“I don’t stink. You said yourself I was April fresh,” he protested, lifting his arm and sniffing.
“Yes, Simon, you smel delicious,” I deadpanned, sniffing the air around me.
He left his arm up higher on the pil ow, and I knew if I rol ed just a little I could slide right on into the nook. He looked at me, raising his eyebrows
ever so slightly. Was he thinking what I was thinking?
Did he want to nook me?
Did I want to nook him?
Oh the hell with it…
“I’m coming into the nook,” I announced and went ful snuggle: head nestled in, left arm over chest, right arm tucked under his pil ow. Legs I kept
to myself—I wasn’t a total fool.
“Wel , hel o there,” he said, sounding surprised. Then he curled himself around me immediately. I sighed again, wrapped in boy and voodoo.
“What brought this on, friend?” he whispered into my hair, and I shivered.
“Delayed reaction to Linda Blair. I need some nook time. Friends can nook, can’t they?”
“Sure, but are we friends who can nook?” he asked, tracing circles on my back. Him and his demon finger circles…
“I can handle it. You?” I held my breath.
“I can handle just about anything, but…” he started, and then stopped.
“What? What were you going to say?” I asked, leaning up to look at him. One piece of hair uncurled from my ponytail and fel down between us.
Slowly, and with great care, he pushed it back behind my ear.
“Let’s just say that if you were wearing that pink nightie? You’d be in a heap of trouble.”
“Wel , it’s a good thing we’re just friends then, right?” I forced myself to say.
“Friends, yes.”
He stared into my eyes.
I breathed in, he breathed out. We traded actual air.
“Just nook me, Simon,” I said quietly, and he grinned.
“Come on back down here,” he said and coaxed me back to his chest. I slid down, resting where I could hear his heart beat. He folded the
afghan over us, and I noticed again how soft it was. It had served me wel tonight, this afghan.
“I love this afghan, but I have to say it doesn’t real y fit your apartment—the cool-dude motif you have going on,” I mused. It was orange and pea
green and very retro. He was silent, and I thought maybe he had fal en asleep.
“It was my mom’s,” he said quietly, and his grip on me became infinitesimal y tighter.
There was nothing to say after that.
Simon and I slept together that night, with every light in the entire place on.
Clive and his hangnail stayed away.
Chapter Eleven
I WOKE UP A FEW HOURS LATER, startled by the warmth of the body next to me, which was decidedly bigger than the cat usual y nestled against my side. I
rol ed careful y onto my back and away from Simon so I could see him. I could see him just fine as the lamps, along with al my other lights,
continued to blaze away into the night, fighting back the evils of that awful movie.
I rubbed my eyes and inspected my bedmate. He lay on his back, arms curled as though I was stil in them, and I thought of how good it felt to
nook with Simon.
But I shouldn’t be nooking with Simon. Brain knew better. Nerves were in agreement. That was definitely a very, very slippery slope. And
though the images of climbing a slippery Simon that immediately came to mind were far from innocent, I pushed them aside. I looked away and
noticed the terribly wonderful afghan tangled between his legs—and mine, for that matter.
It had been his mom’s. Heart broke each time I thought of his sweet, timid voice sharing that little nugget with me. He didn’t know I’d talked to
Jil ian about his past, that I knew his parents were no longer alive. The idea that he stil clung to his mother’s afghan was inexorably sweet, and once
again my heart broke open.
I was close with my parents. They stil lived in the same house where I’d grown up, in a smal town in southern California. They were great
parents, and I saw them as often as I could, which is to say holidays and an occasional weekend. A typical twenty-something, I enjoyed my
independence. But my parents were there when I needed them, always there. The idea that I would someday have to walk this earth without their
anchor and misguided guidance made me wince, to say nothing of losing both of them at only eighteen.
I was glad Simon seemed to have good friends and such a powerful advocate as Benjamin watching out for him. But as close as friends and
lovers could be, there was something about belonging to someone completely that gave you roots—roots you sometimes needed when the world
battled against you.
Simon stirred slightly in his sleep, and I watched him again. He murmured something that I couldn’t quite pick out, but it sounded a little like