“Only if you exist the same way,” he says and pulls his shirt off in one fast, fluid motion.
I hold a hand out. “Deal. But I’m switching bras. This one’s soaked.”
“I can tell.”
I glance down. It’s a basic, minimal padding, zero underwire bra, glued to my skin from the rain. My nipples are poking through. I shrug.
“I can find something better. Do you want your shorts dried as well, or…?”
“I’ll keep them on, I think. They’re not too bad.”
That’s a fabulous answer. I have many questions about what’s underneath those basketball shorts. But I don’t think today is the day. Not if I can control myself. Which I can. I’m a fully capable adult who can wait to see the penis belonging to the guy she likes. But if he sent me any hints…I’d drop my panties like that.
“Okay,” I say and have to clear my throat. Twice. “I’ll take these to the dryer and then I can show you around. Feel free to explore.”
I escape to the laundry room on the second floor, needing to shake off the image of a wet and shirtless Zander that’s filling my brain. But I know I’m going to go back downstairs and be faced with the exact same image of him. So. Crap.
I peel off the remainder of my clothes and throw them all in the dryer. And then I realize I didn’t think this through because now I’mfullynaked and have no clean clothes in here. Huffing out a deep sigh, I peer around the doorway to make sure Zanderhasn’t followed me up, then book it to my room. I grab a generic pair of black shorts and a pastel pink bralette. In the full-length mirror mounted on my closet door, I note you can still see my nipples.
Great.
You know you guys can chill, right?
I close my eyes and exhale. Okay. Nothing is happening right now. It’s just your brain overreacting to seeing him shirtless and that kiss in the rain and, yeah, maybe he was a little excited too and you could feel that. But nothing has to happen today. And even if it does, there’s no reason to be freaking out. It’s Zander. You don’t have to fake it with him. You’ve never hidden your emotions from him, which israre, so there’s no reason why you’d have to fake an orgasm for him.
But what if I do?
Okay. Stop stop stop stop stop.
Towels. Just get some towels and go from there.
I step into the hallway. It’s brighter than it was when I went into my room. I glance out the window at the end of the hall. The sun’s peeking through a cloud, giving the briefest suggestion of a rainbow. I pull on the green doors of the linen closet. My plan was to paint flowers around the edges of this closet. I haven’t gotten there yet.
“Okay,” I say, bounding down the stairs with a pile of towels. “Dry thyself!”
I throw one at Zander, who is inspecting the wood I’ve left on the floor of the alcove beneath my stairs. The towel lands on his head. He straightens and runs his hands over the towel, drying his hair, before pulling the towel off entirely. I watch the muscles in his back as he dries his chest and shoulders. He is a literal thirst trap and I have to stop watching or I risk spontaneously combusting. I bend and twist my hair into a towel wrap, then set it on top of my head.
“What’s the wood about?” Zander asks, then laughs awkwardly.
“I’m just happy to see you,” I say and skip over to the two by fours. I hand Zander another towel. “So many things to get distracted by in my house and you’re drawn to a random pile of wood.”
“Well, I was a carpenter. I think that’s allowed. What’re you building?”
“Shelves,” I say, then eye him appreciatively. He wraps the new towel around his waist to absorb some of the water from his shorts. This does wondrously unfortunate things for my imagination. “The bench is here already, but I want to make, like, little shelves on the end. It’s kind of self-centred. But I think it would be cool to have all my books right here as you walk in.”
“Not self-centred at all. You’ve earned it.” He runs his hand over the pink velour cushion, then the back wall. His eyes scan the wood on the floor and the space I want to build them. “This is doable. Do you need help?”
“I wouldn’t say no. Do you think I can wallpaper them to match?”
“Definitely. This house…” There are stars in his eyes as he finds purchase on every nook and cranny I’ve poured myself into. This reaction and he’s only seen a fraction of what I’ve done here. “It’s like sunshine. You’re sunshine.”
My cheeks flush and I find myself looking down at my rainbow toenails. “It wasn’t always that way. I didn’t have the balls to change all this until a few years ago. When I turned eighteen, my dad told me that my mom left me the house. I don’t know what generous stroke made her decide on that…but it’s mine. He moved out once I finished my master’s degree. Didn’t want to be here any longer. Part of me didn’t want to be, either. I kind of wanted to move away and have a fresh start, but I know what this house means to the family, and I’d already put a lot of myselfinto the garden, so I thought, why not put my whole self into the house?”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Zander says and walks further into the innermost workings of my mind. He smiles as he walks through the archway into the family room. I thought I would be wasting a perfectly good arch if I didn’t paint a rainbow around it. “God, this is so you. You’re like a little whimsical elf. Have you ever thought about writing fantasy?”
I laugh. “I do loveLord of the Rings, but I know my limits. I don’t think I could ever come up with something like that.”
“I dunno. Seeing all this, I kind of feel like you could do anything.”
