When in Rome(40)

I needed a distraction from her voice and the thought of her body and the smell of her shampoo filling my home, so I turned on the TV, and now here I am watching an old black-and-white western where men are being shot off horses to a playful pew pew pew sound.

It’s the perfect distraction until…holy shit, I shouldn’t have come home from work at all. I’m going to have to move out and let Amelia have this house, because the sight of her turning the corner in my blue pajama bottoms but with only her black camisole covering her top half is too much. The bottoms swallow her whole so she has them rolled down at the waist a few times and that camisole doesn’t quite meet the top of the pants. There’s this enticing little band of skin showing all the way around her body. This woman looks like a fantasy come to life. Plucked straight out of my best dreams and placed right in my living room. The audacity of her.

I keep very still as Amelia pads her bare feet across my living room; her damp hair is draped over her shoulder, so long it nearly touches her waist. It hangs in this loose, easygoing way that’s somewhere between wavy and straight. A drop of water clings to the end of a lock of hair, and I watch closely as it lets go, dripping down the side of her bare arm. She belongs on a beach in Hawaii with a flower in her hair and sand clinging to her legs while a photographer snaps photos for a glamour magazine. She shouldn’t be in my tiny, unimportant living room smiling at me in a way I definitely don’t deserve. And yet, I find myself wanting to trace a line around her smiling lips so I can always remember the shape of them. I want to wind her long thick hair around my hand and wrist. I want to brush my fingers across her accentuated collarbones. Shit, none of that is good.

She opens her mouth but I bark first. “Where’s the top of those pajamas?”

Amelia’s eyebrows raise. Her face is clean of makeup right now, and unfortunately, she’s somehow prettier this way. “In my room. Don’t worry, I haven’t lost your precious Christmas gift pj’s.” That’s what she thinks I’m worried about?

Amelia sits down beside me and I stand up. We look like we’re on a seesaw. “Wait, where are you going? I wanted to show you this.”

I don’t know what this is because my back is to her. I slip around the corner where I find the thermostat and turn it down to 60 degrees. My old AC unit turns on with a roar and only then do I feel comfortable enough to take my seat again on the couch. Far away. Nearly sitting on the armrest.

If she realizes I’m acting weird, fighting with every fiber of my being to keep my eyes from dropping to her chest, she doesn’t let on. She smiles brightly at me and then tosses the notepad I gave her this morning onto my lap. She turns to face me, pulling her legs up under her. A little too comfy there if you ask me. I want to put my finger on her knee and slowly slide her to the opposite end of the couch.

“I finished it! The list,” she says, nodding toward the notepad in a hopeful tone.

I drag my eyes away from her beautiful face. (Shoot, not beautiful. Just…fine, it’s beautiful.) Look at the damn list. Just as I’m about to start reading, I notice a shiver race through her. “Cold?” I ask, a little too eagerly.

“Yeah. Does it feel like it just got supercold in here all of a sudden?”

I shrug with a light frown and then shoot from the couch to grab a plush blanket that was draped over the armchair. I bring it back with me, hug it around her shoulders, and then start wrapping it around her like plastic wrap, all the way up to her neck. She’s a human burrito. I give the overlapping corner one good yank to make sure she’s nice and snug and then I tuck it into the top (which is sitting just below her earlobes). Her eyes flare wide with disbelief because she can’t tell if I’m playing or not. I’m not playing. I made a homemade chastity blanket.

“Umm…thank you?” she says, close to laughing.

Feeling pretty secure now, I sit back down beside her, pick up the notebook. “Just trying to be hospitable.”

“Right. Mr. Hospitality. That’s definitely the title that comes to mind when I think of Noah Walker.” I cut my eyes to her head poking out the top of the plush burrito and it’s impossible to keep the smile from my face. She still looks too damn cute so I turn my eyes down and read her list.

1. Explore the town

2. Go fishing

3. Do something exciting

4. Play Scrabble

5. Teach me how to make Noah’s pancakes




“Play Scrabble?” I ask, lowering the list to look at her. She’s somehow managed to loosen the burrito and now has it loosely draped around her shoulders and open in the front like a normal person would wear a blanket. It doesn’t work for me at all.

“Yep.” She runs her fingers through her hair like a brush.

“You don’t need me to play Scrabble.”

“It would be boring to play by myself. I’d win for sure.”

I give her a derisive look. “What I mean is, you can play Scrabble anywhere. That’s not unique to our town.”

She pulls her feet out from under her and wraps her arms around her knees, hugging them to her chest, and thank God, wraps that blanket all the way around her again. “Actually…I haven’t been able to find anyone back home who wants to play.”

I stare at Amelia’s soft face and downturned eyes as she pretends to pick at the red nail polish on her toenails, but I know she’s only avoiding eye contact because she’s embarrassed. A surge of protectiveness rams through my body and suddenly I want to hunt down anyone who has ever turned her down for a game of Scrabble and force them to play all night with her. And you’re going to smile and like it! What kind of asshole wouldn’t want to be friends with her? She’s sweet. Funny. Easygoing. Gorgeous. It’s unfathomable that she’s single.