I get up and go to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. The mirror is fogged up from the steam of her shower. The countertop is clean for the first time in months, and she even cleaned the toilet and the shower before she got in it, apparently. Everything is all clean and shiny. I assume it’s because she’s a girl that she felt the need to clean it before she used it. It looks nice and I remind myself to tell her thank you.
She left her shampoo bottle in the shower, and her soap. It smells nice in the bathroom for a change and I realize it’s her stuff that left that clean scent in the air. Makes me want to go and sniff her. I want to bury my face in her hair to see if it smells as good as the bathroom does.
She’s had enough time to get dressed now, hasn’t she? I knock on my bedroom door and I crack it open, peeping in. She’s sitting on the edge of my bed wearing the towel. It’s open over her thigh, showing a long expanse of nak*d leg.
I motion to her, asking her silently if I can come in. She grips the towel where it’s tucked between her br**sts and hitches it higher. But she nods.
She looks toward my closet, which is standing open, and then back at me. I raise my brows at her in question. Does she need something?
“Can I borrow a shirt?” she asks. She looks down at her bag. “All my clothes are dirty, and I hate to put on dirty clothes when I just got out of the shower.”
I must have looked at her funny. Because she rushes on to say, “I’ll return it to you tomorrow, before I leave. I just want to sleep in it. Do you have a washing machine?”
I nod.
“Which question are you answering? The shirt? Or the washer?”
“Both,” I say. She smiles at me. I’d talk to this girl all day long if it means she’ll smile at me like that. I take a shirt from a hanger and toss it to her. She catches it and pulls it over her head. After she tugs it down toward her knees, she tugs the towel and jerks it from beneath the shirt. She sits down on the side of my bed and removes a pair of pink panties from her bag.
“Can you turn around?” she asks.
I do, and the fact that I did makes me grin like a kid in a candy store. I hope she can’t see me.
I feel her hand on my shoulder and I turn back around. She’s wearing my AC/DC shirt, and it hangs down around her knees. Damn she’s pretty.
“Can I throw some things in your washing machine?” she asks.
“I can do it for you,” I offer.
She shakes her head. “You are not fondling my panties, perv,” she says, grinning. “Next thing I know, you’ll be sniffing them.” She laughs. I wish I could hear it, because it’s probably the most beautiful sound in the world. It’s not often I wish I could hear, because I can do almost anything I want. But right now, I wish I could hear the sound of her laughter.
I motion to her and she walks out with me to the hallway, where I open the door to the laundry closet. I take what’s in the dryer out, and put it on top. Look like Sam and Pete’s stuff and they can handle their own clothes. I flip what’s in the washer to the dryer, and ask her for her things by holding out my hands. She shakes her head. I step to the side and she starts to take a few things from her bag. She doesn’t have much – just a few shirts, some shorts, a pair of jeans, and what she was wearing today. And the throws in a few pairs of panties. There’s more Betty Boop and I grin at her and shake my head.
I dump in some laundry soap and she starts it, and then she walks back toward my bedroom. “Do you have a blanket I can put on the floor?” she asks.
What the hell? “Why?” I ask.
She looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “To sleep on?”
“You are not sleeping on the floor,” I tell her. “You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“The couch is about five feet long. You’re too tall. I can sleep on the couch.” She nods like she’s made up her mind.
I grab her arm gently as she goes to walk by me. “No,” I say. “You take the bed.”
The bed is full size, so it’s not the biggest bed in the world. She draws her lower lip between her teeth and nibbles it. That has to be one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen. I reach out and touch her lower lip with my thumb, gently pulling it from between her teeth. She licks her lips and looks everywhere but at me.
“Are you sure this is all right with you?” she asks.
I lean close to her and pull her into my chest. I don’t know why I feel the need to do that, but I do. She hesitates briefly and then wraps her arms around my waist. I kiss her gently on the forehead. She looks up at me and she looks almost lost. The color is high in her cheeks and she steps back. “Thank you,” she says. She stands up on tiptoe and kisses my cheek almost like it’s an afterthought.
That kiss touches me like the deepest tongue kiss never has. It’s like my breath is trapped in my throat and I can’t draw it in or out.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“Fine,” I say. But I’m anything but fine. She raises her arms to lift her wet hair from her neck and her boobs shift beneath her shirt. I’m instantly hard. “Let me know if you need anything?” I say. But I’m not looking at her anymore. I’m walking toward the door as fast as I can, before she notices that I’m getting hard just thinking about the fact that she doesn’t have a bra on.
She touches my arm and says, “Logan, please don’t tell anyone that I can’t read, ok?” She looks worried and I hate it for her. I hate that she even has to worry about things like this.
“That was between me and you,” I tell her. I like that it’s our secret. Kind of like my talking is.
She closes the door behind me and I hear the thumb lock on the door click. She just locked me out of my own room. I can’t say I blame her really. She’s in a strange place. And she’s surrounded by strange men. But there’s a piece of me that’s glad she locked the door.
I walk back to the living room, taking a blanket with me from the linen closet.
“I still can’t believe you’re going to sleep on the couch,” Paul says.
I can’t believe it either. But I am.
Emily
I’ve been lying in Logan’s bed for what feels like hours, but I can’t sleep. I heard Pete when he came home, and I heard Paul tell him to go to bed. Then the apartment got quiet. No one has made a sound for hours, until now. I think it’s Matthew, because it sounds like quick, muffled footsteps and then an awful gagging noise.
I open the door and look out, the bathroom door is open about an inch, and I’m pretty sure that’s Matthew in there getting sick. He’s miserable, and I want to help him, but I also don’t want to intrude. I tiptoe into the kitchen because I’m thirsty, and I look over at the sofa, where Logan is sleeping. His feet are hanging off the edge by about a foot, and he’s flat on his back, his head bolstered by the arm of the couch. He doesn’t even have a pillow.
I open the fridge and bend over see what they have to drink, and when I stand up, Matthew is looking at me over the top of the door. “What are you doing?” he asks. His eyes are rimmed in red and bloodshot, and his face is pale.
“Getting something to drink,” I whisper. “Can I get you anything?”
He shakes his head. His gaze darts down to my bare legs, and I tug on the hem of Logan shirt. “Nice shirt,” he says. He jerks a thumb toward Logan. “Did you two have a fight?”
I look over at Logan too. He’s sleeping soundly, his mouth hanging open. “No,” I whisper. “Why would you think that?”
“Wait.” He stops like he’s thinking about something. “Why are you still here? Are you spending the night?”
I nod, lifting a bottle of water to my lips.
“Logan’s girls never spend the night.” He looks amused. But I don’t understand why.
“He insisted,” I whisper.
“Why are you whispering?” he whispers loudly and dramatically.
“Logan’s asleep,” I reply.
“He’s deaf.” He grins.
Oh, yeah. I forgot. It’s so easy to forget that he can’t hear. I laugh and shrug.
Suddenly, he turns on his heel and runs back to the bathroom. He’s sick again, but it sounds like his stomach is empty. I open drawers beside the sink until I find a drawer with towels in it. I wet one with some cool water, and I meet him when he’s coming out of the bathroom with it. He takes it from me with a heavy sigh and dabs his face with it. “Do you need anything?” I ask.
“Ginger ale,” he says. “There’s some in the fridge.”
I nod and go back in that direction. While I’m there, I grab an empty margarita mix bucket off the counter. I start down the hallway, and assume his door is the one with the open doorway. He’s sitting on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. I put the bucket in front of him. “For later,” I say.
“Thanks,” he says as he takes a sip of the ginger ale. I take the towel from his hands and go back to the bathroom, getting it cold again. When I go back in the room, he’s laying down, so I gently put the towel on his forehead and turn to walk out. “Don’t break his heart,” he says.
He’s puking his guts out and all he’s worried about is me breaking Logan’s heart.
“I’m just here for the night,” I say.
He snorts. It comes out more like a snuffle. But I get it. He doesn’t believe me. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says.
I turn out his light as I leave the room, and close the door behind me.
The washer has stopped quite some time before, and I take what’s in the dryer out and see that the pile on top of the washer is growing. I can’t see letting their things get all wrinkled, so I stand there and fold them, and I fold what’s coming out of the dryer, too. I flip my laundry into the dryer, and then I remember the huge pile of laundry in the hallway, so I start a load of their things. Might as well. I’m not doing anything else.
I walk back to the kitchen, and Logan is snoring. His hair hangs all tousled over his forehead, and I wonder if his mother ever used to watch him sleep like this.
The kitchen is a mess, so I grab a trash bag from the pantry and start packing pizza boxes away. Then I put up all the food that’s on the counter, and give it a good scrub. The kitchen is all nice and sparkly before I go back to bed.
I yawn and close the bedroom door behind me. But this time, I don’t feel the need to lock it.
***
The bed dips in the middle of the night, and I startle awake. My heart starts pounding like a jackhammer and I scoot to the edge of the bed. “What are you doing?” I ask.
It’s Logan, and the room is dark, so he can’t see my face or hear my voice. He rolls to his side, away from me, snuggling deeply into the pillow. He makes this adorable smacking noise with his mouth as he settles. He reaches back and jerks the blankets off of me, tugging them onto him.
He doesn’t really think he’s going to sleep in here, does he? I could go and get on the couch, but he’s already snoring. He’s sound asleep. I lean up and look into his face. He doesn’t stir. He’s not going to try to put the moves on me. He’s just going to sleep.