“Ugh, seriously?” Cammie looks dismayed by the information, but then her eyes brighten like a brilliant idea just hit her. “Can you show me?”
My eyes bulge as I choke out the words, “What, how to shower?”
She waves this away, turning to enter the stall area but still talking like it’s a given I’ll follow. “No, no, just how to work these showers. I must have done something wrong, right?”
My hand comes up to my hair before I realize I probably shouldn’t mess it up any further, as my odds of actually getting to wash it before dinner are dropping. Cam begins arranging her things on the shelf and hooks in the center of the room. She doesn’t go so far as to undress yet—small mercies—but gestures toward herself to indicate I should join her. In the showers.What is happening?
“It’s not that complicated—just turn the handle to start the water, then the hot and cold knobs for temperature.”
“Okay, well, there must be some…finesse to it that I was lacking, so if you can just show me real quick, I’ll leave you alone.”
It’s apparent that she’s stuck on this plan, and I’m as stuck either following through or never getting to shower in peace. Heaving a sigh, I approach the center shelf, stack and hang my belongings accordingly, and enter one of the stalls, still in my sweats and T-shirt. “Stand behind me, I guess, so it doesn’t spray you too much.”
I reach up to angle the showerhead away from me and feel Cammie’s warmth at my back. Forcing very tame thoughts into my head—about calculus, and software, and other stuff far from where I’m standing in a shower with Camilla Lovett—I go through the steps of turning on the water, adjusting the temperature until, testing the stream with my hand, I find it appropriately warm. Then I turn to find Cammie even closer than I imagined she was, looking at me with wide blue eyes like I just solved a Rubik’s Cube in record time.
For my own sanity, I step around her, intending to gather my stuff and wait in the hall until she’s done in here.
“Well, what the hell happened when I did that? I was in that corner stall right there, and—”
That makes me pause in my retreat. “Wait. The nonfunctioning one?”
When I turn back to her, Cammie points to the stall in question. “Well, yeah, it was shitty, but it functioned enough to wash everything I needed.”
With the answers clicking into place, I shake my head. “Iguess no one told you when you moved in—we’re not supposed to use that stall. It’s got all kinds of issues, apparently, and isn’t even supposed to put out water. So maybe you fixed it?”
Cammie scoffs. “I certainly did not! Thanks for the intel, even if it came several days too late. A huge relief, really—any other stall in here is about to feel like a dream.” She points to the one still running water. “Are you using this, or can I?”
I shake my head quickly. “Go for it.” I weigh my options while she takes her towel from its hook and steps into the shower stall, closing herself in with the curtain.
Then, one by one, articles of clothing are swung over the top of the curtain rod for safekeeping. No part of the girl who was just wearing them is visible, but it still feels like my whole body flushes red as I turn around on instinct.
There is no option. I’ll just have to look and smell a little less than my best, and the people in this small Italian village, who I’ll likely never see again, can deal.
“West? You still in here?” Cammie calls out.
“Yeah.” My voice cracks, because of course it does.
“I thought you were showering.”
It takes me a few seconds that sound like hours of silence before I say, “I’m just gonna wait, I think. How long do you think you’ll be?”
“It’s already so much better than the last time, I might be in here all night,” she says dreamily before adding a flatter, “Or roughly twenty minutes.”
My jaw drops.“Twenty?”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but I have a lot of hair.”
“Oh my—”
“Weston, just start your own damn shower. It’s only weird if we make it weird, and I’m not planning to do that. So if you don’t either…”
I could retort that I don’t think we haveplannedany of the numerous points in our relationship where one or both of us “made it weird.” But even without my phone or any other clock available, I feel my time running out.
More than that, maybe, I feel the subtle gauntlet she’s thrown. The one that says,I can be a mature adult—so mature as to shower in the same general vicinity as you without losing my shit. Canyou?
My only option has reversed.
“What is there to make weird? I shower with all my former friends.”
