Carol knew some teachers who wouldn't be caught dead inside the school building during the summer. She was not one of them.
She devoted four weeks' worth of mornings to helping out kids and still popped in from time to time once the dreaded summer school season had wrapped up. She enjoyed her time visiting with the summer bridge kids—students who came to school a few times a week to keep up on reading and math skills either because their parents were invested in their education or their parents wanted cheap babysitters. But Carol's true summer love was her possible flunkees.
Every year for four weeks, a group of fifteen or so students had to hang out with Carol from nine in the morning until noon. It was their only option if they didn't want to be held back. Carol monitored their progress as they made their way through computer-based learning modules and tests that focused on reading and math skills. She'd snorted into her coffee on the first day when she'd found a note from Tony lamenting the fact that she'd prevented him from completing his "summer scourging" of his beloved lab. She was sure some threat followed, but she couldn't read his handwriting to figure out what it was.
Her group of students was a familiar one. A few were on her caseload, and a handful more would undoubtedly get there once they reached fourth and fifth grade. Carol had talked to all their teachers before the school year was over to see what kind of students she'd have. Some needed the extra help and time to understand things, while some were just lazy and had parents who weren't the best at caring.
Carol spent her mornings floating around the various computer stations where she asked questions and checked up on progress. On Fridays, Phil showed up to let them into the library to work on reading skills and take AR tests. The kids were devastated to learn that their points couldn't go towards earning prizes during the summer.
But even with all of that, it was still the computers doing most of the teaching, which left Carol ample time to do online shopping. Thank goodness for stipend pay. She always blew through all of it before the first week was over.
Carol shopped for plane tickets to go home to visit her family, shoes that she'd probably wear once and swear to never wear again because heels were the worst, and clothes for the upcoming school year. She updated her Pinterest boards with new recipes to throw in the slow cooker, researched new word wall ideas, and scoured Etsy stores for the cutest custom-made planners.
All in all, it was an easy June: check in with kids, poke around online, talk to more kids, send Jess a text to get her ass out of bed because seriously, it's eleven already.
The rules of summer school weren't that difficult. You show up every day on time, you get your work done, and if the computer found you worthy (which it almost always did), you didn't fail a year in elementary school.
But rules were apparently meant to be broken.
There were a few parents who didn't quite understand what "being on time every day" meant. And having met their kids before, Carol wasn't at all surprised about this. Fury was willing to give them a one-day warning, but that was it. There was a phone call home when a student missed a day to let them know that if it happened again, the child would be removed from the program and would have to repeat their grade.
This year, like the others before it, always had its amusing stories. And true to tradition, they revolved around parents' excuses as to why their kid was late or absent to the mandatory morning learning sessions. Parents couldn't seem to settle for the typical "my car broke down" or "we all slept through alarms" business. Apparently the thought of having to explain to Principal Fury why you couldn't get your kid to school on time was so intimidating that the list of excuses never ceased to entertain Carol. She seriously considered trying to get to get a book deal out of it.
Her favorite of the year came six days into summer school. Breanna, a pretty little girl who had trouble in Barnes's class (trouble as in her single mom was more concerned about milking the government for every cent she could than her daughter's education), missed a day. The girl had come running into the computer lab every morning so far with mere seconds to spare, but was a no-show that day. Once all the students were picked up by parents or daycare vans, Carol made the phone call to home.
"Breanna wasn't in session this morning, and you signed a contract saying—"
"Yeah, I know," her mom had interrupted. "She had a thing with her eye. I was really scared, and I know you all worry about pink eye all the time, so I had to take her to the doctor to get it checked out."
Sounded plausible enough. "Well, I hope she's okay, and I look forward to seeing her tomorrow."
When Breanna reappeared in the morning—running through the door with ten seconds to spare—she handed Carol her doctor's note. "Feeling better?" Carol asked.
Breanna nodded, sending her pigtails bobbing in the air. "All better. See?" She opened her eyes as wide as she could, and to Carol they looked perfectly healthy.
"Were they red yesterday? Did they hurt?"
"Yeah," Breanna answered. "They did that."
Carol's BS-o-meter began to go off, and her gut was further confirmed when she opened up the doctor's note. "Breanna, this is a note from the dentist."
"Yeah, it's my doctor note."
"Sweetie, dentists work on teeth, not eyes."
"Yeah, but Mommy said she didn't want to have to reschedule my appointment so she told me to lie and say my eyes hurt." The little girl gasped and clapped her hands over her mouth. "I wasn't supposed to tell you that part."
Carol sighed and waved a hand toward the bank of computers. "Get to work."
Carol woke to the sound of someone trying to beat down her front door. If her neighbor's drunk friend was at the wrong house again, she was not going to be held responsible for her actions. Not even bothering with pants—whoever was adamant about destroying her door at three in the morning could deal with her wearing nothing but a t-shirt from college and a pair of Hello Kitty underwear—Carol climbed out of bed to see who was causing the ruckus.
She threw the deadbolt and swung open the door, ready to tell the idiot on her doorstep to fuck off when she realized it was Jess standing on her front porch. A shocked, sex-mussed, wide-eyed Jess.
"Are you okay?" Carol demanded as she physically jerked her inside.
"I fucked Barton," Jess admitted quietly, in some kind of stupor.
Carol's brain was fully awake now thanks to those four words. "You what?" she yelled. She had zero tolerance for home wreckers, and if Jess and Clint were up to something, Carol would beat them both.
"Not Clint," Jess spat. "God, I could walk naked around him days and he wouldn't give two shits, he's so gay."
"Then what the hell are you talking about, and is this story going to require booze or coffee?"
"Kahlua?" Jess offered with a shrug.
Carol swore under her breath and went to the kitchen. This was going to be a tequila story; she could feel that in her bones. She grabbed the bottle and went back out to the living room. Chewie had wandered downstairs to inspect the disturbance. Upon finding out that it was only Jess, he'd fallen asleep on the armchair. Carol found herself irrationally jealous of her own cat.
She set the bottle on the coffee table and took the seat at the opposite end of the couch from Jess. "Start from the beginning and go slowly."
Jess grabbed the bottle first and took a swig before passing it off to Carol. "So you know the groundskeeper guy I've been seeing?"
"The one you flirt with all the time when you're supposed to be running with me?"
"That's the one." Restless, she stood and began pacing the carpet in front of the sofa. "He kind of has a shady past."
"Let me put on my surprised face that you're dating someone who falls in the bad boy category."
Jess flipped her off before she continued. "He was just released from prison—"
"You're dating a felon?"
"An ex-felon."
Carol sighed. "There is no such thing as an ex-felon, Jess. Either you are one or you aren't."
"Fine. An ex-prison-inhabitant. Whatever." She paused to take another pull from the tequila bottle. "Anyway, he was out with a group of guys tonight and knew they were going to be up to something shady, so he called me to come pick him up." Carol hummed a note of approval, and Jess threw her hands up in the air. "See? Attempting to reform his ways."
"So you picked him up?" Carol asked.
Jess nodded. "I offered to bring him back to my place and drive him to work in the morning, but he said the place he was staying was closer and he felt bad for making me go and get him."
"And I'm assuming the night didn't go as planned."
"He's a really good kisser, Carol," Jess exclaimed. "I mean like toe-curling fantastic. I don't want to think about who he's been practicing these skills with the last few years, but damn. Anyway, we get to the house and he says he forgot his keys and we have to sneak in through the window."
"And this didn't set off warning bells in your head?" Carol questioned. "Were you even sure it was his house?"
Jess shrugged. "It made me feel like I was sixteen again. Sounded fun, so I said sure."
"Your brain is broken."
"To be fair, we've both known that for a long time." Jess flopped back down on the couch with a sigh. "And this is where things get weird."
"They weren't weird already?"
"I knew the guy was living with his brother. I knew the guy's last name, but I didn't put two and two together until we were going at it and Phil and Clint busted into the room."
Carol felt her jaw drop. "Wait, what?"
Jess just nodded. "I barely had time to roll off the mattress and hide behind the bed. I don't know if they saw me or not. They didn't talk to me—just Barney—so I'm guessing they didn't."
The stupor in Carol's mind cleared just enough to remember Jess's words from when she walked in the door. "You fucked Barton."
Jess nodded sheepishly. "I wasn't going to leave him all hot and bothered and just slip out the window and drive away. Besides—"
Carol cut her off with flapping arms as soon as Jess's smirk began to spread across her face. "You fucked Barton."
"I fucked a Barton, not the Barton." Her face twisted into an evil grin. "But if Clint is hung anything like his brother, then good on Phil."
Carol moaned and shoved her face into the back of the couch. "I want to hear every detail and I also want a lobotomy."
Jess laughed. "I'm just saying, I don' think Phil is exaggerating on what Clint is like in bed. If anything, he's toning it down."
"I'm begging you to stop talking."
"His tongue is also amazing," Jess continued before needing to dodge the pillow Carol threw at her face.
"You know I'm gonna miss hanging out with you on the regular, right?" James asked, and Carol almost spit out her beer.
They'd picked the same bar as always for their post-5K celebration, loading up on chicken wings, beer, and onion rings. She'd half-expected it to be awkward, with the race behind them and their thighs sore, but so far, it'd felt good. Talking on the track and the paths through the park had been easy, thanks to the huffing, puffing, and general complaints about the evils of running; talking at the bar without distraction'd invited raw terror into Carol's gut.
For exactly ten minutes.
Because then, James'd insulted her taste in baseball teams, and she'd swapped out terror for lazy flirting and a lot of sneering.
Well, up until James's comment about missing her.
She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand, buying herself time, and James raised his eyebrows. "What? Cat got your tongue?"
"Maybe I just forgot how freaking mushy you can be," she retorted. He rolled her eyes at her. "Somebody should tell Stark about this. He'd probably try to build something to suck out all your feelings."
"Think he tried a decade or so ago, but it didn't stick." She snorted a little at that and stared down at her beer. Apparently for too long, because he sighed. "Look, Carol, I'm not gonna lie to you about this," he said quietly. "I'm not gonna pretend like I haven't had a lot of fun seeing you every couple days and watching you spill water down yourself because you can't drink and run at the same time."
She snapped her head up and glared at him. "People who can run and drink and breathe all at once are freaks of nature and I want no part in their voodoo," she reminded him.
He laughed. "Can you walk and chew gum? 'Cause if you're able to do that, we can start there, work our way up to drinking." She elbowed him hard in the ribs, and he grinned at her. Bright enough to burn the world down, she thought, and swigged her beer to avoid saying it. Silence washed over them, and James sighed as he turned his bottle around in his fingers. "I missed you before we started running," he finished, and she pretended like her stomach didn't twist itself in a knot at that. "I'm gonna miss you more now that we're not."
Carol nodded dumbly and picked at the label on her beer bottle. For weeks, James'd plagued her thoughts, but she hadn't known how to say it. She'd tried a couple times, sure—to Jessica twice, to Chewie once—but she'd ended up hiding her face in her hands and groaning each time. At least Chewie'd groomed her temple as a consolation prize.
The ugly truth was this: she was an awful fucking girlfriend, but her life was better with James Rhodes in it. It was warmer, funnier, and she felt—
She didn't know what she felt. It'd been too long since she'd experienced it to remember the word.
Next to her, James snorted, and she glanced up from her bottle. He'd dipped his head in the ensuing silence, his lips pursed together into a tight line. "If you're not interested, if you're still where you were before whatever the hell happened between us, you can just say it," he told her, and for a second, Carol actually stopped breathing. "Because I'd rather know that you don't feel anything than lie up at night wondering what the hell we did to each other." He lifted his eyes, and Carol swallowed at how they managed to be so warm and sad at the same time. "Wondering how we screwed up something that, from the outside, looked pretty great."
"You mean how I screwed it up," Carol said immediately. He opened his mouth, ready with a comeback, and she shook her head. "If we want to talk about people having their feelings sucked out, then by all means, we should start with me," she said. "I'm an emotional basket case. I'm bad ateverything. I missed you too, but I don't know how to start again, you know? I don't know how to fix it."
"Maybe we can start easy," he suggested, shrugging. Carol rolled her lips together, but only until his mouth twitched up in a tiny smile. "Maybe with that dance you owe me."
She frowned. "Since when do I owe you a dance?"
"Since you wanted me to comfort you in your end-of-school-years blues and I almost took you up on the offer," he returned, and dammit, Carollaughed at that. He smirked in response, his eyes twinkling. "Is that not how you remember it?"
"I remember you wanting to comfort me and me being the bigger man, actually," she retorted, "but your revised history sounds sexier."
"Learned it from Tony. You should listen to my revised college stories sometime. I was quarterback of the football team and valedictorian. Saved a bus of orphans from a burning building." She rolled her eyes at him, laughing into her beer bottle. When she finished off the last couple swallows, she glanced over her shoulder to find James standing next to her, his hand outstretched.
"One dance," he said.
"It's never one dance with you," she replied, but she slid her hand into his.
The jukebox was full of the worst music imaginable—bad old bar music and rejects from the first couple Now That's What I Call Music! collections—but James fed it a whole bunch of quarters and thumbed the random button a couple times. They fake line-danced to "Achy Breaky Heart" until Carol wheezed from laughing and James's whole face lit up in a smile.
"Ask Tony about being sober in a country-western bar sometime," he said at one point, spinning her around.
She grinned. "Pay me enough, I'll host a country-western party just to fuck with him."
"There is no price too high for that," he replied, and she cracked up when he tipped an invisible Stetson at her.
The second song instructed them to "jump around, jump around, get up, get up to get down," and Carol wondered how they looked as they bounced to the music: James's brow glistening damp with sweat but his smile beaming and beautiful; Carol with her messy hair and not-quite flattering t-shirt; their laughter echoing through the bar.
But the third song—
"Hey," James said, and he caught her by her wrist as she reached for her drink at their table. The third song was some slow, crooning thing, an Elton John or a Billy Joel, and Carol caught herself before she completely collided with his chest. She was still panting and sweating from the last song, but he spread his hand on her hip anyway, swaying to the music. She swayed too, caught in his gaze at first until the surprise wore off and she dropped her eyes.
Her heart pounded in her ears, but not in a bad way. More in that way that told her she was crossing a line into dangerous territory without any backup.
"I don't know what I'm doing," she murmured about halfway through the song. When she glanced up at James, he raised his eyebrows, a silent question. She shook her head. "We go any faster than crawling, and I might bolt all over again."
He smiled at her, his face soft and maybe a little sad, but he also gripped her hand tighter. "I'm starting to learn that there's not a whole lot you can do that'll make me stop caring about you, Danvers."
She snorted a little and leaned forward to rest her forehead against his shoulder. "Guess that's one thing we can agree on, then," she said, and closed her eyes as they swayed.
"You texting Jess or the flavor of the month?" Joe asked, and grabbed for her cell phone.
All at once, a lifetime of training snapped into line, and Carol swung around with her leg up, ready to kick her oldest brother in the hip. He grabbed her by the calf and stopped her, but only by inches. "You flip me, I'll kill you," she warned.
He glanced down at the muddy lawn just off the porch's edge. The fall wouldn't hurt her, but the mud'd leave her pissed for days. Joe grinned slowly. "You think I'm afraid of you?"
"I think another year from now, you won't be able to block me," she returned, and he laughed as he released her leg.
She kicked him in the thigh, lighter than originally planned, and finished up her text to James. She hadn't really meant to text him that morning, but the older of her two brothers'd dragged her for a run and she'd thought of him.
Which meant pausing to tell him that, out on the porch, while Joe gloated like an asshole.
Carol loved her brothers, really, but trekking up to Boston to visit them and her dad always felt like a special kind of hell. She'd worked her whole life to prove herself to them—they were good men, mostly, but old-fashioned, fans of women who "act like women" (whatever that meant)—and even though she knew they were proud of her, she felt a little like the black sheep every time she pulled into the driveway. Steve'd gone to college right out of high school and worked some mechanical engineering job that made Carol's head hurt; Joe'd gotten married right out of high school and popped out adorable children to love. All morning, her niece'd sung Taylor Swift songs while her nephew turned knick-knacks into guns, kid stuff that'd cracked her dad up.
Carol'd shoved her hands in her pockets and agreed to run with Steve just to get out of the house.
"You pissed about the joke?" Joe asked, and Carol jerked herself up out of her thoughts to find him leaning against the house, his arms crossed over his chest. "Because you need to grow a pair if you—"
"The guy who told me I'd never get married because I hate dresses now wants me to grow a pair?" she snapped back. He rolled his eyes. "You remember that, don't you?"
"I was ten and didn't realize you had balls of steel."
"Hope you've learned."
He grinned. "Learned when I jumped up to your level at karate class and you started kicking my ass."
She laughed at him a little, shaking her head, and her phone chimed. It displayed a new message from James, but instead of reading it, she tucked her phone in her pocket. Joe cocked an eyebrow. "A friend," she informed him.
"A friend you sleep with?"
"A friend I mind my own damn business with," she replied. He snickered when she fell back against the side of the house next to him, and she shoved him with her shoulder. "You should be worried about your kid. She asked me what the girl in the Taylor Swift song 'gave away,' and I'm pretty sure it wasn't 'all her worldly belongings before she became a nun.'"
Joe shrugged. "Her mom'll explain it."
"God forbid you parent."
"This from the woman who's gonna die alone with her cat."
Joe said it lightly, just another brotherly jab, but the words sliced through Carol's gut. She glanced away from him, out at the yard, and ignored the way her throat felt suddenly tight. Since their "start by crawling" conversation, she and James'd avoided talking about feelings altogether—and all while Jessica sung odes to Barney Barton's fantastic sense of humor and other-worldly tongue. More than once, she'd laid in bed and wondered if maybe trying again with the same guy—with anyone—didn't count as a huge mistake.
She bit down on her lower lip and glared at the nearest tree. Next to her, Joe stayed silent.
"We don't say that shit as a slight, you know," he said after a couple seconds, and she jerked back around to find that Steve'd joined him out on the porch. Joe looked mostly like Carol—fair hair, fair eyes, fair everything—but Steve'd inherited sandier hair and crooked teeth her parents'd never bothered fixing.
She forced a twitchy smile at him. "Here to join in on the rag-on-Carol power hour? Because we charge double after the first ten minutes."
He snorted. "And here, I figured I'd take the rag-on-Carol second shift. Let Joe get the first punches in."
"Almost flipped her off the porch," Joe said with a grin.
"After I almost kicked you hard enough to bruise," Carol retorted.
"And you all wonder why Dad likes me best," Steve deadpanned, and they both flipped him off. He laughed and leaned against the porch railing. "I heard Joe talking about your flavor of the month," he added after a couple seconds. Carol huffed a sigh. "What? Can't a guy ask about who his sister's seeing?"
"Maybe his sister's not seeing anybody," Carol returned.
"Then can't a guy ask about who sister's scr—"
"Just stop already."
Carol's voice rang out sharper and louder than she intended, and both her brothers blinked at her like she'd grown three or four extra heads. She sighed and dug her fingers through her hair. "I can't do the 'who's Carol screwing this year' conversation this time around, okay? I'm kind of over it, especially since I know it'll never be good enough unless I'm barefoot and pregnant ten minutes after meeting him."
She squared her shoulders and waited for the usual snide comebacks, but instead, her brothers just glanced at one another. Steve cocked his head, Joe shrugged, and silence washed over the porch. "Okay, what?" she asked, and this time, they shrugged in unison. "You've got your 'she missed the point' face on."
"Yeah, because you missed the point," Joe said, and she rolled her eyes. "Carol, every guy you've ever dated's tried to save you from something. Your 'save the children' complex, your own screwed-up head, your obsession with hockey—"
"Us," Steve offered.
Joe snapped a finger at him. "Especially us," he agreed. "You've dated guys who've wanted you to rely on them like a lifeline all day, every day. It's fine if you like that—but it's never gonna be you in the long run."
She felt her shoulders start to deflate and forced herself to cross her arms under her chest. She tried very hard not to think about James and their hundred conversations about their almost-but-not relationship. "What's me, then, so-called expert?" she demanded. Joe shook his head at her. "What? If you know, you should at least tell me."
"You're the girl who never learned how to want somebody," Steve said quietly. She rolled her lips together. "Long as we've known you—"
"So, your whole lives?" she snapped.
He smirked. "Our whole lives," he amended, "you've wanted things. College, the Air Force, your special education kids, your townhouse. You've thrown yourself at them. And when it's come to guys, you've waited for them to track you down." He lifted one shoulder. "You never learned how to just want somebody. To open up all the stitches and let them in. And it's okay that that's who you are, but you can't blame us for seeing it."
Joe nodded silently, and Carol dropped her eyes down to the porch. For a moment, the quiet in the backyard felt peaceful, but the longer her brothers watched her, the more she felt like she might suffocate under their careful eyes.
So, like the good older sister she was, she huffed at them and tossed her hair. "I should've knocked you off the porch when I had the chance," she informed Joe.
Joe grinned. "You and what army?"
"Me and this air force," she retorted, and he squealed like a pig when she swooped in for the noogie.
Despite the 5K season ending over a month ago, Carol and James still found themselves running into each other at the bar about once a week. If she happened to the check the parking lot for his car as she drove by, then no one needed to know about it.
"How was your trip home?" he asked before taking a drink of beer.
Carol shrugged while she munched on a few fries. "Family is family. The first couple of days are great, and then you remember why you moved so damn far away." James chuckled in sympathetic understanding. "You think I'm a stubborn asshole, you should meet my brothers."
"That weirdly sounds like fun." Carol looked at him like he was insane. "Only child. I find sibling interactions highly entertaining."
"What a sad, little life you lead."
James grinned. "You being in it makes it better." She didn't say anything for a minute and he shook his head. "Sorry—only crawling doesn't include compliments, I guess."
"It's not that," Carol told him. "I just— It's hard for me to believe someone would think that about me. My students, maybe. Pretty sure Jess keeps me around because I'll keep her ass out of jail, or bail her out if need be."
"Then you're an idiot."
"Thanks," she replied as she slugged him in the arm. They slipped back into comfortable silence while listening to SportsCenter over the din of the bar.
Carol kept stealing glances at him out of the corner of her eye. She felt like a moron for doing so and for admitting that she didn't understand why James would feel that way about her. That was what pathetic chicks did in rom-coms, and she had no room for that shit in her life. She was a proud, strong, not-quite-Sasha-Fierce. She didn't need a man.
But it wasn't like James was trying to step in and save her. This wasn't a damsel-in-distress situation, not completely. Carol needed saving from the thoughts her brain spat at her, and James was man enough to know that he couldn't be the one to save Carol from that. She had to do it herself.
It was a struggle she recognized when they were together, and one she wasn't yet ready to battle.
But now—
"Dance with me," she offered.
His eyebrows rose in surprise, but he wiped his mouth with a napkin and took her outstretched hand. She repeated his music selection technique by shoving in some quarters and punching the random button. Immediately, the soft strains of some country ballad began to filter through the speakers.
"Ugh, Taylor Swift," Carol whined.
James slipped an arm around her waist and slowly pulled her close to him. "She's not so bad if you really listen to her lyrics."
"You'd get along so well with my students, you have no idea," Carol quipped.
He smiled. "Blame Tony. He's the one who got me hooked on her songs; he's a huge fan. Pretty sure he's been to a concert or two."
"That is a delicious piece of information to have," Carol laughed.
"You didn't hear it from me," he replied.
"Of course not," she answered as she stepped slightly more into the embrace. She was sure they looked like idiots, slow dancing to Taylor Swift in a sports bar. But even the ridiculous lyrics about heartbreak swirling in the air around her couldn't keep her from melting into James's arms. When the song ended and broke into some dance club remix Carol didn't recognize, neither of them moved apart.
For the first time all summer, she allowed herself to luxuriate in him: the smell of his aftershave, the heat of his skin, the strong planes of his body. She missed him—his kindness, his sense of humor, how he took zero shit, his smile—and she was finally ready to not only admit it, but do something about it.
Fucking Taylor Swift.
"Come home with me."
The words were out of her mouth before she thought was fully formed in her mind. But she didn't fight to take them back, she just let them hang there. James took a small step backwards in surprise. "For what?" he asked.
She didn't answer with words, just gave him a look that clearly answered his question.
He let out a low whistle and shook his head. "That doesn't sound like crawling to me."
"Since when did you ever complain about when I was on all fours?" she smirked. "C'mon."
He tried to look nonchalant while quickly paying for their meals and drinks. They agreed that he'd follow her to her house. She wanted to speed away and tidy up, but didn't want to lose him. He was used to her emotional mess; hopefully he wouldn't mind a sink full of dirty dishes. At least she'd emptied Chewie's litter box a few hours ago.
The whole drive home, she waited for nerves to overtake her, but they didn't. Just anticipation, the kind that made her stomach churn in a hot and sexy way, not like she needed to vomit from anxiety.
She was fumbling with her keys on the doorstep when his hand came to rest on her back. "You're sure?" he asked. Carol answered with a kiss, and he let it linger for a few seconds before pulling away. "Use your words," he told her.
"I'm sure," she promised before unlocking the door and pulling him inside. "So, this is it," Carol announced with a shrug and a sweeping arm motion. Her townhouse wasn't much to speak of, but James had never stepped foot inside of it.
His eyes swept across the living room and into what he could see of the kitchen. "If you really are a hoarder, you're hiding it well." He laughed when she slugged him in the arm. Then, his eyes darkened, and Carol felt her stomach drop again. "There's a bedroom, right?"
"Two, in fact," she answered as he started kissing her neck. "And a couple sturdy tables and countertops on the way. Just don't step on my cat."
A little while later, while her breathing returned to normal, Carol smiled as James kissed his way down her shoulder. Once he got to the top of her arm, he pulled her closer to him. She was happy to be the little spoon in his grip, mostly because she didn't have the energy to move into another position.
"Can crawling include me spending the night?" James asked.
"I'd be seriously pissed if you left my bed," Carol answered. He stayed quiet, but she could hear his thoughts and drudged up the energy to twist in his arms to face him. "I'm sorry I always left yours."
It was his turn to respond with a kiss, one that soft and sweet. "Sleep," he told her. "I'm making breakfast in the morning."
"Definitely not allowed to leave my bed, then."
Clint's phone chimed at lunch, and he sighed. "Sorry," he muttered, and wiped his fingers on his jeans as he reached for it.
They'd chosen some kind of gastro-pub for their annual let's talk about my kids before they show up in your class lunch, and so far, the food involved a lot of pesto, truffle oil, and pretention. "I think I see why Jasper likes it here," Jessica'd said as her appetizer of roasted red pepper hummus arrived, and Carol'd rolled her eyes. "It's frou-frou, but there're burgers."
"Name of Phil's autobiography," Clint'd offered, and Jessica'd almost shot hummus out her nose.
Jessica wasn't actually a part of the lunch-she'd invited herself "because food," to quote the text message-and for the most part, she'd behaved herself through the serious discussions about Carol's newly minted fifth graders and their myriad issues. Carol counted herself lucky that her (slightly unbalanced) best friend understood why she cared so much about her students-and why she dragged all the fourth- and fifth-grade teachers out to individualized lunches to hash out the important details before the school year started.
("Clint's your favorite one to meet with, right?" Jessica'd asked on the ride over, her bare feet on Carol's dashboard.
"Do you even wear shoes in the summer?" Carol'd snapped back at her, and Jessica'd grinned at the non-answer.)
Clint'd grinned when they showed up and during most of their conversation, but his smile dropped right off his face as he read his text message. He typed something back, but not without mumbling, "I know you're banging some bimbo, you asshole."
Jessica choked on air.
Clint glanced up, eyebrow cocked, as she pounded her fist on her own chest and looked like a cross between Tarzan and a goldfish. Carol frowned at her, a question almost on her lips, but Jessica just shook her head.
What— Carol started to mouth, but Jessica swept a finger across her own throat. When Carol felt her frown crease, Jessica started mouthing a response of her own, something that involved a lot of overblown head-jerks in Clint's direction and—
"Are you trying to tell me that Clint reads lips using silent pig Latin?"
Jessica groaned and smacked herself in the forehead as Clint finally put his phone back on the table. "Do I even wanna know what you two got up to in the ten seconds it took me to text my asshole brother?"
Carol was about to echo Jessica's immediate and very loud no! when cold realization slapped her across the face. She glanced at her best friend—her horrified, wide-eyed, slightly-quivering best friend—and the corner of her mouth twitched. "Your brother's banging a bimbo?" she asked.
All the color drained out of Jessica's face, but she quickly hid it by reaching for her truffle fries. Clint, on the other hand, just huffed a breath. "Not that he'll admit it to me, but yeah," he said with a shake of his head. "He snuck her in one night. Dropped her bra in the bushes on her way out."
Jessica released a tiny squeak and, like a mature adult, kicked Carol hard in the shin. "Maybe you shouldn't nose in on his brother's business," she suggested. When Carol blinked, all purposeful innocence, she narrowed her eyes. "Clint sounds annoyed enough at him that he doesn't need—"
"To talk about how he's stringing some girl along?" Clint cut in with a shrug. Jessica swallowed her next fry without chewing, but he just reached for his soda. "It's not a big deal. I mostly just feel bad for her. She probably doesn't realize what a shit he is. My only problem's gonna be when she figures it out and throws a brick through the window to—"
His phone cut him off, ringing loud and long, and he groaned as he looked at the caller ID. "And here's the part where Phil bitches at me for bitching at Barney," he said, and excused himself from the table.
Jessica waited until Clint disappeared out the front door of the restaurant to dig her elbow hard into Carol's side. Carol swore, but not without laughing.
"You are a fucking asshole," Jessica sneered. She swung her elbow again, but Carol ducked out of the way. "Do you want to out me to him? Because I'm pretty sure the last thing I need is—"
"Clint Barton to realize he's seen your bra?" Carol asked.
Jessica's flared red. "Shut up."
"You've left them lying on my floor often enough, but that's only because you can only make it two hours into a Netflix binge before you're stealing my sweats and blankets." Jessica leaned forward to bang her head against the tabletop. "So, which one was it? The blue one with the lace on the edges? That push up you call the 'self-sticking envelope' because it always seals the deal?"
"Oh my god, stop talking," Jessica muttered against the table.
"The slinky red one that—"
"Please don't tell me you're talking about women's underwear," Clint chimed in as he flopped back into his chair. He tossed his phone onto the table with the air of man who really wanted to forget technology existed. Carol snickered while Jessica flipped her off unsubtly. "Because you know the rule."
"Nobody wants to hear about your man-thongs, Clint," Carol informed him as she stole the last of Jessica's fries. "We're eating."
"What about my banana hammock?" he asked, and when he waggled his eyebrows, both Carol and Jessica groaned.
After Clint paid for their meals—"Phil's already pissed, might as well go for the gold," he'd said—and they'd all left the restaurant, Jessica slung an arm around Carol's neck and pulled her close. "Two things as I decide how exactly I'm going to kill you to death," she said. Carol rolled her eyes, but Jessica just tugged her closer. "One: don't think your harassment gets you out of drinking your weight in tequila when my thing with Barney Best-Tongue Barton goes up in fire and brimstone."
Carol pulled a face. "Stop talking about his tongue."
"Never," Jessica replied, and licked her lips to prove it. Carol shoved at her until she stepped away, grinning. "And thing number two, because not even Barney's tongue can distract me from this: the next time you have a boyfriend, it is on."
Carol snorted. "Like that's going to happen."
"Like it hasn't already happened," Jessica said knowingly, and literally skipped ahead of Carol to the car.