My eyes widened. “You have mice?”
“I don’t. The house does.”
“And this doesn’t concern you?”
He shrugged. “At first, but they mostly leave us alone.”
“Mostly?”
“Well, we can’t leave the good cereal out anymore,” he conceded ironically. “But Potato is more or less a communal pet now.”
My gods.
“So, you feed him potatoes?” I asked, trying to make sense of all this.
“Nah. He just sort of looks like one. My teammate thought he was literally the vegetable one morning when he didn’t have his glasses on. The name stuck,” explained Ryan. “Honestly, we think there might be two mice in the walls, so they aren’t lonely. We can’t tell them apart though, so both of them are named Potato. Potato, potahto, y’know?”
I stared at Ryan for a long moment as he ruffled through the center drawer of his dresser. Once more, I turned around, looking around the walls, which had now quieted. “Interesting.”
“Haven’t you ever had a mouse as an unintentional roommate?”
Luckily, no. Gertie also had cats.
The moment I turned back around to tell him as much, Ryan still stood with his back to me. Shirtless.
My eyes caught on his bare skin—from his well-carved shoulders all the way down to where his jeans hung loosely over his hips. His defined muscles flexed with the everyday movement as he yanked a deep-green shirt overhead.
Ryan wasn’t one of the largest players on the team. In fact, he was almost slim from all the running he did, yet for some reason, I never expected him to be so fit. Not that I spent time imagining him without clothes on at all.
His shirt hugged the roundness of his biceps as he pulled it lower over his abdomen. When he turned back around to face me, I noticed the hem graze the copper button of his jeans.
“Does this look okay?”
“What?” I started to nod as I processed his question. “Oh, yeah. You look great.”
“Not really sure what equinox attire looks like.”
“You’re fine.” I still stared, blinking as I brought myself back to the present moment. My eyes back toward Ryan’s face rather than the rest of him.
He pressed his lips together to hide his never-fading smirk. He didn’t say a word if he noticed my momentary stroke. “Ready?”
“I was ready a half hour ago. I don’t take as long to primp as you apparently do.”
“Be quiet.” Ryan nudged me with an elbow as he stumbled back down the stairs.
I followed close behind, biting back a giggle at the sudden race to the front door we’d started.
At this rate, maybe we wouldn’t be so late after all, so long as Ryan didn’t accidentally trip me down the stairs. Then, we would have someone else in crutches.
And someone would have a lot of explaining to do.
“Hey!”
Ryan froze in his pace toward the door. Unlike when we had entered, there was another person stretched out on the couch, one leg up over the top. His laptop was open in front of him, playing some sort of show while he fed himself another few chips at a time. They crunched loudly with each bite, crumbs scattering onto his sweatshirt.
“Hey, Trevor,” said Ryan.
“How’s the leg, man?”
