Shit. “Uh. Yeah. Sorry. Joss is asleep and his phone was under the pillow.”
“Joss fell asleep on the couch, huh?”
“The couch?”
“Yeah, dude. The couch. He’d hear the phone if his head was on his own pillow, wouldn’t he?”
Tanner’s tone is dry, and I’ve got nothing. And I’m not a liar. So I swallow my tongue and the silence is deafening. Tanner isn’t a man who needs to speak. I canseehim cracking his neck as he unpicks my bullshit, and I can’t fuckin’ take it. “Uh. You want me to wake him up?”
Pause. Then Tanner sighs. “No. I’ll see him soon enough. Just tell him Bowen just delivered the hemp bun order, and it’s by the back door.”
He hangs up, leaving me half perplexed at my own idiocy and half relieved that Joss didn’t see the hot weed farmer again.
It’s not weed.
I don’t care. He’s hot, and Joss noticed.
Dumbass.
I take a seat on Joss’s unmade bed and try to fathom how I’ve fucked up so early in the day and how I can unfuck it before Joss wakes up, but no wisdom comes to me, and being away from Joss feels wrong.
I rise and pad back to my room. In my absence, he’s rolled onto his stomach, my pillow tucked under him. His hair is everywhere, and his back is exposed to the early morning sun, long and lean, a tiny scar at the base of his spine.
Kiss it.
Damn. I take a breath and sit on the edge of the bed. I want to be in a place where I can do shit like that and not think about it, but…I’m not. Because life is complicated. Man or woman, Joss is my roommate, not my—
“Morning.”
I jump.
Joss lays a hot hand on my thigh. “Easy. It’s me.”
“I know it’s you.”
“Yeah? You didn’t wake up and wonder what the fuck I was doing in your bed?”
I woke up and wondered why it felt like you always sleep in my bed.“I remember you coming.”
That’s not much better, given that he didcomeyesterday. And so did I.
Heat rattles through me. I dampen it down, and with Tanner’s voice echoing in my head, for once I’m successful.
I’m still clutching Joss’s phone.
I hand it over, wincing at his bemused murmur of thanks. “Don’t thank me yet. Tanner called and I answered it by mistake.”
“By mistake?”
“I meant to silence it, so it didn’t wake you, but I was half asleep, saw his name, and forgot it wasn’t my phone.”
It sounds even more ridiculous when I say it out loud, but Joss nods like it makes perfect sense. Perhaps to him, it does. I’ve lived with him long enough to witness the generous logic he needs to survive. “What did he want?”
“To know if you fell asleep on the couch.”
“Eh?”
“I told him you were asleep, and your phone was under the pillow. He correctly concluded that you were in a different room, because he’s a fuckin’ repressed detective.”
