Option one: stay here until the water runs cold, then stay here some more, and eventually Leo finds my shriveled, pruney corpse wedged in the bottom of the shower.
Option two: call for help, let a man I’ve been deliberately tormenting see me naked and stuck, and never emotionally recover.
I’m seriously considering option one when there’s a knock on the bathroom door.
“Archie? Are you okay?”
Of course he heard.
“I’m fine!” I shout, in a voice that sounds approximately zero percent fine. “Just rearranging the bathroom furniture!”
A pause.
“It sounds like something fell.”
“Nothing fell. Gravity and I are just having a disagreement.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Do you need help?”
That simple question shouldn’t be this hard to answer.
I obviously need help. I’m in an untenable position with shampoo burning my eyes and water spraying the mirror.
But asking Leo Brennan for help in the shower means Leo Brennan in the bathroom while I am naked and stuck. There’s a difference between choosing to be provocative—sending him to fetch the Destroyer was a strategic decision—and being genuinely, pathetically helpless.
The first one is a power move. The second is just…need.
“Archie,” Leo’s voice is part plead, part demand.
His voice is closer now, right outside the door.
I manage to find my voice. “I’m naked.”
“I assumed.”
“I’m serious. I’m extremely naked. There’s nothing between God and me right now.”
“Archie, you’re about to add a head injury to the ankle. I’m coming in.”
The door opens.
I use my free hand to grab the washcloth from the shower caddy and slap it over my crotch with the desperate speed of a man trying to protect his last shred of dignity. It’s a small washcloth. Coverage is…optimistic.
Through my shampoo-soaked vision, I look up to see Leo standing in the doorway, surveying the scene.
There’s a brief, loaded silence.
“Don’t say a word,” I warn.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Your face is saying words.”
“My face is assessing the situation.” Leo steps into the bathroom, sidestepping the lake forming on the floor. The rogue showerhead immediately catches him across the thighs. He doesn’t flinch.
“Right,” he says as he gets closer. He starts to roll up his sleeves. “Can you push yourself back onto the stool if I brace it?”
