And for letting us stay the night here for free.
“Super weird that she hasn’t been able to rent the place since you left,” James says in a dry, sarcastic tone while stepping over a loose, oily takeout bag. “How did you live here for two years?”
“I mostly stayed in my room.”
He points. “There’s a thong hanging on the fridge handle.”
“Do you want to know how long that’s been there?”
“Nope.”
As we pass the bathroom on the way to my old room, we hear the shower water running behind the closed door. I give it my signature “shave and a haircut” knock. “Just letting you know we’re here!” I yell through the door.
“Make yourself at home!” she yells back. “There are brownies on the counter. But they’ve got weed in them, so beware.”
I look over my shoulder at James. “Nice of her to warn me. Last time she did not.”
His eyes widen, and a grin splits across his face. “Did you call 911 thinking you were dying?”
“No, worse. I called Emily,” I say while opening the hall linen closet and finding it empty of towels. Not surprising since I was the only one who ever washed them.
James and I drip-drop our way down the hallway and into my room. Myoldroom. My heart rate picks up as he steps inside. A sense of monumental change sweeps over me when I close the door behind us.
The space is clean, just as I left it. But with James in here, it’s completely different. There might as well be a crackling fire in a fireplace for how cozy I feel watching him prowl around the room. Every time I’d come in here—lonely and heart-bruised from the day—I’d hope that the apartment would finally feel like home. Like somewhere restful and warm. Itneverdid.
Not until now.
“Mind if I change?” he says casually. “These wet clothes are disgusting.”
“Yes, good idea.” I turn to leave the room and give him privacy, but his laugh stops me.
“I’m not shy, Madison. You can stay. Change too if you want. I won’t look.” He’s already peeling off his sopping-wet shirt and my god the muscles of his torso are something out of a medicaltextbook. The kind doctors in training expect to find in the real world—every muscle and ligament defined—only to realize that average bodies don’t actually look so chiseled.
James’s does.
So I turn away and unzip my bag (also wet from having dragged it along on all our adventures tonight). I dig out the big sleep shirt I brought and toss it onto the bed. I don’t even bother to make sure James isn’t looking because 1) he’s so respectful there’s no way he’s peeking when he said he wouldn’t, and 2) I’m not scared of nudity. If someone dared me to walk through New York naked for a million dollars, I’d laugh knowing I would have done it for twenty.
My shorts hit the floor in a loud wet thud, followed by the echo of James’s jeans doing the same. Chills I shouldn’t have flood my skin. I attempt to peel my shirt up overhead as gracefully as James did, but it’s so wet it gets stuck around my face and shoulders, arms straight up in the air. The harder I tug to free myself, the more stuck I get. I’m a human finger trap right now.
As much as I don’t want to . . .
“Uh, James.”
“Hmm?”
“Can you . . . help?”
“Help with w—” His voice goes dead silent.
I can imagine what I look like to him at this moment, standing here in my underwear and bra, hands sticking up over my head with my shirt covering everything from my wrists to my neck. I hope it’s sexy—but I’m betting it’s not judging by the soft laughter James is trying to hide.
“How the hell did you get stuck in there?” His voice is closer now.
“You know how we nineties kids have been preparing all our lives to get stuck in quicksand?”
“Sure.”
“We’ve been training for the wrong situation. Sopping-wet shirts are the real problem.”
