Not that I don’t blame Hannah for a lot of this, but the dishes in the sink means he cooked and didn’t do the dishes after. Plus, the laundry. I’m sure his wife used to take care of a lot of the household chores, and he’s still trying to figure out how to do it all, but yikes.
“You want to know something weird about me?” I ask.
“I’m not sure I can take more weirdness from you,” he replies with one squinting eyes as if afraid of what I might say next.
“I kind of love to clean. It relaxes me, but I never have much of a mess at my apartment since it’s just me.”
“You’re a liar,” he says.
“Give me a box of trash bags, two rolls of paper towels, and whatever cleaner you have. Go sit down and watch TV until I’m done.”
“No way, you are not cleaning my house. That is the least romantic thing in the entire world, and we were supposed to go out for breakfast this morning.”
“Romantic?” I question.
“Do I seem like the girl who needs constant romance?”
“Well …” Again, with the squinting eye. I sock him in the stomach. “Go sit down and drink your coffee.”
“I can help, at least,” he offers.
“You’ll get in the way,” I reply. “Go, go, move.” I swat at him again, and he jumps.
I thought it would take me a little longer, but I got in a rhythm and had the house clean and sparkly within two hours or three episodes of Kardashian reruns.
“Is it rude of me to say this is kind of hot?” Brody asks, staring at me wearing a pair of rubber yellow gloves, holding a roll of paper towels under one arm, and a bottle of cleaner in the opposite hand.
“I can start in your room next. Are there any delicacies you’d like me to stay away from?” I ask.
Brody stands up from the couch and steps toward me as if he has a meaningful purpose. His eyes are sinuous, but I don’t move as he approaches me, staring down with the look that should make me weak in the knees. “My delicates don’t need to be cleaned,” he says.
“Oh,” I utter.
Brody loops his arm around my back and lifts me up with ease, allowing my legs to wrap around his waist. “Who would have thought a clean house would be such a turn-on,” he says, dropping me down onto his bed.
“If that’s the case, please keep it a mess while I’m not here.”
“Will do, fireball.”
Our clothes are piled up on the floor within minutes, and his tidy bed with red and black checkered linens has been rearranged into a mess of sheets and blankets haphazardly covering our naked bodies. I run my hands up the length of his chest, enjoying the stubble and dips and grooves from his muscles. Brody owned the control the night before in the shower, but it’s my turn to show him I can take control too. I try to remove the yellow gloves, but he moans, “No, leave them on.”
I push him down onto the bed, mounting him as I gently skate the gloves up his chest. I enjoy watching his face as I make the moves, control the pace, and pressure. His eyes close, and his mouth is ajar, his breaths rapid and heavy. I follow the changing look on his face to increase the pleasure, and the action of him grabbing the headboard from behind his neck pushes me to the brink of losing control. I nearly collapse on top of him, feeling the stubble on his chest scratch the delicate skin of my breasts. The sensation sends shivers down my spine, and quakes of uncontrolled tremors to rattle my core. “Yes,” he groans. “Yesssss.” His body continues to arch toward mine, faster and harder before he pulls me into him, rolling us over, so he’s on top of me. He kisses me like there won’t be a tomorrow or even another hour in this lifetime.
“Does your ‘yes’ mean I win this round?”
Rather than a direct response to the score of our game, he says something that shocks me—something I never expected to hear from anyone in my life: “How are you so perfect?”
“Perfection is obviously in the beholder’s eye,” I say. “Because I’m anything but.”
“You’re my kind of perfect, Journey.”
Maybe two imperfect people can make a new kind of perfect.
22
I’ve never missedsomeone in the capacity of being away for just a couple days and purely wanting to be by their side. Text messages and video chatting doesn’t always curb the desire of being touched or held and I didn’t know this was a thing people experienced, but after a lazy Saturday afternoon, life needed to return to a state of normalcy, so Brody could head out early on Sunday to pick up Hannah from her mother’s house in Connecticut.
Our lives with interference have set a good pace for us. I’m sure too much at once would be overkill, and I’d rather have the chance to miss him a little to appreciate the moments we get to be together.
