their straws to their mouths, as they quietly whisper to each other between sips.
Since they’re both staring straight across the street, I look too. Something glorious must have caught their attention after all. Whatever mysterious show they were talking about.
The yard gate at the side of the house opens, and someone pushes a lawn mower through the opening.
“Here we go.” Bessie does a little shimmy with her shoulders, and they both giggle.
The man pushing the lawn mower has a cap pulled low over his face, making it impossible to get a better look.
When he rounds the corner to align the lawn mower with the edge of the sidewalk, he looks straight at us. His eyes go wide for a moment before he waves. Not sure if he’s waving at the two ladies or me.
What. The. Ever-loving. Hell?
“Is that . . . Is that Noah?” His name pops out of my mouth, and I’m too stunned to fully wrap my head around this scene in front of me.
Why is Noah mowing the lawn across the street?
"Look at those calves."
"And those biceps. They look extra muscly today."
Loud slurping noises accompany Agnes and Bessie's chatter, which I'm only listening to halfway.
My feet move on their own accord, compulsion carrying me across the street. There's no other explanation for it.
And goodness, the ladies were right. I don't know where to look first. In his sleeveless shirt and shorts combination, there's so much to explore for my eyes.
The strong muscles under the stretched skin, the veins standing out loud and proud.
I want to lick him all over. From top to bottom, and back up.
Noah clears his throat when I'm only a couple feet away and staring at him like a crazy person.
When did he turn off the lawnmower?
He turns the hat around on his head, and my knees go weak. Is he doing this on purpose? He knows I have a thing for that. I mean, wearing a baseball hat backwards raises the hotness levels by like five hundred billion points.
"Hey." He looks over my shoulder and waves. "Good morning, ladies."
A unified "Good morning, Noah," echoes across the street.
"What are you doing here?" My gaze strays to the house behind him. The same house I've seen several times before without paying too much attention to it. The same house I’ve never seen anyone going in or out of.
He rubs his jaw, and my gaze follows his hand, zeroing in on his five-o’clock shadow. Gosh, it looks so good on him. Back in high school, we didn’t have a lot of guys come to school without shaving. Swimming is another reason to shave. There's absolutely no denying that the scruff shoots him up on the sexiness scale like nothing else.
Backwards hat plus scruff. I'm ready to melt into a puddle about now.
The scruff also makes him ridiculously manly, which is something I’m still not entirely used to.
This Noah, with the facial hair, with all the new muscles that are also more substantial than before, and then those dang fine lines in his skin. Veins. The matured face. It’s hard not to stare at him, which is exactly what I’m doing right now. Again.
He bites the inside of his cheek. “Well, we’re kind of neighbors.”
“Kind of . . . neighbors?”
“No, I meant we are neighbors. Definitely are. I live here”—he points behind himself before pointing across the street at my house—“and you live there.”
“How is that possible?” I gather my ponytail from my neck and scoop it to one side to play with the ends. “I mean, of course I know how it’s possible that we live on the same street. But . . . wow. I had no idea.”
He stays quiet and looks away from me.
I narrow my eyes at him. “And you didn’t think I should know about this? Why didn’t you say anything?”
And then, I shove his shoulder.
Hard.
Well, that gets his attention.
Mine too, because why on earth did I just do that?
We’ve actually had several moments in the last few weeks where I caught myself thinking about doing it, but I never acted on it.
Before now, I guess, even though I shouldn’t be too surprised.
These weird moments keep happening where this old familiarity seeps into my pores, and I'm thrown back into us. Into the previous version of us that is slowly mixing with the here and now. It makes me not think about what I do or say and things just happen. Almost like I’m using muscle memory from past Chloe and Noah