromance Book Club #3) - Lyssa Kay Adams Page 0,45
plate to the sink, rinsed it off, and loaded it in the dishwasher.
“Thanks for feeding me.”
“What are friends for?” He returned to the table and held out his hand. “Let’s start a fire outside.”
She folded her fingers in his and let him pull her to her feet. But as she followed him outside, the fire she was most concerned with was the one that had ignited inside her.
After lighting the fire in the firepit, Noah went back inside for two fresh beers and a blanket. He returned, handed her one of the beers, and then sat down next to her on the cushioned patio sectional that she’d helped him pick out last spring. It cut a ninety-degree angle around the corner of the covered patio where she’d helped him hang string lights and decorate with a row of hanging baskets. The flowers had long since died, but the baskets were still there.
How many nights had she sat here just like this with him? And why now, all of a sudden, did the space seem smaller, more intimate? Her hands shook as she spread the blanket over their laps, and when he slung an arm over the back of the couch, her lungs stopped working at the innocent brush of his fingertips against the nape of her neck.
If he was equally affected, it didn’t show. He stared quietly into the flames, his face cutting a hard angle in the dancing, flickering shadows as he raised the bottle to his mouth. The strong, long lines of his throat worked against a swallow.
He looked over. “Talk to me.”
He’d said those same words to her countless times, but tonight, she understood the simple gift of them. He never prodded, never pushed. He was just there, willing to listen, always. Expecting nothing in return.
“About what?” she asked, breathless.
“About whatever has you staring at me so hard.”
Yeah, that wasn’t going to happen. How was she supposed to tell her best friend that she was suddenly overcome with a need to kiss him?
Alexis tore her gaze to the fire. “He didn’t . . . He didn’t even ask about her.”
His fingers brushed her neck again. “Your mom?”
“To not even . . . to not even acknowledge her as anything more than just some woman he’d had a summer fling with.” A tear stung the corner of her eye. “She deserved better than that.”
“You both deserved better.”
“I’m not sure he even cared about her.”
“Would it matter if he had?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Noah set his beer on a table next to the couch and shifted in his seat so he could face her more directly. Under the blanket, Alexis curled one leg under her to make room for him.
“Why does it matter?”
The tear swelled and blurred her vision. “Because she deserved to be loved.”
“You loved her.”
“I know, but it’s not the same. She deserved a true love.”
“Tell me about her,” he said, voice tight.
Alexis leaned her head against his arm. “She loved squirrels. Other people would try to keep squirrels off their bird feeders, but her bird feeders were for the squirrels.”
“Sounds like someone else I know.”
“She loved Fleetwood Mac. And Stephen King novels. She let me read It when I was in middle school, and I didn’t sleep for a year.”
Noah smiled. “Is that why you hate clowns?”
Pain struck her in the chest. “No.”
He didn’t prod. Just waited for her to explain.
“I wanted a clown for my birthday party one year. We couldn’t . . . We couldn’t afford it. So my mom dressed up like one for me.”
“Why did that make you hate them?”
“I don’t know. I think maybe because even as a kid, I knew it was wrong. That she felt bad about it. Like she had failed me somehow. And that wasn’t fair to her. I wish I’d never asked for it.”
The burn of resentment that she’d felt at Elliott’s house once again scorched her throat. “I bet Candi had clowns at her birthday parties. I bet Lauren didn’t have to pick up extra shifts to pay for it either.”
“It’s unfair. All of it.”
Alexis sat up and took a drink of her beer. “You know what’s really unfair? I remember that the doctor was wearing a red tie the day we found out my mom had cancer. But I can’t remember what she wore that day. I don’t want to remember his tie.”
Noah let out a pained breath and leaned toward her. “Honey—”
“Memories are unfair, you know? They don’t tell us until it’s too late