Most of the time.
One week. I couldn’t expect him to not touch anything or starve while he was sequestered here with me. It’s not like January had liked my food when she’d stayed here.
Hurrying into the shower, I half-expected to find discarded clothes left on the floor. But there weren’t any. The air smelled of soap that wasn’t mine. It was the scent Angelo’s body had radiated when he had sat next to me on the sofa.
I picked up his “4 in 1” bottle from the bathtub deck. Coming off his body, it smelled good, but the long list of chemical components printed on the back label and the boastful sticker of four products in one bottle almost made me shudder.
Trying hard to ignore his plain plastic, purple toothbrush and generic paste in the ceramic holder next to my bamboo toothbrush and the paste from my shop, I undressed and got under the spray, hoping it’d do its magic of cleansing and erasing the day, the memories, the thoughts, the concerns.
It ended up being a long shower.
Pestering thoughts kept leaping into my mind every time I closed my eyes. Angelo’s confident manspreading with that lean yet muscular body, half-slouched on my sofa, one brown-booted foot on the newspapers ledge beneath the coffee table surface, his knee bent up in a sharp angle, while the other foot was on the floor, his legs spread three feet apart. My eyes kept going there, to that virtual seat in his lap, until I gave him a take-your-feet-off-my-table look, which he ignored.
His confidence bordered on smugness, yet he was the opposite of smug when he spoke about his background and achievements. And hewastrying to be considerate, even if he got most of it wrong.
A towel hung to dry on the rack next to mine. Strangely, a tactile memory flashed in my mind at the sight of it—Angelo’s arms around me and the feel of his stubble the day of our interview a month ago.
The towel was neatly spread.
Neatness was something I noticed and appreciated. The way my employees handled the shelves, the paperwork, and the storage on their first day at work told me everything I needed to know.
Angelo’s uneven cuffing at the elbows of the white shirt in City Hall had been the second thing I had noticed about him after the strong, tanned, tattooed forearms. I had the impression he’d be the type who would throw his things all over and leave wet towels on the floor. It hadn’t mattered much to me then. But it did now.
In my closet, Angelo’s jeans, tees, and Henleys were folded on a shelf, along with a few buttoned shirts hanging next to mine. Two pairs of rustic Chelsea boots—one brown suede and one chafed black leather—were on the floor. He had changed into his sneakers before he left.
Dressed in a comfy pair of yoga pants and a hoodie, I added an extra fifteen minutes of meditation and somatic exercises to my bedtime routine. I had to fall asleep before he returned. I couldn’t stand the thought that we’d be sharing not just a closet, a bathroom, and a kitchen, but a bedroom and a night.
When my heart rate remained elevated, even after all the breathing exercises, I made myself a cup of chamomile tea. But I was still wide awake at the last sip.
Instead of getting into my own bed, I made up the sofa bed for Angelo. On the coffee table, I noticed his notebook. The page it was open on had sketches of what I figured were guitar parts with handwritten notes in Italian. Curious, I flipped through a few pages. More sketches, more notes in Italian. Google Translate was useful in revealing the words were types of wood, such as ash, alder, maple, and accessories with names like frets, bridges, and pickups, and something called tremolo, as well as ideas for various styles and sounds.
Leaving it on the table as I had found it, I put up a room divider and only then hurried to my bed. I was tired, more emotionally than physically.
I meditated in bed, too, but after tossing and turning for an hour, I got up to pee. To the sound of the key turning in the lock, I finished washing my hands quickly and stepped out of the bathroom.
My eyes were adjusted to the relative darkness, so in the dim light coming from the distant desk’s side lamp, I could see the lopsided grin that spread on Angelo’s face as he stopped to look at the sofa bed that was already made and the large canvass accordion partition I had placed between the foot of my bed and the living room. It was a flimsy, symbolic division that I hardly ever used, but I hoped it would fill in the place of the wall I needed between us.
“Hey,” I said from the bathroom door.
Angelo’s head snapped toward me. “Hey. Did I wake you?”
“No. Had a good walk?”
“Yes.”
“Okay then. Good night.” I was convinced that, beyond my voice, he could also hear my heartbeats, so loud they banged inside my chest.
“Buona notte,” he replied. It was the first time he had used Italian. It flowed musically, even more than his accent sounded in English.
I went behind the partition and got into my bed. A moment later, I heard the swooshes of Angelo taking his clothes off.
Lying on my side, I tightened my eyelids shut. I listened as he padded into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. The sound of running water in the sink drowned everything.
But when that stopped, I heard the unmistakable gush of a male urinating.
I further tightened my eyelids.
In the ten years I had owned and lived in this studio apartment, I had rarely let a man stay the night. In my few and far-between dates that had ended in sex, I’d preferred to be the guest rather than the host. I didn’t want anyone to overstay their welcome, and I didn’t want to have to kick anyone out.
