Page 23 of Until You

chapter

six

Oliver

She takes seventeen minutes.

I know because I track the time. Not on purpose, but rather because the old clock on Mimz’s mantle ticks loud enough to hear from three rooms away, and there’s nothing else to do but sit here and listen to it while my life rearranges itself in real time.

Seventeen minutes of the clock ticking. Of the ceiling fan clicking on every third rotation because Pops has been meaning to fix the balance on it for two years. Of the coffeepot in the kitchen, making that low, sighing gurgle it does when it’s been sitting on the warmer too long.

Seventeen minutes to think about the fact that the woman I’ve replayed in my mind more times than I’d ever admit to another living soul is currently thirty feet away from me, behind a door, in my grandparents’ house.

I lean forward, elbows on my knees, and scrub both hands down my face.

Think, Oliver.

The facts are simple. My grandparents hired a live-in aide. That aide happens to be the same woman I slept with in my truck three months ago at Seven Mile Dam while rain hammered the windshield, and she wore my hat, and I forgot every rule I’ve ever set for myself.

Those are the facts.

I hear the door open. Footsteps in the hallway, lighter now, still bare, padding across the old hardwood. That third board from the kitchen groans, and I hear her pause on it for half a second like she’s used to the sound of it, like it’s familiar, and something about that detail irritates me in a way I can’t fully explain.

She’s settled here. She knows which boards creak.

She rounds the corner into the living room, and I get my first real look at her. Not the ambush version—the half-drowned, towel-clutching, wide-eyed version from twenty minutes ago. This is the put-together version. Or her version of put together, anyway.

She’s wearing cutoff denim shorts that end mid-thigh, showing off the ink on her right leg—flowers, I can see now. Brightly colored and beautifully detailed, they wind up from her ankle past her knee and disappear under the frayed hem. A black tank top that’s loose enough to be casual but fitted enough that I can see the shape of her underneath. Her hair is still damp, but she’s twisted it up into some kind of knot held in place with what looks like a pencil. The diamond in her nose winks at me.

She’s barefoot. The dark polish on her toenails is chipped.

She’s carrying two mugs of coffee.

She holds one out to me without a word.

I take it. Our fingers brush. Neither of us acknowledges it.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Don’t read into it,” she says. “I was already in the kitchen getting mine.”

She drops into the armchair across from me—Mimz’s chair, the floral one with the afghan draped over the back—and tucks one foot underneath her. She wraps both hands around her mug and looks at me over the rim.

Those pale green eyes. I’ve wondered since that night if they were as crystalline green as I remembered. Now I know, and I wish I didn’t, because they’re the kind of green that’s hard to look away from. Light and clear and sharp, like sea glass held up to the sun.

“So,” she says.

“So.”

A beat.

“This is weird,” she says.

“Yep.”

“Like, astronomically weird.”

“I’m aware.”