AJ glanced over his shoulder, and she was struck that overnight he’d gone up on the sexy scale by at least ten points.
“I made breakfast,” he pointed out the obvious.
“That’s amazing. I’m actually running late for work, but, um, I will definitely take it to go.” She tried to pivot back to the bathroom, but her mind wouldn’t let it go. The loose edges of the night needed to be tied down, or she’d trip on them for the next week. “So… did you spend the night? Here?”
He didn’t respond immediately. As she waited, her heart pounded wildly in her chest.
“Yes.”
“Did you go home, or to the resort and come back?”
“No. Why?”
“Your clothes,” she explained.
“I came straight from the airport to the wedding. I had my bag with me.”
“Oh. Right.” She nodded. “And you slept…?”
“In bed with you.” He said it with the same factual tone he might use to describe a traffic detour or the migration patterns of birds. Not defensive, not smug. Just a statement of fact.
She blinked. She’d had AJ Costas in her bed all night, and she had zero memory of it. This had definitely been the epitome of what Steven Tyler was singing about in his 1998 classic “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” but that’s exactly what had happened because she was a lightweight. She’d been betrayed by her own biology.
“Is that okay?” he questioned as the scrutiny of his gaze intensified.
“Oh, no, yes, I mean yes, no, of course it is. Yes.” She flashed him a grin meant to deflect, but his watchful stare was like an emotional magnifying glass, catching every shift in mood down to the thousandth micro-expression that crossed her face.
His eyes narrowed.
“It’s fine, I just… it’s just a classic case of FOMO.” She made light of her reaction, one that if she’d had coffee, hadn’t been in such a hurry, or didn’t have such a huge crush on the man currently occupying space in her kitchen, she would have never been vulnerable enough to expose.
AJ looked at her, not blankly, but with the clinical curiosity of a scientist encountering a previously undiscovered specimen. “FOMO?”
“Fear of missing out. But I guess in this case, it would be ROMO, regret of missing out.” She laughed, but the sound was thin. “It doesn’t matter. I’m , um, I’m gonna be late for work, I gotta shower.”
Poppy escaped into the bathroom, shutting the door with a whump that reverberated in her skull. She leaned on the sink and braced herself with both hands, willing the porcelain to absorb her tremors. When she lifted her head, the reflectionlooking back at her in the mirror was unkind. There was a dent in her cheek from the pillow, a mascara smudge under her eye that looked like a bruise, and her hair had achieved lift-off in all conceivable directions. AJ looked like he could have been posing forMen’s Healthmagazine, and she looked like a raccoon that had barely survived a wind tunnel.Cool, cool, cool.
There was no time for a pity party, so she reached for the shower knob and turned it on. Water gushed out, forceful and steady. She blinked, then stuck her hand under the spray, expecting the familiar icy trickle that required a full ten minutes to coax into compliance. The water was already steaming.
How was that possible?
Had AJ fixed her shower?
No. That’s crazy. It must just be a fluke.
She grabbed her toothbrush from the sink, and as she squeezed on toothpaste, she realized that the tap wasn’t dripping. She turned the cold water on, then off. No drip. Then she repeated with the hot. Same result.
Had AJ fixed her sink?
Her phone lit up with a ten-minute warning, which she always set for herself because she was easily distracted.
Double shit. She didn’t have time for a pity party or for a Sherlock Holmes investigation of The Case of the Fixed Plumbing.
She took a quick shower and sadly had to sacrifice shaving her legs. She quickly dressed in light blue scrubs and styled her wet hair in two Dutch braids. It wasn’t her best look, she wished she had time for a blowout before facing AJ again, but it was what it was.
As she opened the bathroom door, she realized her hand was trembling. She was nervous to face him for their goodbye.
Would he ask for her phone number?
