“Thanks—I feel better,” she said. “I don’t know why long drives make you feel so gross. You’re just in the car.”
Max glanced up as he closed his laptop, looked at her tits, then looked back at her face. “You find everything okay?”
“Sure did,” she said, and ran a hand through her wet hair, like that would help it dry. “You sure you’re not seeing someone?” she teased.
“What?”
“You don’t have some significant other you didn’t tell me about?”
Max stared at her for a few long seconds, like he was buffering. It dawned on Sloane that she’d fucked up.
“No,” he said, “What?—”
“It’s fine if there is,” she said for some fucking reason. “I mean, I didn’t?—”
“There’s not,” he said, somehow bewildered and vehement all at once. “What are you talking about?”
Sloane was never going to try initiating a flirty conversation again, because she clearly couldn’t be trusted.
“Your shower stuff is really nice,” she said.
There was a several-second pause.
“My shower stuff?” he echoed.
“You have, like, leave-in conditioner,” Sloane said, like it was justification. “And body wash.”
“Yes, I have a body that needs washing.”
Sloane had soared past fun and flirty by several miles and was starting to pray she didn’t crash-land on the dunes of weird and hostile. “Men usually don’t,” she said, and had to close her eyes at how dumb that sounded.
“It’s body wash,” Max repeated, though he finally sounded more amused than hostile, so that was something. In her defense, the last guy Sloane had hooked up with regularly had kept a bottle of Dawn Powerwash in his shower, next to a bottle of drugstore two-in-one shampoo/conditioner and a bar of soap. He swore it was to clean the shower, not himself, but Sloane had remained suspicious.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—sorry. It’s been a long day. I’m kind of scrambled.”
She was still standing in the doorway to his bedroom, and now Max walked around the coffee table, his face softer.
“I’m not seeing anyone,” he said. “And I’m definitely not letting anyone put their shit in my shower. There’s barely room for my shit. I’m just high maintenance.”
Sloane snorted. “Body wash and leave-in conditioner doesn’t make you high maintenance.”
Now he was two feet away, his hands in his pockets, and he looked at her disbelievingly. “You just told me it was evidence I’m secretly dating someone.”
“It was a compliment?” Sloane tried, which didn’t work. “Your hair smells great.”
“I know.”
She could almost smell it from where he was standing, just within arm’s reach. They’d probably be making out already if she hadn’t decided to be completely weird about his shower, which she was going to blame on the long drive and the wine and the everything about dinner.
After a moment, Sloane reached out, slid her hand around Max’s waist, and tugged gently, but he was already moving toward her, a hand on her hip just above the waistband of her pajamas, the other reaching back into his hair.
“You could have just asked if I was seeing someone,” he said, then tilted his head back and shook, his hair coming loose around his shoulders. He’d been right: It smelled great, floral and woodsy, like wildflowers in the forest.
“Yeah, but why do that when I could make it weird instead?” she asked, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and pulled his head toward her, angling her face to the side and inhaling once her nose was buried in it.
“Told you,” he said. His lips brushed against her ear as he spoke, and it sent a shudder down her spine.
“Shut up.”
