“Yeah,” I say, hoping desperately that Trevor will pick up on what I’m doing and play along. “He was living in the house even before I got here. It helps him to maximize his work time and get the repairs done as fast as possible.”
I look over to Trevor with a desperate plea in my eyes.
Please play along.
“How about pasta?” Trevor says as if it’s completely ordinary and expected. “We haven’t had a good batch of spaghetti in a few nights.”
Oh thank God.
“Sounds good,” I say with a relieved smile.
I am so thankful that he understood what I was doing, and that he doesn’t seem to have a problem with staying here at the house with me. I’m not quite sure what he’s going to do about not having any clothes or any of his stuff here, but I suppose he can manage for one night and then slip out to grab some things to bring back to the house tomorrow.
“Well yeah, this isn’t going to be at all awkward,” Max says.
“Why would it be awkward?” I ask him as I play innocent and naïve.
I want to see what he’s really up to.
“We’re all just working alongside each other, aren’t we?” I ask.
“Yeah, sure,” he says.
Max gets up and goes to put his laptop away in his room. I can hear him shifting things around in the guest bedroom and assume that he’s probably finally getting out of his suit and into some reasonably comfortable clothes. I walk up to the sink and stand beside Trevor, not knowing how many minutes we have left before Max returns to the room.
“Thank you,” I whisper to him.
He doesn’t look up from washing his hands, but I can see the smile on his face.
“You don’t need to thank me for that,” he says. “I didn’t want to leave you alone with him anyway.”
After a painfully awkward dinner together, Max decides to uncork a bottle of wine, probably to lessen the tension in the room. Unfortunately, one uncorked bottle of wine turns into a few. Trevor and I have a couple of glasses each, and it honestly does help to ease the awkwardness of the evening between the three of us all here in this house together. But Max gets carried away and ends up drunk enough for us to decide it’s a good time to call it a night. Max stumbles toward his guest room and then waits to make sure Trevor goes into another one of the guest rooms next door. Both of the rooms are right down the hall from mine. I give Trevor a subtle glance of goodnight that Max is too drunk to notice anyway. Then, we all go into our respective rooms for the night.
After I wash up and climb into bed, I lay there on the mattress and can’t sleep. All I can think about is the kiss through the open window. All I can think about is the feeling of Trevor’s arms around me and our tongues encircling each other. I don’t want to think about anything else. I think I’d rather lie here awake all night thinking about that then waste time sleeping.
When I hear my bedroom door slowly creak open, my heart leaps in my chest because I am hoping to see Trevor’s face come from around the corner of the door. But instead, I am startled to see that it is a very drunken Max who has come to try to hit on me.
4
Trevor
Ican’t sleep. I can’t seem to do anything lately other than think about Ava. And to make matters even more difficult to suppress, as I am laying here on my back in bed and staring up at the ceiling my body is having a visceral reaction even just thinking about her. I think about the kiss we had today through the window, and all of the sudden I’m aroused and have to put my hand on the growing bulge between my legs to rub the swelling down. Of course, the rubbing doesn’t actually work.
When I hear Ava’s bedroom door creak open, I wait to see her appear in my doorway. I left my bedroom door open so that I could keep an eye and ear on things, and maybe part of me had hoped she would come. But after a few long minutes, when she doesn’t come, I get up to go see what she’s doing. I walk down the hallway toward her bedroom, thinking that I probably won’t find her in there and that she’s most likely gone to get a glass of water or something. But when I reach her open doorway and see Max in her bedroom, leaning down over her in the bed as she tries to push him away, I completely lose my shit.
I run into the room and grab Max by the shoulder and pull him off of her with one hand. With a tightened grip around his collarbone, I toss him away from her and he goes stumbling back onto the floor.
“Are you okay?” I ask Ava, glancing at her just long enough to make sure that she wasn’t hurt.
“Yes,” she says.
I can see that she is completely flustered and shaken. Then I turn my attention back to Max as he struggles to get back up to his feet. Before he can try to say or do anything else, I punch him in the jaw and send him hurdling back down toward the floor. Then I get on top of him and land a few square hits, trying my hardest not to completely beat the shit out of him and stopping myself within an inch of his life. I honestly want to kill the asshole, so my level of restraint is pretty damn impressive. I stand up, ignoring his moans and groans from the floor, and go to get Ava, who is still looking fairly shell-shocked in her bed.
“Come on,” I say as I hold my hand out to her. “You’re going to stay in my room with me tonight.”
She takes my hand without protest and I wrap my arm around her shoulders as we walk past Max’s writhing body on the floor. I listen for a few minutes after we get back into my room and hear Max slither back to his room to sleep off both his drunken stupor and the painful beating that he just got. Then I gently pull Ava into bed next to me.
“I’m worried,” she says.
