“Everything okay?” he asked, and I couldn’t hide my smile as I saw him look around, disoriented.
“Must have been a good sleep,” I said, pulling my attention away from the results of his workout routine. “Sorry.”
“I wasn’ttryingto sleep,” he said.
“So, ya just lounge around naked and awake then?” I asked with a smirk.
He blinked again. “Huh? How did you?—”
I shrugged, gesturing toward his pants, which were twisted on his waist. “Looks like you yanked them on in a hurry and they’re down kinda low, and I don’t see no underwear.”
Walker stared at me, raising a brow and stepping back. “If you’re going to notice random shit like my lack of underwear, how about you get in here before people question your sexuality more than they already do.”
I grunted as I stepped in. “Ya heard that too, huh?”
“The guys here aren’t a lot different from in the Army,” he said with a snort, walking over to the coffee machine and tapping it. “They think they’re slick, but they’re terrible at keeping their nose out of other people’s business, and even worse at being subtle about it.”
“They think they are.”
“Which, again, isn’t that much different.”
“True,” I said, looking around. “You, uh, feelin’ alright?”
He snorted as the machine finally came to life. “I haven’t caught whatever is sweeping through here and leaving grown men curled up in their beds like dearly departing Victorian children.”
“Morbid,” I said, looking around and deciding to take a seat. “When I hadn’t seen ya today, I was worried you were one of them.”
“Not me,” he said with a shrug. “I get sick, maybe once a year, so I’m not worried.”
Which sounded great, but whatever was going through the place was pretty strong. No one was sure how a bug got in, but there were plenty of staff who left the resort occasionally. Any of them could have picked it up and brought it back. Despitehow clean the place was, it was still the same people constantly around each other. It wouldn’t take much for it to work its way through all the guys if it got a foothold.
“I think it was Reggie,” I said as he took the coffee mug out of the machine and held it up. “Yeah, I’ll take one.”
He slid it across the table to me. “Other people leave the resort.”
“Yeah, but everyone keeps sayin’ it was after his last disappearance, and before everyone got sick, he’s disappeared again,” I said with a snort as I sipped the coffee and sighed at the bitter taste. “You an’ your black coffee.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, and when I looked up, he was leaning over with two barely used containers, one sugar and the other liquid creamer, that he set down with a snort. “Maybe you should learn some patience.”
“Ya remembered,” I said with a chuckle as I began pouring both.
“That when you have the choice, you like to have coffee with your cream and sugar? Yes, I remembered,” he said as he retrieved his cup of muck.
“Says the guy who drinks motor oil instead o’ coffee,” I muttered as he took a sip. I could tell from the color he’d made that one even stronger. Apparently, he’d figured I would accept the first cup and had purposefully made it weaker. “You, Bassey, and Morrow always drank it like that. We hated when it was y’all’s turn to make the coffee. Felt like we were gonna be up for days.”
“Nothing wrong with a strong cup,” he said with a chuckle as he took the seat directly across from me rather than the one next to me. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it added weight to my thoughts that he was trying to avoid me.
“There’s strong, and then there’s whatever the hell y’all make,” I said with a shake of my head. “And you were the worst.First time I had one of your cups, I remembered that time they gave us meth.”
“It wasn’t…” he began in protest and sighed, whatever else he was going to say dying in his throat. “It wasn’t meth.”
“Close the fuck enough,” I snorted. “I felt wired. And then I had your coffee and wondered if maybe they took inspiration from it.”
“Dramatic,” he said softly, but he was smiling.
I glanced over my shoulder toward the bed, seeing the sheets rumpled. “So, accidental nap?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I don’t sleep for a long time. A couple of hours here, a few hours there. I can’t sleep a full night. I’ve grown used to it.”
