Chapter Twenty-Two
All morning, Amanda was walking on clouds.
Kissing Noah good-bye while he was still lounging in her bed. Thinking of him the whole subway ride. Imagining his lean body stretched out on her sheets and then picturing him rising, pulling on his clothes, brushing his teeth in her bathroom, drinking coffee from her favorite mug.
The world seemed brighter. Everything was more vibrant, more alive.
Is this, she wondered as she pushed through the subway turnstile, what love is? Is this why it makes people do stupid things and get all googly-eyed and giddy?
She practically danced her way up to the office. When she caught sight of Luke, she waved. He didn’t wave back.
“You look like shit,” she said, spinning him around in his desk chair before she went to sit at her own desk behind him. “Rough night?”
It was the way she usually was with him, and she did it without thinking. But this time, it didn’t feel like trying (badly) to flirt, or doing anything to get his attention, or finding excuses to be near him however she could.
She didn’t feel that way about him.
And she was beginning to realize her world was in technicolor for a very specific reason. One that had nothing to do with the man in front of her—handsome even when he was scowly and still had a little bit of bedhead. And everything to do with the man she’d left in her bed that morning, handsome especially when he was smiling and sleepy in the mornings, with a whole lot of bedhead and scruff.
“You’re in a good mood today,” he grumbled, kicking his chair into place and stopping her from moving it again.
“And you’re a total grump.” She folded her arms and stalked back to her desk. “Tinder let you down?”
“Just busy with the move,” he said and then spun around so he was facing her where she sat. “You do remember I’m moving, right?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly, feeling herself frown. “You kind of haven’t let me forget.”
“Then you know that means Noah’s moving, too.”
Just hearing his name—it felt like there should be clarion bells ringing, fireworks booming, something to mark what it meant.
Then again, this didn’t seem like an occasion for celebrating the way her heart was leaping out of her chest, full of feelings she’d never had. Never known she could have.
Not with the way Luke was looking at her. Not with the way he’d spat out his brother’s name.
“What’s going on with you?” she asked carefully, doing her best to sidestep the whole thing about Noah and moving and the way it made her heart burst and twist all at once.
“Nothing’s going on with me—that’s the point.”
They were starting to draw notice. They never fought. Certainly never in the office, with people milling all around.
He rolled his chair over. She wanted this whole damper on her awesome mood to go away, but she couldn’t help it. She leaned closer so he could whisper to her.
“The point is what’s going on with you and my brother,” he told her, and she couldn’t move. She couldn’t look up. She couldn’t confirm or deny or shake her head or run away or jump up and scream, “Yes, and I think I’m in love!”
Because she couldn’t speak. Everything in her was frozen, from her toes all the way to her tongue.
How did Luke know? What had Noah told him? Noah had said he wanted to wait. So why the hell hadn’t he talked to her first?
“Although who am I kidding?” Luke went on. “I should have known that Noah moving wouldn’t bother you.”
“What are you talking about?” She knew she shouldn’t get into it, but still. He was being so cryptic, so weird. And such an ass.
“I just mean that Noah has this whole serial monogamy thing going on where Kristina dumps him and he immediately has to find someone else to spend all his time with. But that’s not your thing, is it? ‘Serious relationships?’” He said the words as though they were in air quotes. As though the two of them were sharing some in-joke about how love was made up and never lasted anyway. The kind of thing she might have said before she’d felt it. Before she’d had reason to believe it was real.
“You won’t be pining over him when he’s gone.” Luke said it with a shrug, twisting the knife even deeper, and Amanda swallowed. He didn’t know shit. He didn’t know her. Suddenly, she wasn’t even sure how well he knew his brother.
For the first time, she could see him. Really see him—not as the guy she’d painted some unattainable fantasy of for all those years but as a person. A man. Leaning over her desk and trying to hide how shitty he felt.
Luke didn’t want her. She knew that. It was obvious—and it always had been, if only she’d bothered to do any looking.
But that didn’t mean he wanted anyone else to have her.
It didn’t mean he wanted her to choose someone else.
He was used to having all the attention. From the way Noah put it, Luke had been used to having all the attention for a very long time. It had to be disorienting to feel that slipping away. Not just to realize his friend and his brother were having a relationship without him, doing things he couldn’t be a part of, getting closer in ways he’d never know.
But more than that. The idea that Noah might do something without him, period. Make a decision, make a change with his life. Not a move to L.A. that they could do together, but the opposite. A decision that had the potential to cleave their relationship forever.
It almost made Amanda want to reach out and hug him, so palpable, so very real and desperate was his pain.
But her pain was real, too. She kept her hands by her sides.
“I think,” she said, and then when her voice came out small and hoarse, she cleared her throat and tried again. “I think that’s probably going to be for Noah and me to decide.”
It wasn’t a This Is Serious statement. It also wasn’t a You’re Right and It’s Nothing and I’m Fine.
But it was true, no matter what. It wasn’t Luke’s call.
He shrugged, whole paragraphs written in the line of his shoulders, the lean of his hips. “I’ve known you for almost four years, Mandy,” he said, using a childhood nickname that sounded so strange right now, when she didn’t feel like her kid self at all. “In all that time, you’ve never had a real boyfriend.”
“You don’t need to tell me that,” she practically snorted. Trying to keep things light. Trying to get back to how their friendship had been before she—well, she wasn’t going to say that she fucked it all up. Nothing about what she was discovering with Noah felt like fucking up at all.
But before things had changed.
“It’s like the end of senior year of college,” he said. “You know when everyone was hooking up like we were all going to die tomorrow, so might as well get in that last fuck with the person you never thought it would happen with?”
He laughed, and she nodded like she knew what he was talking about. Like she could relate. She had no idea why Luke was thinking about that until he said, musing, like it was all some funny gossip he had to share, “I guess Noah decided it was time to get laid again before we get the hell out of here.”
She was too stunned to speak. Too pissed to look at him.
“Anyway, I didn’t mean to keep you.” He slapped the desk lightly with his palm. “I should probably let you get cracking, since you came in so late and all.” His eyebrows did a little dance, like this was back to being one big joke. Like he hadn’t just stabbed a knife through her chest, pulled it out, and was walking to his desk with blood on his hands as she sat there, staggering, feeling her own heart drain out its life.
Like she and Noah were just sleeping together.
Like he was using her for some quick, work-your-stress-out fuck before he moved on to his new life.
Like this was nothing. She was nothing. Her heart was nothing, and anything that might have made it feel like more was simply Noah rebounding after Kristina. Noah looking for someone to warm his bed at night. Noah being confused.
And so what? She wanted to shout after him, after she pressed her hands to her abdomen and realized that no, that knife wasn’t real. And yes, she was still upright, still ostensibly fine.
So what if they were fucking? So what if it was nothing but fun?
It still doesn’t give you the right, she wanted to yell.
But instead, she picked up her bag and stormed out. If she needed to be at work today, she didn’t care. If Luke had anything else to call after her, she didn’t care, either. It wasn’t until she looked at her phone when she was in the elevator that she saw the text she’d missed from Noah.
“No shit, Sherlock,” she said out loud and headed for Central Park.