Chapter Nine

Matt woke the next morning to the sound of dishes clinking. Bleary-eyed, he checked his phone. After ten. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept so late, but was tempted to fall back against his pillow…at least until a clink turned into a crash, which was quickly followed by the kind of curse that Lexi could have picked up only from a sixteenth century pirate ship. Or the fire house. When it came to profanity, there might not have been much of a difference.

Still half asleep, he dragged on a pair of sweat pants and walked shirtless to the kitchen, hoping for coffee. Immediately he noticed the orange juice again on the counter, this time surrounded by a pile of dishes. He rubbed his eyes but the view didn’t change. “Please tell me you’re not cooking anything,” he grumbled.

“You’re hilarious,” she said, though her dry tone suggested her feelings were more aligned in the opposite direction. “I’m cleaning.”

Unless she’d thrown a party since he’d last passed through the kitchen, he could only assume the dishes were already clean. But he was tired and very much in favor of choosing his battles, so rather than question her, he reached blindly for the coffeemaker. And missed. Where his finger should have jabbed the start button, he found dead air. His machine was gone, replaced by a Keurig. “Where is my coffeemaker?”

Lexi pointed to a top cabinet. “It’s up there. I brought mine over.”

His mouth opened, then closed again. He thought twice about telling her the dangers of coming between a man and his preferred choice of caffeine, but then he actually saw the scope of the situation with the dishes. And then the cabinets. The latter were empty. The former were everywhere. “Lexi?”

She didn’t look up. “Yep?”

“What are you doing?”

“Well, I couldn’t reach the top cabinets,” she explained, “and, since I have been doing the dishes, I thought I’d rearrange things. Really, Matt. You have the plates on the top shelf. Who does that?”

“I don’t have to see them,” he said slowly. “I just grab one. Whereas when I need a bowl or something, I have to see to figure out which…one…” He trailed off, watching her grab a casserole dish and, with a look of determination he knew too well, eye a high shelf. Resigned, he stretched just past her and grabbed a stool, setting it solidly in front of the cabinet she hadn’t a prayer of reaching.

“Thanks,” she told him brightly.

“You can use that to put everything back,” he said, but she’d already climbed the two vertical steps, hoisting the ceramic dish to the top shelf where it absolutely did not belong. Only then did he realize his mistake. She wore the tiniest pair of shorts, and he wasn’t sure why that fact had initially escaped him. Add to that, with her on the stool and her arms extended over her head, her shirt edged upward, baring her midriff inches from his face. He felt the heat from her skin, smelled the soap from her shower. Visually traced one curve after another, twisting and turning into a bigger mess than she could ever make of his kitchen.

He swallowed hard, managing to turn away to plunk one of those little plastic cups into the slot in her coffee machine and close the lid. At least that was how he thought the thing worked. Caitlin had one in her bookstore so he was remotely familiar, but the fire station thus far kicked it old school, which was the way Matt liked it. He didn’t think much could beat a hot pot of coffee waiting.

At least not until that moment.

He hadn’t gained enough distance from Lexi, and when she turned to step off the stool, he was looking directly up at her, like he’d hoisted her skyward for some dramatic moment from one of her movies, where all she had to do was slide down the length of his arms to land in the kind of embrace that made the credits roll. His breath caught, and he’d have sworn time stood still. The only sound was the gurgle from the coffee he’d brewed, and he was hit with one single thought.

He wanted nothing more than to knock every dish he owned out of the way, bend her over the counter, and sink so deep into her that he’d forget his own name until he heard it on her lips.

Fuck. The word, an admonishment, one hell of a mistake he couldn’t afford, rolled around, the mother of all bad ideas, throwing sparks and ash, tinder to flame and destruction. And wasn’t that it in a nutshell? How else could it possibly end?

She was his best friend. Everything in the world that mattered to him hinged around her somehow. Every bit of family he had left in this world. His job. His house. His dog.

He ached to reach for her, but he knew he’d never be able to let go of everything holding him back.

She’d remained uncharacteristically quiet, and the moment hung around them like a warm blanket on a cold night. Then she wavered, and instinctively he reached for her, his fingers just grazing the bare skin of her abdomen. She jumped at the contact, and he wondered if the same jolt that had set fire to his blood was to blame. He met her gaze. Flattened his palm against the curve of her waist. She sucked in a quiet breath and still hadn’t let it out when his second hand joined the first. Firmly, gently, he lifted her from the stool, moving her to solid ground. In his mind, he was supposed to have said something then about putting back his dishes and his coffeemaker, but restoring that little bit of order wouldn’t have done anything. Not now.

Her shirt had fallen when she’d lowered her arms, leaving his hands between the fabric and her skin. Her pulse beat through him, setting his own erratic heart rate. In his lust-clouded thoughts, it wouldn’t take anything to kiss her. And his lips were millimeters from doing just that when he realized it wouldn’t take anything.

It would take everything.

He dropped his hands and turned away, the rush of cold air in her absence nearly taking his breath. He didn’t say anything—just headed for the shower, grabbing his coffee as he went.

He’d lost his damn mind.

He cranked the water as cold as it would spray, like that would do any good. He’d need ice cubes to pelt him from the fixture if he had a prayer of forgetting where his thoughts had just gone. He stripped out of his sweat pants, wondering belatedly if Lexi had noticed through the baggy fabric that he was harder than he’d ever been in his life.

It wasn’t until he’d stepped under the cold spray that he realized his second mistake. Everything in the shower reminded him of Lexi. He kicked himself for not going straight to the one in the master bedroom, but he seldom used it. He had no desire to clean the giant tub or enormous glass-walled shower, and until this moment, the hall bathroom had suited him just fine. But all he could smell was Lexi’s shampoo. Lexi’s body wash. He didn’t even see his damned Irish Spring.

He’d never made a sound more feral than the growl that escaped his throat.

That was it. He’d reached his breaking point over a bar of soap. Not once in his twenty-nine years had he ever felt so helpless, and if he didn’t take the edge off, he had a bad feeling he’d do something stupid. Something he couldn’t take back.

Like make love to her.

The errant thought filled him with a whole new kind of ache. It had nothing to do with the blistering cold water or the lingering melon scent or the fact that he felt like he held a steel pipe in his hand. He could think only of sinking into soft, hot velvet, her heels hooking around his thighs, opening to him, urging him closer, deeper. He could already feel her body tight and soaked, his own tense with the need to thrust frantically in a rhythm that already drummed in his chest. He felt the heat, the sensation of losing his grip on her sweat-slicked skin, of fingernails tearing at his flesh.

He felt every bit of it, and then he felt nothing but hot bliss. He looked down in shock.

He’d exploded. Thinking about his best friend. And in the throes of the coldest shower he’d ever taken in his life.

And it felt better than any actual sex he’d ever had.

Defeated, he rested his forehead against the wall and kicked up the water temp. Nothing about this was okay. He couldn’t blow up their friendship. Even if they wanted the same things, he couldn’t risk that it wouldn’t work out. But they didn’t want the same things. He’d never been in a real relationship in his life. He’d never wanted one, much less know if he could stick one out.

His only concession was that he was getting way ahead of himself. He thought she was hot. In the state of Colorado, that did not require a marriage license. He just needed to breathe. Easier said than done when he was left to shampoo and bathe with her body wash, but he literally ran into burning buildings for a living. He wasn’t going to let a melon berry, whatever that was, bring him down.

He finished his shower, made sure it was clean, and only then realized he hadn’t grabbed anything to change into. Aggravated with himself, he pulled on the same sweat pants, grabbed his coffee, and headed to his room.

He took his first sip before he’d made it out of the bathroom and almost choked. It tasted like syrup. He glanced in the direction of the kitchen, where the dishes still clinked under the ministrations of what Matt already knew to be the softest hands that had ever touched, tickled, or wrecked him, and immediately changed his mind.

The syrup went down the bathroom sink, and he escaped to the safety of his room.

…

Six hours later, Matt headed to Elsie’s by his damn self. To his surprise, within a couple hours of his shower, the dishes had been put away—though where he’d ever find anything was Lexi’s guess—but not because Lexi intended to go with him to Elsie’s as planned.

She’d finished so quickly because she wanted to see Dave. For the second day in a row. She did ask Matt to send Elsie her regards, and pointed out that Matt rarely saw his grandmother alone, so basically she’d made an excellent case that made him look like a jerk for calling her out for bailing on the visit.

Elsie—who insisted that he call her by her first name, because apparently that somehow made her younger—had sold her house and checked herself into a retirement facility for the sole purpose of carousing with men. And she hadn’t exaggerated that point. Matt had had the displeasure of walking in on her once, after knocking, after she’d instructed him to come in. Never mind Ed while he gets his pants on, she’d told Matt. He doesn’t have anything you don’t.

Two things had changed that day. One, Matt had realized that whatever medication his grandma had been on in the last few years had worked wonders, because almost three decades before, when Matt was born, arthritis had crippled her to the point that she’d barely been able to get around—a far cry from recent years, where she was actually getting around.

Two, he hadn’t been back since without Lexi. He always let her enter the room first, because if anyone had to lay eyes on another naked male octogenarian, it might as well be her. He figured in another fifty or so years she’d be looking at one, anyway, whereas Matt had no such thing on his bucket list.

Today, Lexi-less, he knocked with utmost hesitance.

“Come in!” his grandma’s voice called in return.

He shook his head. She never asked who was there. “It’s me.” He paused, then in a lower voice, asked, “Are you naked?” He earned odd looks from a couple of residents making their way down the hall, but he’d take that over naked grandma any day.

“Commando,” she responded, just as the door swung open. “But not naked.” She glanced from side to side, her white puff of hair not moving with the effort. “Where’s Lexi?”

He tried to think of an excuse that would fly and failed. So he went with Lexi’s. “She’s on a date.”

His grandma opened the door wider and ushered him in. As far as retirement facilities went, the place was pretty nice. It was homey, with apartment-like suites. Elsie announced her plans to move there on Matt’s eighteenth birthday, which was shortly after he’d graduated from high school. He’d been relieved that she’d be surrounded by people.

He never dreamed they’d be naked.

Apparently, being around people her own age had worked wonders for her health.

She stood now with her hands on her hips, a backdrop of family photos and floral prints cluttering the walls behind her. Matt’s attention always went first to one of him as a baby with his parents. The rest, it seemed, included Lexi or her parents, and the realization that Lexi would eventually have her own family—one that didn’t include him—hit him like a punch to the gut. He couldn’t think of anything worse than losing her.

“Well, then,” his grandma said, “if Lexi isn’t here, you’re just going to have to get me my condoms yourself.”

Or maybe he could.

Matt blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t give me that look, young man.” She gathered the hem of what looked like a nightgown and eased into a chair. “You know rates of STDs are rising among the old folks. Up fifty percent, last I heard.”

Matt knew no such thing. EMS training be damned, he didn’t want to know any such thing.

“And they provide them here,” she continued, oblivious to his shock, “but you know how much they charge us?” Elsie looked toward the door and yelled, “Gladys, what is it for the condoms now?”

“Two fifty,” an elderly voice returned.

Elsie smacked her own thigh. “That’s right. Two dollars and fifty cents. Each. You’d think they’d give them away. Do you have any idea how much extra they charge at this place if you need medical attention? You’d think they’d want these old geezers breaking hips left and right.” To Matt’s absolute horror, his grandmother lightly punctuated her revelation by pumping her hips in the chair.

“I can never unsee that,” he muttered. Louder, he asked, “Lexi brings you condoms?” He didn’t really want to know, but he didn’t want to wonder if he’d misheard, either.

Elsie stared down her nose at him, the bright blue frames of her glasses perched crookedly. “Did you say Lexi was on a date?”

“Yes.”

“With someone else?”

“Well, she’s not here with me,” Matt pointed out.

“I hope she’s not using my condoms,” Elsie mused.

However unintended, that wasn’t just a low blow. It was a physical one. “That makes two of us.”

His grandma turned once again and yelled, “Gladys!”

This time the other woman teetered into the room, tennis balls muffling the scrape of her walker against the floor.

“Land’s sakes, Elsie,” Gladys said. “Why don’t you text me?”

Elsie patted her head, just missing the glasses perched there. “I can’t find my glasses.”

“They’re as plain as the nose on your face,” Gladys deadpanned. Her own gown had somehow gotten hung up on her walker, giving the impression of a thigh slit that was probably worthy of a red carpet. Matt could only hope he had their energy, as it were, when he was that old. But today, he didn’t want details.

He didn’t ever want them.

“Never mind that,” Elsie told her with a wave. “How’s that granddaughter of yours? My boy just broke up with his girlfriend—”

“Grandma—”

“None of that now.”

“Elsie. I did not break up with my girlfriend.” Which he was sure she knew, considering she’d not long ago laid into him for not settling down, at which point he’d told her if he’d wanted a relationship he’d have one. At the time, he wouldn’t have considered it, but in that moment his fingertips still tingled from the time they’d spent under Lexi’s shirt, and he still hadn’t shaken his desire for her. He felt like a stranger in his own skin, unsure what he needed, only knowing that he couldn’t have it. Not unless he could go back to the moments before Lexi said she had to have that stupid fence, back to the decades he’d spent in the kind of bliss that could belong only to ignorance, but then, what could he change? He wanted Lexi to be happy. He just hadn’t realized she wasn’t.

“Excuse me, son, for trying to spin things your way.” Elsie’s admonishment barged through his thoughts, and for once he was grateful. To Gladys she said, “So he was dumped. Is your granddaughter still single?”

Well, maybe not grateful.

“Yes,” Gladys beamed. “And due any day now. My fifth great-grandbaby!”

“I’m good,” Matt said quickly, holding up a hand. “And congratulations. Nothing has changed with Lexi, though.” Great. Now he was lying to his grandma and her equally colorful friend. And apparently had been lying to himself, because where had that thought come from?

“She’s on a date,” Elsie countered.

“She’s out with a friend,” he corrected, despite her having used his own phrasing.

“A girlfriend?” Elsie made a tsking sound, then blurted, “You know, they need to use condoms, too.”

“How does that work?” Gladys asked. “Two girls using condoms. Are they for the toys?”

“I don’t know,” Elsie said, “but safe sex is safe sex.” To Matt, she added, “She’s like a daughter to me, you know.”

A condom-delivering daughter. Matt shook his head. Every grandmother-slash-mother should be so lucky…if only he didn’t have to witness it. “Do you need anything, Gr…Elsie?” he asked. Then, realizing his mistake, said, “Never mind. I know what you need. I have to go for now, but I’ll tell Lexi you’re looking for her.”

“You do that, son,” Elsie said, her hand catching the corner of her glasses as she reached to hug him. “Well, I’ll be. As plain as the nose on my face.”

Gladys huffed. “I told you that much.”

Elsie rolled her eyes behind the repositioned blue frames and pulled Matt close, whispering, “Don’t you let that girl go.”

“It was just to dinner,” he assured her. Or maybe himself. “Maybe a movie. It’s fine.”

And it was. But his grandmother’s knowing look haunted him long after he left the retirement home, doing all he could not to make eye contact with the residents…at least until he managed to put their teeming sex lives out of his head.

Matt and Lexi were fine.