Long Slow Burn. Isabel Sharpe

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      Kim nodded, experiencing a jumble of mixed reactions: fear, excitement, pride and an overriding desire to run home and hide in bed. But if she always gave in to fear she’d still be miserable at Soka. Still be dating Sam. Still the same old pimply, dowdy Kim.

      Marie tapped a few more keys; Dale’s face disappeared from the monitor but lingered in Kim’s brain for a few pleasant seconds before Troy’s dark eyes and lean features supplanted his.

      Kim had come a long way. What hadn’t killed her had made her stronger, and there was no reason she couldn’t continue to change and grow, as Marie said, even if, God forbid, Charlotte’s Web failed. She wanted a relationship, and she’d lose nothing by meeting with these two. Call it practice, if that made the hours easier to cope with. And if she babbled and stuttered and spilled, so be it. No animals or small children would be harmed in the having of these dates.

      “I’ll do it.” She spoke impulsively, started to take the words back, and found she couldn’t, because she didn’t want to take anything back; from now on she wanted to take everything forward.

      “Both of them?”

      Kim nodded firmly, her face flushed. “Both of them. I’m ready.”

       2

      “HEY, NATHAN.”

      “Mmph?” Nathan opened one eye. Kim. What was she doing in his bedroom? Undoubtedly not what he wanted her to be doing in his bedroom.

      Wait. He wasn’t in bed. He was on the couch in her—their—living room. What the—

      “Did you remember to get wine on your way home?” Hands on her hips, lips pursed. “For my book club meeting tonight?”

      Wine? Oh, no. He must have fallen asleep. She’d asked him this morning to get some; his fog-brain did remember that much. “I don’t think so.”

      Kim’s face set. “No problem. I’ll get it.”

      “No. No.” He sat up, rubbing his eyes, and shook his head, trying to clear it. Wine. She’d wanted him to get some on his way home from … where? “I’ll get it. I said I would. Wait, what time is it?”

      She looked at her watch. “Almost four-thirty.”

      His memory came back. He’d gone out after his bartending job at the Hi Hat Lounge last night, stayed out until four, gotten to work at Alterra Coffee at six, then stumbled home and slept through his four o’clock appointment with his faculty advisor, during which he was to have reported on progress he hadn’t made. He was supposed to buy Kim’s wine on the way back.

      Nathan bounced off the couch, got an instant brownout and had to bend over until his vision cleared.

      He was never, ever drinking tequila again.

      “How long have you been asleep? Didn’t you have an appointment with Dr. Stephanopolous?”

      “Um. Maybe.”

      “Oh, no.” She used that tone he hated most. That what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you tone that meant all she saw was her little brother’s loser friend. He couldn’t tell her about the panic that gripped him when he tried to work, the compulsion to jump up and run, the inability to focus, the instinct that putting more work into what he’d planned was shoving bad after worse.

      Sometimes he thought he was going nuts.

      “I’ll call and straighten it out. Then I’ll get the wine.” He staggered forward into the pizza he’d bought after work and half finished before nodding off. Squish. A tepid slice stuck to the bottom of his bare foot. When he shook free, the sauce-slathered crust dropped back to the plate but the mozzarella clung. He hopped a few times, lost his balance and fell back on the couch, his cheesy foot sticking into the air.

      Why always in front of this woman? If she laughed, he’d join her.

      She didn’t laugh. She sighed.

      He hated those sighs. “Help, cheese is trying to eat my foot.”

      “Nathan.” Amusement in her voice this time. Good. He could usually get her to laugh. Someday soon he hoped to earn respect along with that laughter. Maybe affection. Maybe more.

      She disappeared and came back with a paper towel, her hair in an endearingly sloppy ponytail, her slender, toned body hidden under baggy gray sweats and a shapeless sweater. “You are truly something.”

      “Aren’t I?” He grinned up at her, the oh-so-charming, cocky boy-man she expected, and took the towel to wipe his foot clean. “Thanks for the rescue. I have to call Dr. S., then I’ll get your wine, I promise.”

      Dreading the next installment of his advisor’s disappointment, he strode over the crooked, scarred hardwood floors of the narrow hallway to his bedroom, painted a vibrant blue by Kim before he’d moved in early in the month. She’d done amazing things with blasts of color here and there, but the apartment had definitely seen better days. As far as Nathan was concerned, however, any place Kim lived was paradise. He still couldn’t believe fate—or rather his previous landlord selling the building—had made this miracle possible.

      After searching through piles of laundry and stacks of paper, his phone appeared on the floor next to his drafting table. He made the call quickly to get it over with, then found Kim in their old-fashioned kitchen, whose drab colors she’d ambushed with bright red canisters, colorful bowls of fruit and intricately patterned decorative tiles.

      “What’s that smile for?” She’d picked up his pizza plate and glass and carried them to the sink. Why hadn’t he taken the time to do that? Fifteen seconds wouldn’t have made his screwup with his advisor worse, and it would have kept Kim from having to treat him like a little boy again.

      “You won’t believe me.” He nudged her out of the way at the sink and took over washing. “Dr. S. forgot our meeting. He couldn’t apologize enough.”

      “Are you serious?” She stopped drying her hands on a red towel. “You’re not kidding?”

      “Would I lie to you?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “I wouldn’t.” He gave a final rinse to the pot he’d used to heat stomach-soothing oatmeal for breakfast, and set it upside down in the drying rack. “I told him not to worry, that I’d waited outside his office only fifteen minutes. Twenty, tops.”

      Kim shook her head in exasperation. “I swear, you are the luckiest person on the planet. Totally self-indulgent and it never catches up to you.”

      “Self-indulgent? Me?” He pretended comic outrage, though the barb hurt. Comments like that from Kim only bolstered his determination that while they were living together she would come around to seeing him differently. Yes, he’d always been disorganized. Ask his mom how often he’d left homework materials at home in the morning and at school in the afternoon. But he was plenty smart, and had been a good student all his life until the previous semester, when the panic and mental blocking started. “I was exhausted and fell asleep. That’s human nature, not self-indulgence.”

      “Exhausted from being out until four СКАЧАТЬ