Worse: she’d worn silky briefs with a lacy top.
And that was probably going to say more than she’d intended to.It’ll look like you did it on purpose, in case things go further than practicing is supposed to go, she thought, then almost stopped short. In fact, she probably would have done, if it hadn’t been for two things: the tentative way he kept every finger together so it didn’t touch beyond the place she put them.
And his reaction when full contact was made.
She actually felt him relax, all in one big go. Like he’d been holding himself tense up until that point, but now somehow knew he didn’t have to. Or maybe he just couldn’t resist, once he felt what hugging was really like. He had to lean into it, so completely that it actually felt like someone sagging against her. She was almost holding him up after a moment.
But it didn’t feel bad.
He didn’t weigh on her.
Instead, she thought of being surrounded, protected, comforted. She felt his head actually rest on top of hers, gently, so gently. And realized that it wasn’t just him who hadn’t ever known something like this. She wasn’t sure she had, either. All she could really remember were pinched, one-armed sorts of things from her mother. Stern looks from her father. A thousand people around town who didn’t want to be her friend, a ton of dates who found her too overwhelming.
The closest she’d ever gotten to friendship was Cassie.
Or maybe Marley, over at theGazette. Though Marley wasn’t really the hugging type. She was prickly, bristly. A pat on the back was enough to say she was your buddy. So this? This was a lot. It was enough that she thought maybe her eyes were starting to sting—and doubly so when she felt what his hand was doing on her back. Just a little, but she could feel it intensely.
He was rubbing her.
Like maybe he knew that she needed this, too.
At which point she had to do something. It was all just feeling too real, and too nice, and they hadn’t even gotten to the date part yet. If she didn’t get ahold of herself soon she was going to do some very inadvisable things the second they did. Like make a whole ridiculous sound when he slid one hand under her hair.
Innocently, she thought.
He obviously hadn’t meant anything by it.
But he did it, and she reacted, and when she did, oh, the way he whipped that hand away. The sheer speed with which he stepped back. She blushed to see it, hard enough that she had to hide it. She turned away, toward his bedroom, before he could catch it, and when that didn’t seem like enough she added a few words on the end.
“We should get to picking you an outfit.”
And to her relief, he seemed to agree.
She was safe.
Until she realized, as she started going through his clothes:
Now her entire job was to make him look even hotter than he already did.
With the memory of that hand in her hair, still searing a hole through her body.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It felt like the best thing to do was just to focus on the practicalities. Like the fact that his closet was full of the weirdest and most wonderful stuff she could ever have imagined he might own. Hell, it was the weirdest and most wonderful stuff she could ever have imaginedanyonewould own.
He had spangly waistcoats, like something the emcee of a nightclub would have worn in 1974. In fact, he had whole outfits that fit that bill. Flares and platform shoes and feather boas. She drew the latter out and it kept going and going, like a magic trick.
Until he told her to stop.
“Leave it, leave it, focus on the other things,” he groused.
But the other things were just as intriguing. There were hats, of all shapes and styles and sizes. Fedoras, straw boaters, woolen ones with flaps, and baseball caps with teams emblazoned on them that she wasn’t sure existed. FERMERGERD, one of them read. She almost asked him if it was the name of a company he’d worked for.
It made her think of invented chemical plants from some Stephen King short story, about monsters trying to pass as human beings. And it wasn’t even the strangest thing in there. She found costumes, of the kind a little kid might wear. Dusty cowboy boots and waistcoats and rusted tin stars, a fireman’s coat and helmet,a sheet with eyeholes in it—completely enormous, but obviously meant to make someone look like a ghost.
And then even weirder: a cloak, a frilly shirt, what looked like breeches.
“What can I say, I like Halloween,” he said, from somewhere behind her. Half laughing in this nervous kind of way, as she dug through everything. Though she didn’t think he had anything to be nervous about at all. There was something wonderful about all his paraphernalia, all his costumes. Something that felt familiar, somehow.
