“Wasn’t Expecting That”
Noah
Fuck she’s cute.
Feisty and cute.
Totally unexpected, but far from unappreciated.
There was just something about the way Zoe tried to argue her way out of going out with me that made me even more determined to see it through.
It may sound conceited, but it’s not often that women say no to me, or even try to rebuff my attempts to ask them out. I may have been sleeping with Nikki off and on for the past eighteen months but that’s not to say I haven’t still kept one eye open to the female of the species. I just wasn’t actively trying to meet someone with a view to a relationship.
What started out as a simple apology and get-to-know-you dinner has now got me determined.
Part of the new-and-improved version of myself, I decided that Zoe deserves the whole hog when it came to this date of ours. She wasn’t exactly jumping for joy when I asked her out so I’ve taken it upon myself to be proactive in bringing her around to my way of thinking. If that takes a bit of the ol’ Taylor charm in order to achieve it, then so be it.
Therefore, having an unexpected lull between cases late on Thursday night, I decide to send Zoe a text to organize our date for Saturday night. I’d sent a text to myself from her phone when I asked her out so that I could get in touch with her.
Noah: Hey Zoe. Just wanted to confirm the scheduled repeat of our kiss for Saturday.
Zoe: Um, who the fuck is this?
Noah: The man of your dreams?
Zoe: Or my nightmares. Who the hell is this?
Noah: It’s Noah.
After a delay of about five minutes, she finally replies.
Zoe: Oh, hey. You’re joking right?
Noah: I was, but it wasn’t really funny. I apologize.
That’ll teach me for trying to be suave.
Zoe: It’s okay. Just a bit weird for a message from an unknown number. I thought you were someone else.
Noah: Sounds like there is a story there somewhere.
Zoe: Ah yeah, but never mind. You still want to go out on Saturday then?
Noah: Of course. I wouldn’t have asked you otherwise.
Zoe: I kind of thought you were just asking to be nice.
Noah: I never do anything I don’t want to do, Zoe. And I do want to see you on Saturday.
Noah: I figure since our tongues have been in each other’s mouths, we owe it to ourselves to at least get to know one another.
Zoe: Lol. Good point. So where were you thinking?
Noah: Maybe a quiet drink and bite to eat somewhere? I promise not to overindulge.
Zoe: You seem to be fun when you overindulge.
She’s flirting with me now. This is good. The wall inches down ever-so-slightly.
Noah: I care to bet that we both are. But I was serious about getting to know you, Zoe.
Zoe: That’s what I’m afraid of.
Noah: I only bite when asked, I promise.
Zoe: Right. So did you want to meet somewhere or . . .
Noah: I’ll pick you up. I was raised to be a gentleman, after all.
Zoe: A gentleman who kisses random women at weddings?
Noah: Not my finest moment.
Zoe: You sure you want to pick me up? You know who I’m living with, right?
Ah fuck. And all of a sudden, it clicks.
Noah: I don’t fancy coming face to face with your brother’s fist again.
Zoe: Yeah, not his best moment either, I assure you. How about I meet you somewhere?
Noah: Okay. There’s a quiet bar that I thought would be great for meeting up at. I’ll text you the address.
Zoe: Okey dokey.
Noah: See you around seven p.m. then.
Noah: And Zoe, I’m really looking forward to seeing you again.
And I am. There’s something refreshing about meeting someone new. Albeit closely related to a friend of mine, but there’s a clean slate.
If there is one thing I like about relationships, it’s the initial dating stage. Those first few dates where you’re getting to know each other. It’s fun to just talk to someone, to let it all hang out and learn about the other person.
Given my recent decision to look forward to the future, I’m now very much looking forward to getting inside the head of the intriguing Zoe Roberts.
And if I get a repeat of that kiss at the end of the date—especially if it’s even half as good as how she described—then it will be a good night all round.
Zoe
Something about my text conversation with Noah has me feeling equal measures of excitement and trepidation.
The promise of Noah is the exciting part. Not his reputation, although if he’s as talented as he is reportedly endowed, then it will be—exciting that is. It’s the hint of a softer, more considerate side of him that I’m seeing. Confusing, slightly worrying, but intriguing, and as previously mentioned, a bit of a mind-fuck.
But that’s all in my own head. My own issues stem from what my ex-boyfriend has put me through in recent months.
I met Justin a few years ago when I went to get my first tattoo. I walked into the studio and Justin had some spare time before his next client. An hour and a lot of pain later, I walked out with a butterfly on my lower back and a date.
For the first year of our relationship, he was amazing. Attentive and caring, he seemed to worship the very ground I walked on but in a very endearing way. I was that young and dumb girl who thought the sun shined out of my boyfriend’s ass. So naïve, I took his very intense interest in my life as a surefire sign that I’d found the ‘one’ for me.
Despite being starry-eyed and well sexed—because he was rather good at that—I started to feel smothered by his attention. I talked about it with my mom, sharing my concerns, and was surprised to find that she had been worried about me for a while. Zander even suggested that I step back and try cooling things off between the two of us.
But Justin wouldn’t hear of it. He pretty much dismissed my concerns, saying that my family was trying to turn me against him. That was the last straw. My family and I have been through so much together that there is no way we would let someone come between us. Zander may have lived in Chicago while we lived in Indiana, but along with my mom and two sisters, Danika and Mia, we were very close.
I was twenty-three years old and I had a boyfriend wanting to spend every spare moment together, wanting to know where I was and who I was with. He’d even started checking my phone when I was out of the room. That isn’t a relationship worth keeping.
So I cut my losses and ended things with him.
To say he took it badly is an understatement.
The lunatic started waiting for me after class, parking outside my house at all hours, and let’s not talk about the constant calls and messages. I found out a few months ago that he’d hacked into my email account and had messaged some of my friends about me.
Zander and Kate had been encouraging me to come back to Chicago and live with them. I figured Zander would’ve been sick of having his sisters living with him considering they’d only just got rid of Mia, but he insisted. They even got Mac to find out whether there were any jobs going at the hospital. I was on the fence about it but as things started to escalate with Justin, a new start in my hometown started looking more and more attractive.
Then somehow, Justin found out I was moving away and he broke into my bedroom in the middle of the night to plead with me to stay with him. When I freaked out and asked him to leave, he threatened to hurt himself.
So after calling the cops and calming myself down, I got the fuck out of dodge, arriving on Zander’s doorstep the next night with two suitcases and a smile. Then I went a little crazy, new tattoo on my hip, new chocolate-brown hair color, and a new positive outlook on life.
That was a week before Mac and Daniel’s wedding, a week before the drunken kiss that ruined my lips for all other men.
Fast forward to now, and I have Noah texting me to make plans for a date on Saturday night. Despite what the nurses said the other day, I need to confirm that he is in fact single. He did leave the wedding with that uptight bitching blonde. But if he weren’t available, he wouldn’t have asked me out, surely.
He said that he wanted to get to know me, to show me the real him, but what if he’s just wanting to be friends as well? I get up off my bed and see my phone start flashing with an incoming call. It rings for what seems like ages until it stops, my voicemail obviously kicking in.
Staring at the now dark screen, I will it not to ring again. In my head I’m hoping it will stay dark, begging the screen to stay in sleep mode. As the seconds pass by and the follow up call doesn’t seem to be coming this time, my racing heartbeat starts to calm down.
This stupid shit is starting to get to me. I’m having to school my reactions to certain things when I’m around friends and family. When my phone vibrates in my pocket at work, I force myself to not flinch. When I receive an unmarked letter in the mail, I hide the slight tremor in my hands when Kate or Zander give it to me.
Sometimes I wonder whether I’m starting to lose my mind.
Noah has been somewhat of a welcome – if not surprising – distraction.
I need to talk the Noah situation through with someone. I’m a talker. I need to look at things from all angles out loud. Normally it’s Zander or Mia, sometimes my mom, and if all else fails, Danika. She is seventeen now, but still, what seventeen-year-old wants to hear about their older sister’s love life disasters? With all of those options unavailable to me, especially since Zander is likely to hunt Noah down for even breathing my air right now, my future sister-in-law, Kate, is my best bet.
“Kate, do you have a minute?” I ask as I walk into the living room and drop down on the couch beside her.
“Sure, babe. What’s up?” She spins her body around to face me, and frowns. “Wait—the look on your face tells me we need wine for this talk. Do we need wine? Because I’m pretty sure we’re all out now.” She winks at me, grinning as she tops up her glass from the now empty wine bottle from the coffee table.
“Good point.” I jump up and skip to the kitchen, returning with an empty wine glass, which I hold out to her.
Once she’s filled my glass, I lean back into the couch cushions and take a long sip of Kate’s new drink of choice, Moscato.
“So is this a man, work, or brother problem?” she starts off.
I burst out laughing. “Wow, you just dive right on in there, don’t you?”
“I’m not here to fuck spiders. We’re here to solve whatever problem has you stuck in your head, something that both Zan and I have noticed you haven’t been your normal crazy self this week. So out with it—door one, two, or three?”
“Did you have sisters?”
“Two older brothers. I’m the baby.” She shrugs and smiles at me. “Now stop avoiding the question and spill, Zoe.”
“Are you this demanding with my brother?” She quirks a brow at me, and smirks. “Oh dammit, no! I don’t mean like that. Dirty, dirty woman!” That just starts her giggling, blushing like crazy, which makes me join her laughing.
“Zoe, tell me what I need to know.”
“It’s kind of all of the above. Noah kind of asked me out on Tuesday and I said yes.” Then I’m wearing Kate’s wine as she spits it out all over me. “Oh my god! Sorry, oh shit.” She runs to grab a kitchen towel and hands it to me so I can dry myself off, something I do with great amusement. “That is totally not what I thought you would say.”
“Believe me, it wasn’t something I saw coming either. I went from hearing about his Walking Dildo history in the cafeteria to having him hunt me down to apologize for kissing me, then in the very next breath, asking me out for a quiet dinner and drinks on Saturday.”
She starts giggling uncontrollably and I start to look around the lounge for another empty wine bottle—or five. “What?”
“Your brother . . .” Snort “ . . . is going to hit the fucking roof!” She slowly regains her composure but still sniggers as I continue.
“That’s kind of what I’m worried about. And, well . . . is Noah even single?”
Her face falls as she leans deeper into the couch, curling her legs up on the seat to get comfortable. “Mac has known him for a long time, over six years in fact, and although he does have his moments of sheer stupidity, he is a great guy. One thing he isn’t though is a cheater. Even with the arrangement he had with Mac all those years ago, if he met a woman he liked, they would cool it between the two of them while he pursued the relationship. When it didn’t work out, it would start up again.”
That’s one thing in his favor, I suppose.
“He left the wedding with Nikki though.”
Her eyes soften and she reaches her hand over to rest on my leg. “Hun, don’t take this the wrong way, but he was drunk. And I don’t just mean a little, I mean a lot. Nikki was there, he brought her to the wedding—it’s kind of expected that he’d leave with her too.”
“I suppose. It’s just . . . actually, no. Don’t worry about it.”
“What, Zo?”
“He admitted that he doesn’t remember kissing me,” I confess, grimacing when Kate gasps in shock. I carry on though, somehow feeling like I have to defend him. “He only found out what had happened when his brother told him about it last weekend. It must be why he sought me out at work.”
“I knew he was drunk, but to not remember it at all? Jesus! You’d think the sore face the next day would be a sign of something having happened.”
I shrug, unsure what to say to that. It still seems unbelievable to me that he doesn’t remember a thing.
“How do you feel about him having no fucking clue what he did?”
“It wasn’t a one-man show, Kate. I was an active participant. I may not have started it but I sure as hell helped finish it.”
“True. So a date? Non-date? Booty call? Repeat performance?”
“Slow down, woman, you’re supposed to be helping me sort my head out, not clutter it up even more!”
“Sorry, it’s just . . . well with what you’ve been through recently, are you even open to meeting someone new?”
“I’m not heartbroken over Justin, Kate. I was freaked out over him basically stalking me then breaking into my bedroom while I slept. Noah isn’t Justin—well, not from what you’re telling me.”
She smiles and shakes her head. “Not at all, hon. He’s a good guy. Daniel’s known him for twenty years or something, and since he’s just married my best friend, I consider him both a good judge of character as well as a miracle worker.”
“Right. So nothing ventured, nothing gained?”
“Something like that. If you’re okay with it, that’s all that matters. Even if your brother throws a shit-fit and tries to go all macho about it, it’s your life.”
I finish my glass of wine and grin at her, over the moon that I’ll be able to call her my sister in just a few months’ time.
“And besides, leave Zander to me. I’ll just distract him with sex if he becomes a problem.”
“Hun, I love you, but if you talk about having sex with my brother again, I may have to kill you.” I stand up and walk into the kitchen to put my empty glass on the counter.
She grins at me over the back of the couch. “Someone’s got to do it and for the sake of your love life, I’ll do it, Zoe. Just for you.”