Famished by Meghan O'Flynn (latest ebook reader .TXT) đź“•
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- Author: Meghan O'Flynn
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Thomas lay on the couch, his face drawn and pale.
“You all right?” Robert said. “You haven’t moved since we got here.” He sat in a chair across from Thomas, head cocked, eyes on Thomas’s face.
Thomas shook his head weakly. “I’m not sure. Ever since lunch, it’s just been…shit.” He leaned over and vomited into the bucket next to the couch.
Robert averted his eyes until Thomas had finished puking.
“I can’t go tonight,” Thomas said, collapsing back onto the couch. “I feel like death.”
“I’m sorry.” Robert swallowed a smirk. “I wish I could do something.”
Thomas cast his eyes down, defeated. “It took me two weeks and three hundred bucks to get that reservation.” He sighed. “Noelle seemed so excited about it, too—Hey!” Robert could almost see the light bulb turn on over Thomas’s head as he looked back up. “Jim? Is there any way you might do me a favor?”
Robert tried not to smirk. “Anything. Just name it.”
Noelle had sounded disappointed on the phone, but she’d insisted on coming over to Thomas’s place. Now she knelt next to the couch.
Robert watched from the kitchen.
“Let me take care of you.” She put her hand on Thomas’s head.
They all think they’re fucking nurses. Robert pictured her in a nurse’s uniform as she bent to pull up the blanket, and his groin throbbed impatiently.
“No, really, there isn’t anything you can do. I just need to get some rest and—” Thomas’s eyes bulged. He retched again.
Noelle winced and stood.
“Seriously, honey, I just want to sleep. Let me know if the place is good enough to take you to in another month, okay? I had to bribe the maître-d to get in before February, and I’ll be pissed if we waste the reservation. I’d rather my two favorite people use it.” He smiled thinly. “Just don’t go falling for Jim.” His eyes closed.
Noelle turned toward the kitchen where Robert stood waiting, keys in hand.
“I’ll drive,” he said.
She followed him down the stairs. “I hope Thomas feels better soon.”
“He will.” Robert smiled. Eye drops only make someone ill for so long.
I was a whole different person. A better person. A person I barely recognized with my long, white-blond hair and a chartreuse gown that brushed my legs with silky fingers. A person who held hands with the love of her life and sniffed through a melancholy symphony, relieved that her current life felt so normal, so damn happy, in comparison to whatever the composer had been going through when he wrote the music. And I couldn’t keep my hands off the emerald pendant Dominic had picked out for me as Genevieve worked on my hair. By the time the last note rang out, my eyes were dewy with joy, just from the opportunity to be there with him.
Holy crap, I was turning into a ball of mush.
We drove back to his house in silence, but not uncomfortable, awkward silence—just the shared I’m-cool-with-you-not-talking silence. I stole fleeting glances at him as he steered the car through the quiet streets. Once, he caught me watching him and smiled, and a slow heat rose from my abdomen into my chest. Those eyes. So full of comfort and understanding. Eyes that never seemed to show uncertainty, or anger, or fear. I wondered if he could make me more like that, like him.
Actually, I thought, he already has.
When we arrived at the house, he took off his jacket and shoes in the mudroom and walked into the kitchen. “Would you like some water?” he called over his shoulder.
“Yes, thanks.” I kicked off my shoes and ducked into the half bath. I unzipped my dress, shimmied out of my nylons, and unhooked my bra, laying everything on the sink.
When only the emerald necklace remained, I padded into the kitchen. Dominic’s back was to me. I ran my hands up his back to his shoulders and kissed his arm through his shirt.
He turned, two glasses of sparkling water in his hands.
The edges of his mouth curved into a smile. He abandoned the water and wrapped his left arm around me as I arched into him. He reached between my legs. I was already wet.
I love you, I thought. Maybe tonight I would tell him.
Noelle had only agreed to go with Jim because Thomas was so bummed out about wasting the reservation. But without Thomas there, the whole restaurant felt a little awkward and business-like. Jim was reserved and kinda boring, a gentlemanly cliché, holding doors and pulling back chairs and talking about appropriately mundane work topics. But it wasn’t as bad as she had anticipated, especially after a couple of daiquiris, and the tinkling notes of the in-house pianist filled any gaps in their conversation. With Thomas, she wouldn’t have needed the piano; he’d surely have been ready with some weird story about his elementary school or a parallel between politicians and Wolverine. The only thing that made Jim’s eyes light up was talking about Hannah.
“So how long have you and Hannah known each other?” Jim said over after-dinner coffee.
Noelle washed down molten chocolate cake with a sip of her Kahlua and cream. The booze warmed her insides. “A year or so. She was my first friend when I moved here.” Her only friend, really.
“Are you two close?”
She nodded.
“Thomas and I are pretty close friends, too.” He lowered his voice. “Plus, I hoped you’d put in a good word…you know, if she ever drops that other guy.”
Poor guy. He really does care for her. But he doesn’t stand a chance now that Dominic’s in the picture. Noelle smiled and hoped it looked more like kindness than pity. “Will do.”
Jim drove them out of the restaurant lot, Noelle’s after-dinner drinks still sloshing hotly in her stomach.
“Should we go back to Thomas’s and check on him?” she asked.
Jim nodded at the clock on his dashboard. “It’s a little early yet. Maybe we should find something to do for an hour or two, so he can get a little more rest.”
She looked at the clock. He was right. They had only been gone for two hours, and Thomas had just been dozing off when they left. Not that she couldn’t go snuggle up beside him and spend a few hours smelling the sour stench from the bucket on the floor. Eh, later. She shook her head against the fuzziness that was settling in her vision.
Jim kept his eyes on the road. “Want to take a drive? I found a cool overlook not too far from here. One of those scenic view type places. I wanted to bring Hannah up here back when I still had a chance, but…”
Sympathy tugged at Noelle’s chest as she imagined how hard it might be for her to lose Thomas. She looked at the clock again and shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“Great!” Jim squinted at an upcoming red light and turned down a side street. “Faster this way,” he said.
The neighborhood homes glowed under bluish-white light from the street lamps. They emerged onto another, dimmer, main street, and turned left. “Maybe you can take Thomas up here when he feels better.” He grinned, cutting the wheel right onto a sparsely lighted road where the homes were set far back from the street. Above them, the moon shone through a film of murky clouds. “Thomas is always looking for weird, out-of-the-way places. I think they remind him of the lab where they hid the Hulk…or maybe planet Krypton.”
Along the road, the evergreen trees had thickened into a solid wall of iced needles; the ground beneath them heavy and black. She smiled, but it felt forced. “You’re probably right about that. But you’ll have to draw me a map so I can find it again.”
Uncertainty pricked at the edge of her subconscious, but she brushed it away. Thomas really would love it out here. Hopefully, he’ll be feeling better when we get back.
Noelle took her cell from the purse at her feet. The battery flashed red. One percent. She let it thunk back into the bag.
They emerged from the woods and into a small clearing that ended in a chain-link fence at the edge of a cliff. A small lake surrounded by tiny cottages twinkled below the edge of the precipice. The moon tucked itself behind a cloud and winked back again, turning the scene into a sleepy, sparkling town straight
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