Noelle
I was twenty-one, alone in my father’s house, and I had three of his best friends’ names in my mouth when the television cut to black.
That was how the week started.
Mom and Dad had left that morning like I was still the girl they packed lunches for. Kiss on the forehead. Be good. No mention that Grant, Cole, and Rhys were coming to “look after the place.” They knew I would have argued. I was grown. I paid for my own phone. I did not need three men who had watched me grow up sitting in our kitchen like babysitters with nicer watches.
They also did not know what those men were in my head.
Off-limits. Dad’s friends. Too old. Too familiar. I had wanted them anyway, for years, in the dark, in the shower, in this exact living room when the house went quiet. I had never said it. I ha
