Page 474 of Call Me Baby 2: Side B

wiping the drool from my mouth.

“You’re so annoying.”

He chuckles into my skin.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m the worst.

“Wanna be by your side.

“Sit on the bathroom floor with you.”

He leans over me, flushing the toilet.

“What a monster,” he murmurs, lowering the lid, then falling back against the open door, ass on the floor, pulling his legs up ‘cause it’s so tight in here.

That’s when I realize

he slipped on gym shorts.

I pull the towel tighter across my chest,

lean back against the adjacent wall.

For a while, we sit like that,

my finger tracing the bones in his foot.

He has pretty feet for a guy.

Except for this stray black hair.

It’s an inch long. On his middle toe.

Sprouted alone in no man’s land.

I pluck it.

Andrew winces, yanking back his foot.

“The fuck was that for?”

I look at the hair lying on my finger.

“I don’t know,” I mumble, trying to see it in the light. “But now I feel bad. I just ripped you two apart.”

His exhaustion fights a chuckle, then he breathes out the aftermath of a day that nearly broke us.

We’re both thoroughly fucked⁠—

days without sleep,

emotionally spent,

physically drained.

He tips his head back,

looks at me through slits,