Chapter 39
Sebastian had offered, and she’d accepted his invitation, to go back to his place. He’d joked that he wanted her to see that he didn’t, in fact, live in the mess that Naomi had witnessed the last time she’d been there. And she’d agreed that proof of his claim was probably necessary, so she’d followed him back to his house.
True to his word, Sebastian’s house was clean and orderly (as if she’d ever expect otherwise), with each item placed in its proper spot—the kitchen spotless except for one mug that still had a few sips of coffee left in it. She took the water that Sebastian handed her from the fridge and headed back out to the living room for the rest of her “inspection.”
She looked at the shelves that held the books that had told not only their intended story but also the sad story of Sebastian’s life. The remotes were carefully lined up on either side of his otherwise empty coffee table like a pair of soldiers guarding the border of North and South Korea. Her eyes roamed over the rest of the space, and she touched the soft blanket that was folded over the back of the couch.
“Is your bedroom as clean as the rest of the place?” she asked, wanting to steer the conversation in another direction—one that involved sex apparently.
His lips rose to a smile. “Guess you’ll have to see for yourself,” he answered.
She followed him to his bedroom, which was almost as neat as the rest of his place. A few books covered the table next to his bed. And beside those stood the picture of him with Celeste and Matty. She didn’t let her eyes linger on them long, feeling as though the action was somehow still too intrusive. “You didn’t make your bed,” she observed.
Sebastian shrugged. “No one’s perfect.”
“Finally something we agree on.”
“What?”
Naomi shook her head and rolled her eyes good-naturedly. “That it’s pointless to make your bed each day. Try to keep up, Sebastian.”
He laughed as he kicked off his shoes. “I thought you meant that I wasn’t perfect.”
“That too,” she said. “But yeah, I don’t make my bed either. It’s a waste of time when you’re just going to use it again that night.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Sebastian said, his lips finding hers again before the two fell onto the mattress, contributing further to the disarray of the sheets and blankets.
Once their clothes made it off their bodies and onto the floor, Sebastian’s mouth seemed to be everywhere at once—her neck, her sensitive nipples, down her belly, until his lips settled between her thighs to lap up the wetness that revealed just what this man did to her. And it wasn’t just sexual. Somehow she was able to give herself over to Sebastian in a way that she never had with anyone else. In truth, she’d probably always felt this strongly about Sebastian, as if his proximity elicited instant emotion within her.
And though most of the emotion she’d revealed to Sebastian over the years had been negative, it was emotion nonetheless. He’d always caused a reaction in her that was so much deeper than surface level; she swore she felt it in every nerve right down to her core.
Sebastian leaving his temporary home between her legs and moving up to her collarbone again pulled her from her thoughts and had her whimpering for him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll give you what you need.”
She knew he’d make good on his promise. At least sexually. But she couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be able to give her anything beyond mind-blowing orgasms and the recent comfort he’d provided. He was broken, and though she was broken too in her own way, she felt as if some of her pieces had started to find their place back together in the past few weeks.
And as Sebastian’s cock entered her, filling her with a passion that seemed both new and familiar, she decided it didn’t matter where they ended up. What they had now was exactly what she needed, and even if their journey led them to a dead end, she’d happily walk it again.
Naomi awoke the next morning to rain pounding on the roof. It took her longer than it should have to remember that roof wasn’t hers. Being there felt…odd. Because it simultaneously seemed sudden to be spending the night and as if they’d been building toward this eventuality since they’d met.
She flipped over to take a look at Sebastian’s alarm clock, wondering how much time she had to sleep before she needed to get ready for work. She didn’t have to be in until her eleven o’clock final, but she still needed to go home to shower and change unless she wanted to do the professor version of the walk of shame and arrive in the same clothes as yesterday, smelling like sex and satisfaction.
She expected it to be later than it was because Sebastian wasn’t in bed with her, but the clock read six fourteen. Sebastian didn’t have to be in until nine forty-five (she’d come to memorize his schedule without even realizing it), and she figured he would’ve slept later. After brushing her teeth and going to the bathroom, she made her way down the hall in search of him.
Sitting at a small desk by the window, he stared intently at his laptop, his fingers rapidly clicking the keys. He seemed oblivious to her presence even though he could see her from where he sat. Deciding not to bother him, she headed to the kitchen in search of something to drink before walking toward his bedroom again, where she figured she could sleep for at least another hour or so before she’d have to go home to get ready.
She’d just crawled into bed and pulled the covers (covers that smelled like Sebastian) up to her head when his voice traveled through the house. “Where’d you go?” he called.
“Back to bed. I didn’t even know you saw me,” she said.
“I see everything,” was his reply. And then, “Come here.”
She groaned, though he obviously couldn’t hear her, and begrudgingly pulled herself out of bed once again. When she got to the living room, she plopped down on his couch, immediately covering her bare legs with the soft blanket. “How long have you been up?”
Sebastian’s face twisted as he seemed to be calculating the time in his mind, but he went with a simple “Most of the night.”
“Why?” She actually wasn’t sure if she wanted to know, afraid that the reason might have something to do with what had happened between them—like he was second-guessing his decision to take things as far as they had or to let her stay over. She wondered if he’d ever had another woman sleep in his bed since Celeste’s death. Or had sex, for that matter (he hadn’t even had a condom on him). What was the appropriate amount of time to wait before you moved on from a tragedy of that magnitude? She imagined an eternity wouldn’t be quite long enough.
“Couldn’t sleep,” he said simply. “So I came out here. I’ve been writing on and off since about one thirty.”
“Wow. Good for you.” She cradled her cup of tea in her hands. “Is it the same book you were telling me about before?”
“Yeah. It’s the only one I’m currently working on. I hit a pretty good stride earlier, and that doesn’t happen often, so I ran with it.”
“Why not?” She realized her question probably wasn’t clear, so she said, “Why don’t you hit a stride often?”
Sebastian took a sip of his coffee and stood to walk over to her.
“You can keep writing. You don’t need to stop for me.”
“I’m at a good place. It’s okay,” he said, taking a seat next to her.
“Did you just finish a chapter?”
“The opposite actually. I’m at a pretty interesting part.”
Naomi’s forehead scrunched in confusion.
“It’s weird, I guess. But I’d rather stop in the middle because it makes it easier to pick up where I left off.”
Naomi raised an eyebrow. “The mind of a novelist…” she said, sounding intrigued. Poetry was so much different. “So that helps with the writer’s block?” she asked. “Stopping in the middle instead of the end of a chapter?”
“I think so. Though I actually think it’s starting in the middle rather than stopping there that helps.” He picked at a chip at the top of the mug he held. “This book’s been tough all around, I guess.”
“You said it’s a dystopian plot, right?”
“Yeah. But the plot’s not the problem. It’s always been the characters for me.” His gaze dropped to his lap before drifting to the window and the rainy world beyond it.
She could sense he wanted to say more, but instead of asking, she waited.
Drawing in a long breath, he turned back to look at her. “It’s been…difficult, to say the least, to write a book about a little boy. This kid in the story…Will is his name…he’s the same age that Matty would be if he were still alive. He would’ve turned ten on November twenty-sixth.”
Of course she hadn’t put that together, because the last time Sebastian had talked about his novel was before she’d found out about what happened to his family. And though she never would have made the connection on her own, it made perfect sense that this book would scratch at wounds that hadn’t even begun to heal. “What made you want to write it?”
“It came to me in a dream one night. The boy Will, the entire plot, everything,” he said. “It was all so vivid—the apocalypse that took everything, everyone Will knew before it, the search to make sense of the senseless. I guess I thought it might be cathartic for me. Like I could create this kid and somehow have him survive a tragedy instead of being a victim of one.”
It was a beautifully sad idea.
“But once I started it, instead of helping me heal, it only tore me up further. I couldn’t do it. Not until recently, anyway.”
“What changed?”
He shook his head and pushed his glasses closer to the bridge of his nose. “I stopped being so sad, stopped feeling so sorry for myself. At least not all the time anyway.” He let out a soft laugh, but it was more of a breath than an actual sound. “It turns out even I can’t be miserable every second of every day.”