“I’m going to stay up and watch a movie on here,” he explained, gesturing to his tablet. With the bed above shadowing half of everything below, I couldn’t see his face well. “Would you want to watch it?”
Was I sleepy? Yes. But…
“Sure, at least until I start to fall asleep,” I agreed.
He slid over all of half an inch and angled his upper body toward me. Well. Scooting in next to him close enough so that our elbows were touching, Kulti propped the tablet back onto his bent knees as I tucked the hem of my shirt between my thighs. It had ridden up, but it wasn’t like he could see my underwear, and it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen just as much of my legs practically every other day we’d hung out. I fixed the pillow behind my back and eased onto the bed so that my shoulder touched his bicep.
“What are we watching?” I asked.
Apparently the man wasn’t a cheapskate because we didn’t go with a Netflix movie; instead he bought a digital copy of some newly released suspense thriller.
I’d guess that I probably made it twenty minutes into the movie before I fell asleep. With his body heat on one side, even through the barrier of the sheet he had pulled over himself and the comfortable bed beneath me, I was out.
I woke up to find that my bent knees had fallen over and were resting on Kulti’s hip, my shirt had somehow ridden up past my hips, leaving my underwear out for anyone to see. My hands werecrossed over my chest and tucked into my armpits, and the entire right side of my body was huddled into the left side of the German.
I sat up and gave him a sleepy yawn. “I’m going to bed.” I squeezed his bent knee before throwing my legs over the side. “Good night, Rey.”
“Sweet dreams.”
Sweet dreams? Had that really just come out of his mouth? I thought I might have fallen asleep with a smile on my face thinking of him using those words.
“You’re wearing a dress.”
I turned around and frowned, my hands smoothing down the front of the blue sundress I’d put on five minutes before. “Yes.” It was going to be bad enough when my parents saw my outfit. They acted like they’d never seen me in anything besides sweatpants or shorts.
Now I had to hear it from the German too.
He stood in the doorway in the same jeans he’d had on when we left for Austin. He’d added a black checkered and blue shirt and his tennis shoes.
I smiled.
He didn’t say anything. He only kept looking at me as if he hadn’t seen me in less clothing plenty of times, even though that made me sound like a nudist. I twitched. “What? I dress up sometimes. Birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s.” I pulled on the hem of the light dress that almost reached my knees… if I hunched over and yanked.
His gaze slid back up to my face after watching me fiddle with the skirt, and he blinked, slow, slow, slow. “You have makeup on.”
“I wear makeup.” Not much but enough.
“No heels?” He glanced at my feet, which were in a pair of black suede ankle boots my parents had bought me for my birthday a couple years ago.
“Trust me, you’d end up spending the night peeling me off thefloor or laughing when I walk around like a newborn baby giraffe.” I smiled at him.
His eyes flicked up to mine, and a small smile cracked the corners of his mouth. “You’re good at everything.”
I snorted. “I wish. I’ll make you a list later of all the things I’m horrible at.” I grabbed my purse off the corner of the bed and pulled it over my head. “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes,” he answered, dropping his gaze to the scooped neckline of my dress for a split second.
I had freckles on my chest, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen those before.
I pushed the acknowledgment of him staring out of my head and drew in a breath to relax. That morning, he’d woken up when I’d been half naked again, only wearing a sports bra and underwear, and he hadn’t said a word as I pulled the rest of my clothes on. Sure, I could have gone into the bathroom to change, but I kept the same thought in my head that I had from the beginning. I had nothing to be embarrassed about. I accepted my body as it was, and if I started acting all goofy about it now, well, that just looked stupid.
I wasn’t out to impress anyone.
Plus, it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen better—and hopefully worse—before.
Whatever.
I felt good, and I didn’t care how much crap I was about to get from everyone that enjoyed teasing me just because they could.
