Leaving me to wonder why we hadn’t been doing this all along, either. I adored the feeling of his strong arms being wrapped around me, the hard planes of his chest pressed against me, his face touching mine. I almost turned to kiss his cheek again when he withdrew.

“Now I’m really going,” he said. To my disappointment, he actually did start walking away. But then he called over his shoulder, “By the way, you snore.”

“I do not!” I called back.

He turned around so that he was walking backward. “You a hundred percent do, and it’s adorable.”

I waved to him, and he returned it before turning around. I watched him go, again admiring the view, and then sighed as I fished in my pocket for my key. I will admit that it took me much longer than it should have to get the key into the stupid lock and get the door open.

When I got inside, a strange mixture of fear and doubt swelled up inside me, whispering insidious lies about how I should be worried and scared and run away from Noah.

Nope. I shook my head. I was going to do what he’d suggested and replace those negative thoughts with positive affirmations.

“Listen up, brain. I’m going to kiss Noah Douglas as much as I want to, and you’re not going to overreact or melt down over it. I will kiss him and enjoy it. This is going to happen.”

And I was going to keep telling myself that until it became reality.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

I made it to my appointment despite the fact that I was exhausted because I’d barely slept. I just kept running what had happened on the porch through my mind over and over again. It felt like everything had changed, and I was eager to see how that would translate when I saw Noah again.

To my dismay, he sent me a text that said:

That made me laugh, and I sent him an emoji with its tongue sticking out.

I texted Shelby, thinking maybe we could hang out. I felt like a bad friend—we’d been just sending general “hey, how are you, thinking of you” kinds of messages. I hadn’t told her about Noah or how we were hanging out, because those were conversations I wasn’t ready to have yet. Maybe that was selfish of me, but I wanted to fix this phobia and it felt like this might work and I wasn’t willing to jinx it.

She texted me back a sad face, saying she had been so busy and that we’d catch up soon. She did ask:

And she would die if she knew what those ways entailed.