She couldn’t handle it at all, but everything was so cool between them she thought she’d better try. After all, he probably hadn’t really wanted to kiss her. The whole thing was likely just her imagination, and even if it hadn’t been she’d stuffed it all up. There was a wariness about the way he reacted to her now—no suggestions that she join him in the bathroom, no requests for backrubs.
Everything stayed friendly and aboveboard, which was fine most of the time.
But then that robe would slide off the firm plane of his thigh, and he would kind of catch her eye and she would kind of catch his and then suddenly they were in some kind of staring contest. Some kind of really intense staring contest, where the world around them became all slow and heavy and she couldn’t seem to breathe. She had to gasp just to get some of this new and impossibly thick oxygen down, but there was no relief once she had.
The air settled badly inside her—like having indigestion, if indigestion was something pleasurable and exciting instead of an awful nightmare. And the longer she let these staring contests go on for, the more this feeling intensified. Sometimes it got so bad she found herself nearly leaning toward him, despite his unwillingness to lean back. He stayed right where he was and she started to sag and dear God she couldn’t have that. What if she went all the way in and he laughed?
She needed to get him into some clothes, immediately. Ones that did not make her think of dead husbands, and were not in the slightest bit sexy. Both those things were combining to make some unholy issue inside her, so dressing him seemed like a good solution. Or at least, it seemed like one until she was standing in her closet with him, surrounded by all the clothes she did not have. He picked up a lonely pair of tights from an otherwise empty shelf, and it was then that she knew what she should have understood much earlier.
She didn’t actually have any clothes forherto wear, never mind him. Her shoe rack only had two pairs of shoes in it. There was an entire rail behind him, and on it she’d hung a single pair of jeans. And she’d only done that because it seemed likesomethingshould be hung up in there.
Most people chose suits and fancy dresses though, she knew.
He probably knew too, but if he did he didn’t say.
“I think these will go great with my ensemble,” he said instead, despite the fact that they were green, had a gigantic hole in them, and probably wouldn’t make it past his knees. Oh and also they weretights. He was willing to try on tights for her. He’d eaten colander cake concoctions on several occasions now—not to mention the terrible tea he kept drinking and the insane conversations he kept having with her about whether Superman could safely poo. Yesterday they’d actually watched aGolden Girlsmarathon together, and he hadn’t blinked an eye.
And now this.
Of course he was kidding, but that was okay. The effect was still the same—one of warmth and acceptance and other cool stuff. He didn’t mind that she only had green tights, or that her closet looked like something abandoned at the end of time. He just went with it anyway. She suspected heneededto go with it.
Going with it was better than the alternatives.
“Maybe we can fashion you a toga out of a bedsheet.”
“I don’t know. I’m kind of attached to these now,” he said, and then she watched in delight as he attempted to roll them over one foot. Of all the things she ever thought she’d see, Holden Stark bent over in a bathrobe with one stocking almost over his ankle was not one of them. It occurred to her that she could probably sell this image toTMZfor a million dollars, but she had to be honest.
It was worth a lot more than that to her.
Every bizarre moment with him was worth more than that to her.
“You’re really not supposed to do it like this.”
“Well where am I going wrong?”
“You can’t...you have to roll it first.”
“So I can’t just drag it on?”
“No. No. You—okay. Stop, you have to stop. I’m going to wee myself,” she said—and it was true too. She was almost bent double. Tears were starting to leak out of her eyes. She couldn’t remember the last time tears leaked out of her eyes, unless you counted terrible crying over horrible things.
Happy crying seemed like something mythical that only ever happened to other people, yet here she was doing just that. And she did it harder when she realized he still had three feet of material dangling from the end of his foot. He’d managed to pull the gusset up to his knee, but the rest of the tights hadn’t followed.
Plus he just looked so baffled by them. She’d never seen someone be so earnestly baffled over hosiery. He could have been on one of those quiz shows that made you do complicated physical tasks, trying desperately to earn her a million dollars. In fact—hadn’t she seen him make that face once on something like that? Some charity game show before he became really famous?
He hadn’t been able to get out of a big Perspex box, she thought.
And that was what made her want to put him out of his misery.
“You know, I think I have some sleepwear you could probably put on—just give me a second, okay? I’ll go look while you...try to wipe this nightmare from your mind.”
“Oh thank God. I think I’m getting PTSD.”
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“How do women put these on?”
“I’ve done it before, but right now even I’m not sure. You’ve made it look like a harrowing tale of one man’s struggle with a deadly opponent.”
