It took almost five hours to make the three-hour drive home, and they spent most of it singing along with the radio, chatting about stupid crap and cussing at idiots who shouldn’t have driver’s licenses, and it was so normal for them that Noah had relaxed by the time they hit Boston. Navigating the city was enough of a mental distraction so they were easy with each other again by the time they hit the New Hampshire border.
But when he pulled into her driveway and put the truck in park, Noah’s stomach tied itself into knots all over again. As soon as she got out of his truck, the weekend was officially over and so was the best fake-relationship he’d ever had.
Unless she invited him in. Part of him was hoping desperately she’d do just that, but he also knew that if he went in that house and they had sex, there was no going back. Not that it was going to be easy as it was, but at least they’d defined the parameters. What happens on the Cape stays on the Cape.
They weren’t on Cape Cod anymore.
“That was a great wedding,” Carly said. “Thanks for inviting me to be your plus-one.”
“Thanks for being my plus-one.” He wanted to say more, but she was already getting out of the truck.
She grabbed her bag out of the backseat and then stopped, standing outside the truck with her door open. Looking into her eyes, he knew she wanted to say something, but then she straightened her shoulders and gave him an almost Carly-like grin. “See you soon.”
Then she closed the door, cutting off anything he might have said, and walked down her driveway to the kitchen door without looking back. No wave. No kiss goodnight. No hey, we should talk about how not-fake this weekend felt.
Noah backed out of his driveway and headed for his place. He knew he should be happy. He’d avoided having to tell Jim and Emily he’d been lying to them for six months. He’d eaten great food on a gorgeous beach. And he’d had the best sex of his life.
But he didn’t make the short drive home basking in satisfaction. He was confused and inexplicably lonely, and afraid he’d made an irreversible mistake.
And he couldn’t talk to the only person he wanted to talk to about it.
* * *
It wasn’t easy for Carly to get out of bed and drag herself to work the next morning. Since opening Cedar Street Books, going to work had become a lot more fun, but a restless night of tossing and turning because every time she closed her eyes she saw Noah naked had put a serious damper on her usual enthusiasm.
She stopped herself from texting him what felt like a thousand times throughout the night, and the fact she would usually text him whenever something she wanted to talk about crossed her mind illustrated to her just how much everything had changed.
Once she’d let herself into the bookstore and locked the door behind her, she went right into her usual morning routine, dreading the moment when Zoe asked her how the weekend went. Her plan was to flood the conversation with details about the building and the food and the view, but it was damn hard to lie to her cousin—even by omission—and she knew she wouldn’t be able to hold out for long.
“Holy crap, Carly. You had sex with Noah.”
She jerked her head up, silently cursing the heat flooding her face. “I haven’t even said hello yet. Why would you think I had sex with anybody?”
It wasn’t an admission of guilt, but it wasn’t a lie, either. And, dammit, she’d hoped to have another cup of coffee before talking about her weekend.
“Every morning you move the piles of books off the desk so you can put your coffee there.”
“So maybe you should stop putting books there.”
“Or you should put your coffee somewhere else.” Zoe shrugged and Carly rolled her eyes, as they always did at this point in their weekly argument. “But you’re missing the point.”
“The point is that on the desk, next to my computer, is the most logical place for my coffee.”
“You always sigh and carry on like a teenage girl while you’re moving them so I know you’re annoyed—”
“Not that you care.”
“—but just now you weren’t annoyed and when you picked up the one that’s going in the Recommended by Zoe section and saw the couple making out on the cover, you stared at it for a few seconds with a really goofy smile on your face. Ergo, you had sex.”
Carly gave her a sideways look. “Ergo? Really?”
“Hey, I read a lot. Anyway, you went away to a romantic occasion with Noah. I didn’t get so much as a text message telling me you met some other hot guy. Throw in the fact you look like you only slept a few hours, and that tells me you banged your best friend.”
You banged your best friend. Words she’d been saying to herself over and over, although she usually threw in a you dumbass at the end just for kicks.
“Well?” Zoe prompted when she didn’t say anything. “Am I right?”
“Yeah.”
Zoe’s eyes widened. “Seriously?”
“Aren’t you the one who just broke down how it had to be Noah?”
“Well yeah, but I assumed you’d have some other reasonable explanation because...you and Noah? That’s just weird.”
“Tell me about it.”
“No, you tell me about it. Was it as weird as it sounds?”
Carly wasn’t sure how to answer that. Since she hadn’t even sorted it all out in her own mind yet, she didn’t have much hope of verbalizing it in a way that made any sense. “It was amazing.”
“And what now?”
That was the hard part. Admitting the sex had been amazing was easy enough, but visualizing what came next wasn’t. But they’d made a deal and she was going to stick to it. “It was just a weekend. What happened on the Cape stayed on the Cape.”
Zoe snorted. “Sure. Okay.”
“What? We talked about it. That’s what we decided.”
“So it’s going to be totally fine when Noah shows up to watch a ballgame or something at your place with a new woman on his arm?”
Carly’s mind shied away from those images so sharply, she actually jerked her head to the side so she wasn’t looking at her cousin. No, it wasn’t going to be totally fine. She wanted to be okay with it because it was inevitable, but she wasn’t.
“Don’t even answer that,” Zoe said, “because I can see on your face it won’t be fine, but you’re not going to admit it and I don’t want you to lie to me.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. Is it going to be weird—or even hard—for a while? Yes. But we’ll get through it because we’re best friends and we’re not going to let a weekend of sex get in the way of that, no matter how awesome it was.”
“Why don’t you two just admit you’re meant to be together but you’ve both been too stubborn or too stup—uh, too blind to admit it.”
“It’s not stupid to do whatever you can not to mess up a lifelong friendship.”
“I notice you didn’t address being stubborn.” Zoe snorted. “Anyway, it sounds like you’ve probably already messed up the lifelong friendship, so you may as well surrender to the inevitable and just marry him already.”
“Gee, that sounds romantic. And the last thing Noah wants to do is get married. To anybody.”
“Amazing sex can do a lot to open a guy’s eyes to his own stupidity. And at some point I’m going to want to hear more about the sex, so I can live vicariously through you because I’m not getting any.” Zoe paused and then frowned as she picked up a pile of books. “Okay, maybe not. It’s Noah, and that would be vicariously weird.”
“Let’s get ready to open,” Carly said because she was done hearing how weird her relationship with Noah would be now. She knew it. She was living it.
And it hurt for reasons she was afraid to say out loud. It was simple to say her heart hurt because she may have screwed up her friendship with Noah. But she also had to face the possibility she was hurting bec
ause her friendship with Noah would be okay...but never be anything more.
Carly wanted more.
For more years than she could count, she’d imagined herself standing on her grandfather’s dock with the lake in the background. In her imagination, she was wearing a simple white sundress and carrying a bouquet of wildflowers tied with a white ribbon. And, of course, Noah was standing at her side.
But she’d always taken for granted he was the man of honor.
Chapter Nine
Jim being on his honeymoon kept Noah busy as hell at the office. He would have welcomed the distraction if he was sleeping worth a damn, which he wasn’t. Those hours he should have been sleeping were spent thinking about Carly.
He’d dropped her off on Sunday and now it was Friday. There had been a few text exchanges between them. She’d asked him how work was without the boss around. They’d chatted about a TV show they both watched. But, maybe it was him adding a strange vibe that wasn’t there, but they felt off somehow.
And he hadn’t stopped into the bookstore at all. Being busy at work could explain that, but he’d gotten home before they closed twice that week and he hadn’t stopped to chat for a few minutes as he often did. Carly had undoubtedly told Zoe what had happened, and because they’d also been friends since childhood, she might not hold back on giving her opinion on the situation. He didn’t want to hear it.
But mostly he was putting off seeing Carly again and he knew it. He didn’t want to face the possibility that the next time they saw each other, it was going to be so awkward the discomfort would drive a wedge between them and his worst fear would be realized.
He’d lose Carly. Forever.
And putting it off wasn’t doing either of them any good. As soon as he got home, he pulled out his phone. He didn’t have to think about what he was going to say, since he’d thought about it all the way home. The best thing to do was pretend everything was okay until everything actually became okay again.
Want to go for a night ride after you close the store tomorrow?
Because staring at nothing put the clock on his DVR in his line of vision, he knew it was four minutes before she responded. Sounds like a plan. I’ll come over after work.
That was a good sign, he decided, since it was her usual response to that invitation in the past. It cheered him up a bit, though it did little to settle his nerves over what felt like the longest twenty-four hours of his life. By the time her car pulled up next to his truck, he was afraid he’d throw up as soon as he saw her face. Definitely not the message he wanted to send.
Carly stepped out of the car and turned to face him across the roof. For a second or two he held his breath, but then her face lit up in a smile and his soul lit up, too. They were going to be okay.
All he had to do was not talk about last weekend. Or think about it.
Sure. No problem.
“Sorry I’m running a little late, but you would not believe the customer we had walk in five minutes before closing,” she said, and he shrugged to show it was no problem.
Luckily, the customer who’d come back for the book she’d chosen not to buy three days before gave them something to talk about during the drive to the trailhead. Her work stories were always more fun than his work stories. The woman couldn’t remember anything about the book other than the cover being the same shade of blue as the inside of an unfrosted blueberry Pop-Tart and the fact it had piqued her interest, so she wasn’t leaving without it this time. The story certainly didn’t disappoint, and Carly had finally identified the book, so it had a happy ending.
It was while they were pulling their riding gear from his backseat that he realized everything might seem okay on the surface, but things between them definitely weren’t back to normal. The storytelling felt a little forced. And when she actually made eye contact with him, which wasn’t often, the bright smiles weren’t reaching her eyes.
They rode the four-wheelers hard and fast, bouncing over rocks and eating up the miles. It was usually a great stress-buster, but it wasn’t working tonight. He was glad Carly was in front and setting the pace, or he might have gotten stupid in an effort to leave his frustrations out on the trail.
When she finally pulled off the trail, it was in one of her favorite spots, near the edge of the river. It wasn’t fully dark yet, so even after they turned off the machines and lost the headlights, he didn’t have any problems seeing her face. She hadn’t fared any better at pounding the mental demons out on the rough trail than he had.
“You haven’t stopped by the bookstore at all this week,” Carly said once they’d taken their helmets off. “Is it that busy with Jim out of the office or are you avoiding me?”
“Why the hell would I be avoiding you?” He could have gone the easy route and said, yes, he was that busy, but it was a small town and he passed by Cedar Street Books on his way home. There was a small chance she knew there were a couple of evenings he could have stopped.
She laughed, but it was weak. “Don’t make me spell it out for you.”
“I haven’t been avoiding you.” Avoiding dealing with the situation they were in, maybe, but not her. “I guess I thought you might want a little space to... I don’t know. Let the afterglow wear off or whatever.”
The look she gave him made him chuckle. “A week-long afterglow?”
“At least.”
“You never change,” she said, but she said it with affection before turning to look at the river.
He went to stand next to her but, as luck would have it, he stubbed the toe of his boot on an exposed root and he bumped into her. He was in the process of explaining he’d tripped when she put her arm around his waist and leaned her head against his shoulder.
He stilled for a second to make sure he wasn’t misreading her signals before putting his arm around her shoulder. The lazy river was no ocean, but standing on the edge of the water with her put him right back in a Cape Cod frame of mind.
Dropping his arm from her shoulders, he ran his hand over the curve of her ass and heard her sigh as her back rested against his chest. He didn’t think it was an exasperated sigh, either. To test the theory, he rested his cheek on her shoulder so his breath blew across the side of her neck.
Rather than moving or shrugging him away, Carly tipped her head so her neck was totally exposed to his mouth. He kissed her there, his hands still on her ass and reveled in her long, slow intake of breath. When he nipped at the soft flesh, she gasped and then sidestepped away from him.
Well, that wasn’t the effect he was hoping to have on her.
“Before this goes any further, Noah, you should know the only way I’m taking my clothes off in the woods is if they’re on fire.”
That was really going to complicate his plans for the next fifteen to twenty minutes. “Even if you’re on top?”
“Somehow I don’t think mosquito bites in all the wrong places do much for the mood.” The words were meant to be funny, but her tone wasn’t. He could hear how unhappy she was and he didn’t know how to fix it.
“We can’t do this again, Noah. I know we both want to, but we can’t.”
Frustration burned his stomach. “If we both want to, why can’t we? That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Why are we even talking about this?” She sounded as wound up as he felt. “I thought there was a whole what happens on the Cape stays on the Cape thing.”
“There was. And it did. I was just thinking that maybe what happens in the woods could stay in the woods. Or maybe what happens on Saturdays stays on Saturdays.”
She didn’t laugh. She didn’t even smile.
Noah’s chest tightened when she walked back to the quads and pulled her helmet on. They needed to talk about this, even if he had no clue what he could say to make things better between them.
He could apologize for touching her butt again, but that wasn’t t
he answer. The problem was not only that he’d wanted to touch her again, but that she’d wanted him to. What had happened on the Cape sure as hell hadn’t stayed there, and neither of them knew what to do with the feelings that had followed them home.
When she fired her engine, he put his helmet on and straddled his machine. He’d let her ride away from the conversation this time, but he wasn’t letting her leave his house tonight until they’d talked about it. They were adults. One way or another, he wanted his Carly back.
The return ride took longer, since she rode slower and seemed to be avoiding some of the rougher parts that she usually enjoyed. Her body looked stiff in his headlights, mirroring the tension in his muscles. They were both going to be sore tomorrow, but he had a growing, gut-churning suspicion his shoulders weren’t going to be what hurt the most.
When they got back to the trailhead and she took off her helmet, he could see that she’d been crying. It explained why she’d been more careful than usual in the woods, and it made his chest ache. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her but, unlike by the river, her body language was clear. She didn’t want him to touch her.
The first thing Carly did when she got in the truck was turn the radio up enough so it would be awkward to talk. She didn’t even change the channel to music she actually liked, which confirmed it. Clearly she didn’t want to have a conversation with him.
He made it almost all the way to his house before he lost patience and stabbed his finger at the button to turn the radio off. “This is stupid, Carly. We’re going to talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to say.”
“Obviously there is or we wouldn’t have a problem right now.”
She shook her head and folded her arms across her chest. “Talking isn’t going to help and will probably make it worse. We just need a little time to get over it.”
“I don’t want to get over anything. I want to get through it. Together.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “We can’t do that unless we talk about it. And, to be honest, I’m not sure what it even is at this point.”
One Summer Weekend Page 8
