I can feel his eyes on the back of my head.
“I hope you enjoyed your penis.”
Fuck.
“Shower!” I correct. “I hope you enjoyed your shower.”
There’s a beat of silence.
“Thank you,” Griffin says. His voice contains a lot of things, most of them amusement.
I ignore all of it and bolt out the door.
Once I’m on the concrete walkway, I press my back against the motel wall and bury my flaming face in Gerald’s neck.
“Tell nobody,” I whisper to the bird.
Gerald says nothing. His eyes are pointing in two different directions, which I’m choosing to interpret as a promise of secrecy.
I head back toward the wall. Gerald is going to have a very long walk.
Twenty
Griffin
In my defense, I’ve been living alone for years.
I’m out of practice at the art of cohabitation. Which is the only explanation for why, after I stepped out of the shower, I completely forgot for approximately two full minutes that I was sharing a motel room with a woman.
Two minutes. That’s all it took.
I pull on a T-shirt, track down my shoes, and head back outside. Mostly because she looked like she was trying to dissolve through the wall to escape, and also because I’m not going to let her sit in a dark parking lot with a four-foot stuffed bird and pretend like what just happened didn’t happen.
It takes me thirty seconds to find her.
She’s back on the low stone wall, Gerald the Penguin seated beside her. Her face is still a bright shade of pink.
When I sit down next to her, she doesn’t look at me. I give it four seconds of silence.
“So,” I say. “You saw my penis.”
She makes a choked sound.
“You’ve seen mine,” I continue. “It’s only fair you show me yours.”
Her head snaps toward me so fast I’m surprised she doesn’t get whiplash.
I look her right in the eye. “I’m kidding, but at least you’re looking at me. Or at my face, anyway. This time.”
She immediately buries her face into Gerald’s neck.
“Oh my God,” comes a muffled, horrified groan from somewhere in the penguin’s torso.
I laugh. I can’t help it. She makes another sound—half-mortified, half-giggle—and her shoulders start to shake. Eventually, she surfaces, eyes bright with humiliation.
“It was an accident,” she says.
“Completely.”
