When in Rome(13)
The phone rings one more time before a man answers. “Ello? Automuphinandsons.”
Huh? What did that man say? I didn’t understand a single word. Was that even English? Honestly, it sounded like a pile of jumbled-up words being eaten by a garbage disposal. And this is a prime example of why I don’t do phone calls. You never know what you’re going to get on the other end, and it’s almost never a pleasant experience.
“Uh…hi…is…Tommy there?” I ask, glancing down at the paper to make sure I got the name right, even though I’ve read it roughly twenty times now and might be pregnant with its babies due to all the caressing.
I wince when there’s suddenly loud banging noises on the other end of the line, making it even harder to understand the man when he grumbles out his response, which honestly sounds like, “Uh-huh, you’re a honking table.”
That can’t be right.
A cold sweat breaks out over my skin, and I’m about two seconds away from losing it in the form of epic waterfall tears. I feel like a toddler lost in an amusement park. I can’t find my way and nothing looks familiar. I hate that I’m regretting leaving Nashville. I hate that I can’t stand on my own two feet. And I really hate that I don’t belong anywhere anymore.
And now I’m shaking. Maybe I’m not cut out for this. Maybe it’s time to end this call and dial Susan instead. I’ll beg her to send me a car, or a jet, or she can even send me a freaking unicycle for all I care. I could be home by dinnertime like nothing ever happened. But as I picture my life back there, a vise clamps down on my chest and screws tight. I can’t go back yet. I can’t give up on whatever I’m looking for in this town just yet.
“Ello?” the man says again, sounding more impatient than before.
“Yes, I’m here. Umm…I’m not actually sure what you said but—”
I gasp when a male hand reaches around my shoulder to take the phone from my hand. I whirl around and find myself staring right at Noah’s mountain of a chest. I never heard him come into the house, and now my heart is not just racing, it’s shouting and stomping indignantly on my ribs just to make sure I’m paying attention. Or maybe it’s trying to flee my body and get to safer ground.
My eyes tiptoe up his neck, and jaw, stagger slightly over his full, moody mouth until I safely land on his green eyes. He holds my stare as he lifts the phone to his ear. “Tommy? Yeah, it’s Noah. I got a woman here who needs you to pick up her car and tow it to the shop.” He pauses and listens, eyes never leaving mine. The intense, unwavering way he looks at me makes me want to squirm. What an excellent Buckingham palace guard he’d be.
Noah nods. “Mm-hmm. That’ll work. Thanks, Tommy.”
He leans around me and his chest brushes delicate fire across my shoulder. The click of the phone landing on the receiver is so startling against the dead silence that I jump a little. I feel reactive to Noah in a way I’ve never experienced before.
“Thanks,” I say, having to push my voice out from under a thick cloud of sudden attraction. “I can’t believe you understood him.”
The corner of his mouth twitches like he wants to smile, but won’t. “Tommy dips. That combined with his thick accent makes him hard to understand.”
“But you didn’t have any trouble.”
“?’Cause I grew up here. I speak dip. It’s a language in and of itself.”
“Bilingual,” I state with a light chuckle and let my eyes fall down the same path I traversed a moment ago. Nose, mouth, scruffy jaw, neck. When his Adam’s apple bobs, I realize I’m staring. Drooling. I don’t mean to, it’s just that there’s something different about him that turns me into a magnet. It’s more than the fact that he’s ridiculously attractive (and, hello, he is!), but there’s this soft grit, this delicious paradox of rugged masculinity that mixes with a comfy normalcy that makes me want to wrap myself up in the gray cotton T-shirt he’s wearing and live in it forever. I don’t even know him and I feel safe. Noah is the blanket fort you used to make and hide in as a kid. So warm and reassuring.
I think it’s that he’s so different from the men I’m around in my day-to-day life. The artist types that are at all times worried about the swoop of their hair—or in my last boyfriend’s case, only paying attention to me when we were in public where everyone could see.
The relationship wasn’t necessarily fake—but it was suggested by our managers as “a good fit for both of us.” I hoped it could end up being something great, but like the handful of other nonserious relationships I’ve had, it was ultimately flat. A two-liter bottle of soda that’s been lidless for a week.
He wanted to publicly date Rae Rose, venture out to parties all the time, spend enormous amounts of money at restaurants, and milk our stardom to its fullest—always making sure the press was around to capture our “completely candid moments of affection” so we would be on the front page of magazines as often as possible. (And by the way, he was a terrible kisser. Two out of ten, would not recommend.)
I might have been into the sort of lifestyle he lived when I was twenty-one and not burned out by the limelight yet, but now, I just want someone to play Scrabble with me and get snuggly in a blanket. I never could get him to do that, so I ended it pretty quickly, just like all the others who were even less notable than him. (But at least better kissers.)