Page 70 of Call My Bluff
“Well, it certainly doesn’t hurt.”
The bed creaked as Noah shifted, and Olivia smiled when she felt his shoulder press against hers. She really shouldn’t be this comfortable sitting on his bed with him alone in his house; this is the exact situation she would have avoided like the plague a few months ago.
And yet, here they were.
Some time later, he got up and gathered clothes from his dresser before heading down the hall, and Olivia heard the shower start. She stayed safely in his room until he returned, already dressed in his Watson’s uniform.
“You can hang out here and wait for me, if you want,” he offered. “Or if that’s weird you could come back later. Your call.”
Olivia considered the options. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll snoop if you leave me here unsupervised?” she asked.
“Oh, I’m sure you will, but whatever you find is your fault,” he warned. He retrieved his wallet from the bedside table and slipped it into the back pocket of his pants. “Want me to cook when I get back? I have burgers.”
“Sure!” Olivia agreed. She watched him step into his shoes and buckle his belt. For some reason, those little things felt strangely intimate, even though he was fully dressed.
“Alright, four hours,” he said on a sigh. He double-checked his pockets and headed for the hall. “Make yourself at home, Pix!” he called back. “Lock the door behind you if you leave.”
Olivia grunted in reply, though she was sure he couldn’t hear her. She sat still while the door to the garage snapped shut, and the wheezy whine of his ancient car told her he was backing out of the driveway. But then, the house was quiet, save for the sounds of her movie and the pop of something that was probably the pipes.
It was weird to be in someone else’s space when that someone else wasn’t present. After a few minutes, she climbed off the bed and looked around, taking in her surroundings with unfiltered curiosity. She wouldn’t actually invade his privacy—shedidhave limits, after all—but anything he’d left out in plain sight was fair game.
She wandered slowly around the room, looking at the pieces of paper tacked to the walls: his UTC acceptance letter, a reminder to register for graduation, a birthday card from his mom. There were three sizeable holes in the drywall, and Olivia remembered his story about finding a Bluetooth speaker Conner had hidden along the baseboard.
Then she moved toward a chest of drawers covered in sheets of paper—syllabi, study guides, assignment outlines—and a stack of textbooks took up the entirety of his desktop. The books were thick, not a single paperback among them, and Olivia read titles likeClinical Psychomotor Skills,Experimental Psychology and Human Agency, andMedical Vocabulary. She trailed her fingers along the spines as she read. Then she scanned a piece of paper beside the stack: his entire month’s work schedule. There was a block of time on almost every day, often lasting late into the night.
How does he have time for anything else?she wondered.How does he have time forme?
Hemakestime, her mind replied, and she realized it was right. It was a humbling thought, and for the first time, she felt bad about wasting so much of his semester with her stupid game. But it hadn’t felt like a game all week. It hadn’t felt like a challenge to raise the stakes as high as they could go.
It had felt... real. Intentional. Like something had changed.
Something she wasn’t sure she was ready for.
Olivia was watchingGone in Sixty Secondswhen she heard Noah’s car pull into the driveway and shut off.Moments later, the door from the garage clicked open, and footsteps sounded on the kitchen linoleum.
“Pixie?” he called.
“In here,” she answered, turning down the volume on the television.
Noah drifted into his room and flopped face-first onto the mattress beside her. A long groan reverberated through the material.
“Bad shift, huh?” she asked.
He mumbled something that got lost in translation.
“What was that?”
Noah sighed and turned his head to one side, his eyes still closed as he folded his arms beneath his cheek. “A guy came in as high as a kite and wanted to buy forty-seven tiny bags of Cheetos,” he said.
Olivia blinked. That was the most random answer he could have given. “Is that a problem?” she asked.
“It is when you can only find forty-three bags in the whole store,” he muttered.
Olivia winced. “I take it big bags weren’t an option?”
“Big bags have ‘government air,’ whatever that is.”
Olivia laughed softly and reached out to run her hand through his hair. It wasn’t really a calculated decision—just something that felt right. “Who knew there were so many nuts in Willow Creek? It seems like such a normal town,” she observed.
