thought about what he’d said to Nora. He’d thought about her puffy eyes and quivering chin, the soft, stuffy snore that had lulled him into an unplanned sleep in her bed.
Give her a couple of weeks, he’d told himself, pushing the computer aside again. You can list it in a couple of weeks.
But it was more than a couple of weeks now. He’d left it too long, and look what had happened. She’d shown up with a great meal and a gleam in her eyes, because he’d given her some kind of false hope about his plans. Reckless, he thought. He needed to get it up on the site tomorrow, first thing. Tonight, maybe, if he could get his head on straight.
“That was nice of you,” she said. “Not necessary, but nice.”
Wait—not necessary? His brow lowered. Maybe she hadn’t gotten her hopes up, or maybe—
“I actually meant my apartment,” she said.
He turned to look at her, could feel the surprise that was surely registering on his face. “Your apartment?” he repeated, confused.
She nodded, her eyes still out on the water, and he watched her chest lift on a deep inhale. He couldn’t quite see her eyes, but he had a feeling.
He had a feeling she was about to say something rash.
“I want to make mine like yours.”
Chapter 11
So, she’d said it.
Will was quiet beside her, and at first she was grateful. It meant that she could spend the first few seconds following her confession—was it too much to call it a confession?—with her eyes ahead, out on the sunset waters of this place she’d never seen, letting the feeling of her words wash over her. She hadn’t quite planned to say them, or at least she hadn’t fully decided yet, but now that she had—
“You want to rent your unit?” he broke in.
“What!” Nora exclaimed, snapping her head toward him so quickly that she nearly lost her balance. She shifted, turning to face him. “Not rent it!”
He looked at her from behind his glasses (of course he was wearing his glasses; that’s probably why she’d made the confession! There was no telling the power of those spectacles), the dark mass of his hair blowing gently across his forehead. He looked like he could be in a calendar—twelve months of men looking terrific by a lake—but also the expression on his face suggested he thought Nora could be in a monthly calendar featuring people who made absolutely no sense.
“Not rent it?” he repeated.
“No!” She lowered her voice from outrage volume, then narrowed her eyes at him. “And don’t call it a unit.”
He pressed his lips together in a way she recognized, holding up his hands in mock surrender. Silence fell between them again, and she could tell he was waiting for her to explain herself. But even the suggestion, the misunderstanding—that she would ever rent Nonna’s apartment!—was so rattling to her that she barely knew how to start again.
“Want to walk a bit?” he said after a minute, tipping his chin up toward the shoreline.
She nodded, grateful for the suggestion, and they both stood—Nora brushing her sand-coated palms across the front of her jeans, Will shaking out his jacket. She was still thinking over what to say when they reached the shoreline, a cool wind blowing off the water that had her crossing her arms over her chest.
“Here,” Will said, and settled his jacket over her shoulders.
And like that—with that warm and perfect weight enveloping her, Will’s scent close and soothing—something inside her eased, shook free. It felt like that night two weeks ago, in her bed: the golden-hour perfection of those first few minutes of conversation they’d had, before things had turned so fraught and sad.
Before he’d gone, and before she’d got to thinking.
“Mostly it’s about the towel rod,” she blurted, which was maybe not that ideal thought to have shake free first. Then again, maybe it was. The towel rod was simple, specific. A change, but nothing drastic. Nonna, she was sure, would support it.
“The . . . what?”
She cleared her throat, reaching up to gather Will’s jacket tighter around her. There, that was better. “The towel rod that you put in your bathroom?”
“Yeah, I remember. But why—?”
“I want one of those. It’d be nice to have one, so I’m going to put one in.”
Even to her own ears, it sounded overly sharp, full of the same strained, nervous conviction she’d needed to get herself to come here today. You’re going to put the address into your phone, she’d