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“That’s okay. I’ll just start worrying. And once I start, I won’t stop.”
“I know what that’s like,” he said. More than you know. “Ready for a hallway slumber party?”
She giggled. “No pillow fights.”
“Did I say pillow fights?”
“There’s just that whole thing where guys always imagine girls having slumber parties with pillow fights in their underwear.”
He hadn’t been thinking of that. But now he was. And he needed to stop if he wanted to remain gentlemanly.
“You’re the one who brought up pillow fights!” he responded.
Nate barely saw the flash of white before a pillow hit him in the face. He grinned, hearing Colby laugh. “Now you’ve done it.”
“No, don’t!” she said, but Nate was already swinging a pillow back at her.
She was just a shadow against deeper shadows in the hall, but he could see the pillow in the darkness and follow the sound of her laugh. After a few minutes of whacking each other with pillows, Nate had an attack of sneezing.
“You okay?” she asked.
“I always forget I’m allergic to dust. This must have stirred it up.” He coughed.
“Does that mean I won?”
“Yes, Master,” he said. More giggling from Colby. “We should probably try to get some sleep. I don’t know what the next few days will be like.”
They both settled into the floor, arranging blankets and pillows. They put both pillows next to each other, but with the blankets facing opposite directions. Their heads were next to each other, but they weren’t side by side. That seemed safer somehow, and more appropriate.
Nate was thankful that they had a carpeted hallway leading back to the bedrooms. It was still pretty uncomfortable. But as Colby put her head on her pillow next to him, all thoughts of the hard floor left.
“Hi,” she said in almost a whisper.
Nate struggled to find his voice. He could feel her breath on his cheek. “Hey.”
“Thanks for staying here with me,” she said. “I hate being scared of storms. I feel much better with someone around. With you. You totally took my mind off everything and made me laugh. You make me feel safe. This was actually kind of fun. I feel bad saying that.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “During Harvey I was staying with Todd and Zane. They’re my two best friends. They went to Rice, too. We played poker for two straight days while we were trapped inside. And we grilled tons of meat we had in the freezer before it thawed and went bad. It was weird, like having a party while knowing the city was burning. I guess literally it was the opposite of burning. But yeah—we had a good time but felt really awful at how easy we all made out.”
“I bet you went and helped after,” she said.
He tried to find her eyes in the dark. It was hard to read the expression there. “I did. The three of us did, actually. We didn’t have a boat or anything to help get people out, but we did a lot of mucking.”
“What’s mucking?”
“Tearing out the insides of flooded homes. Ripping out drywall, tossing furniture to the curb. Taking it down to the studs if needed.”
“You’re a good guy, Nate,” Colby said. “I always knew that about you.”
The wind howled around the house and it felt for a moment like the whole thing shuddered. There was a wrenching, tearing, terrible sound and then another huge boom, different from the transformer blowing. He felt it in his body, it was so close.
Nate jumped and Colby gasped. She lifted her hands up to the pillow and he grabbed them in his. Without even thinking he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then pulled his face away quickly, still holding her hands in his.
“What was that?” Colby gasped.
In the near distance a car alarm started a shrill ringing. “That was a tree falling. It pulled right out from the roots. Happens when the ground is wet and weakens. Then the wind blows and can take the whole thing down. I didn’t hear any crashing, though, so I don’t think it fell on a house. Want me to go look?”
“No,” she said, grasping his hands tighter. “You shouldn’t go near the windows.”
