My Brothers Best Friend [18+]

Chapter Thirty Nine

The kitchen is suspiciously tidy. 

All of the debris, every broken shard of glass, trampled food boxes - gone. The floor is swept and mopped without a speck of dirt in sight. The couch has a folded blanket strewn over it in the living room, and all of my things - the one's Matt rifled through when he first found out - are shoved back into their bags. 

"Did you clean?" Noah asks, appearing behind me with equally damp hair and shorts riding low on his hips. 

"In the three minutes head start I had?" I snort. "No." 

"Huh." 

He walks around me and towards the kitchen, pulling open a cupboard. Various groceries sit neatly in each cupboard opened, stacked perfectly against each other. The fridge has freshly squeezed orange juice perched in the door. 

All the dishes are done, every surface wiped with what I can only assume is anti-bacterial spray considering the clean smell lingering in the air. 

I turn and look into the living room again, something white on the table catching my eye. It's smoosh, leaning against a vase of fresh flowers. My heart constricts. 

"I don't understand," are the only words I have. 

Noah hands me a glass of orange juice. 

"Maybe he feels bad." 

"You remember what I said to him, right?" 

He smiles, drinking half of his juice is one gulp. 

"Alright, so he hired a cleaner. I didn't even know we owned a vase." 

I look back to the vase of flowers again. Tulips, an odd choice but long and elegant, thoroughly brightening the grey themed room. Very strange. Oddly unsettling. 

Perhaps Matt had a full on mental breakdown after our argument last night and decided to fix everything instead of smashing it up. Maybe he's now fled the country because he can't stand the sight of me after hearing the word 'fingered' come out of my mouth. 

God. What if he's told our mother? 

That's one explanation. Maybe he's out having breakfast with her right now to discuss what a harlot I am. It would make sense - he'd clean the house for her and his bedroom door was wide open when I went past to shower this morning. He's certainly not hiding in the house somewhere. 

"What's that look on your face?" Noah asks. 

"What?" 

"Your..." He waves his arm up and down, my eyes following the movement. "Look." 

"There's no look." 

A snort. "There's definitely a look. Don't get cagey about it."  

I pull a face at him, waiting for his further teasing. 

He grins and pulls me into his arms, kissing the top of my head. 

"Stop panicking," he soothes, stroking up and down my arms as if trying to calm some sort of wild animal. I let my head fall back to his chest and rolls my eyes up to his jaw. 

"This is weird though," I explain. "Has it ever been this clean here?" 

He puts a hand under my chin and dips down to kiss me softly. A hand grazes over the slice of skin at the bottom of my stomach before slipping under the t-shirt I'm wearing - coincidentally, Noah's own t-shirt from the previous day. 

I smile into his mouth. 

"You shouldn't tell someone not to panic if they're panicking. It's incredibly unhelpful."