her hair, and so instead she crept into her bathroom to shower and brush her teeth. When she came out, dressed in a fresh set of pajamas, her wet hair twisted into a loose bun on top of her head, he was back inside again, folding up the blanket she’d left behind and looking like he was getting ready to leave.
The third time, he was in her bed.
It took her a few sleepy seconds to remember how he’d ended up there, and once she did, she squeezed her eyes shut in embarrassment. It’d started with his insistence on her taking another dose of Tylenol and drinking another full glass of water (the whole thing! He was so bossy about water. She did not reflect on how bossy he might be in other contexts; she did not!), and then a pretty effective scolding (no other contexts, none!) when she suggested she might go catch up on some of the work she’d missed during the day. She’d sighed and agreed that yes, she was, in fact, pretty tired, but maybe she’d sleep on the couch, because she had to change the sheets on her bed, and the couch was fine anyway, and—
And he’d said, “Okay, let’s go change them,” and marched past her, and five minutes later they were smoothing clean linens across the mattress and not making eye contact, but it was all fine; she’d get in bed and he’d go, and that was fine and good and normal; it was silly that she’d asked him to stay before.
But then—oh God, this was the embarrassing part—she’d asked him to stay again. She’d crawled into her cool, perfect bed and curled onto her side and asked him if he’d heard from Sally about the kittens, and he’d shown her his phone, three videos of the newly named Quincy and Francis happily exploring a cat tree and a small scratching post, and then she’d gotten sleepy again, real sleepy, talking-nonsense sleepy, and she’d said, “Sit right there for a minute,” and pointed to her mattress, and then she’d held his phone close to her face and watched the videos again, maybe even twice, feeling a little wistful about her stupid late-developing cat allergy, but not wistful enough, she guessed, to keep from falling asleep again.
It was still pitch dark, so maybe it hadn’t been all that long, but judging by how rested she felt, and judging by how dry her hair was, she’d been out for a while. She even had a mean crick in her neck, which was weird, because her pillows were usually. . .
Oh no. Oh no no no.
She was not sleeping on her pillow.
She was sleeping on Will Sterling’s lap.
Her cheek on his thigh, rising and falling slightly from the long, even breaths that suggested Will had fallen asleep, too, sitting up in the same position she last remembered seeing him in, his back against her headboard, one of his feet still on the floor.
She gently—so, so gently—pulled her cheek away, and with mortifying clarity realized that it was damp.
Because she’d drooled on him.
Please don’t wake up, she thought.
“Hey,” he said, his voice low and rough, because of course she’d fall asleep on the lightest sleeper alive.
Please don’t notice your leg, she thought.
He unfolded his crossed arms and set a hand on his drooled-upon thigh, and Nora put her face in her hands and groaned.
He chuckled. “Hey, now. Two nights ago a kitten crawled out of a hamper, peed on my torso, and screamed in my face. This is nothing.” He shifted, rolled his neck. “How’re you feeling?”
That was nice, how he did that. How he moved right on, from the humiliating thing. Probably she ought to take back what she’d said about his bedside manner. On the scale of things, the I’ve seen worse approach worked pretty well, actually.
She sniffed tentatively, relieved to find it was, for the first time in three days, possible to get some air through her nose. “Pretty good, compared to . . . yesterday? Is now . . . tomorrow?”
He shifted again, patted the bed for his phone, which he found in the folds of her comforter. When it lit up she could see more of his face, the handsome, charming curve of his smile. She clutched uselessly at the sheets tangled around her, remembered the way it’d sounded when he’d called her baby.
“Wouldn’t you know,” he said, and turned the phone screen toward her.