Page 25 of The Flight Risk

I walk for a solid three miles and decide to head back to Oakley’s. I dance my way up the stairs, Dirty Dancing style, lip-syncing to the queen herself, Mrs. Taylor Alison Swift. I enter the bedroom and throw off my quarterzip, ensuring I don’t knock my headphones off my head. I glance at the bathroom– that’s strange. I don’t remember closing the door. Maybe in my sex-dream-hazed state I did. I untie my shoes and dance all the way to the bathroom door.

When I open the door, a bunch of steam appears. I look behind the door and see a very naked Oakley in the shower. He runs a hand through his hair and every feminist bone in my body exits all at once. All of his back muscles are flexing and releasing in equal measure. He turns his body and I’m able to see that his other hand is stroking his very hard, very large dick. Suds cascade down every ridge of his body and his muscles continue to contract with every stroke. I take off my headphones and hear “Tess” come out of his perfect mouth. I can tell that his breath is erratic and the tension in his body is so intense that it’s making my own body tense with want and need. He comes and says my name again. My jaw drops and I mouth, “Oh my god!” Fuck, did I just say that out loud?

Oakley registers that I’m there, in the bathroom, staring at him while he’s jerking off. “Fuck, Tess!”

“I am so sorry.” I slap my hand across my eyes and turn to leave, but end up running into the door. “Ow, shit.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” There will definitely be a small bump from the impact. “I am so sorry. I thought you weren’t home!”

The water turns off abruptly and I hear the glass door swing open. I find some stable footing and peek through my hands like I’m playing some weird grown-up version of hide-and-seek.

“Tess!” Oakley calls out.

“Oakley, it’s fine. I just wanted to get a quick shower in. I didn’t know you were in there.” My hand is still plastered on my face, partly out of pure embarrassment and partly because I don’t know if I can handle seeing Oakley like this.

I remove my hand over my face but keep looking down because he has a white towel and he’s just so built and the towel is hanging on for dear life against his lower abs where a deep V and treasure trail is on full display. And he’s clearly still very hard and I can’t form the right words. “It’s fine,” I mumble. “I can take a shower in a bit. You can go back in and finish doing whatever it is you were doing…so yeah, I’ll be downstairs.” My voice is squeaky and so not sexy. Surely, that will fix his very obvious throbbing erection.

I run down the stairs so fast, I’m convinced I left a Tess-shaped hole in his bedroom door. I grab my massive water tumbler and drink almost the entire forty ounces in the span of two minutes. I quickly take out the ingredients for a green protein smoothie. I plug in the blender, dump everything needed for my daily smoothie, press and lock the lid into place and push down the start button. The noise from the blender wakes up Lottie and she slowly descends from the stairs like a zombie, eyes barely open, completely out of it and groggy.

She pulls out a stool and unsteadily sits in it. “Morning,” she grumbles.

“Morning!” Stay cool and pretend like you didn’t just see Oakley totally naked and wet and a thousand percent pleasuring himself less than five minutes ago, while calling out your name when he orgasmed. I’m glad that I have the excuse of exercise to explain my flushed appearance.

I stop the blender and grab a glass from the cabinet. As I’m pouring the smoothie into the glass, I hear a deep and sexy, “Morning.”

Oakley’s voice sends all the vibrations down my body. This is going to be a problem.

I’m brave enough to look in his direction and he looks devastatingly hot. His hair is damp from the shower and his dark blue shirt is clinging to every muscle like velcro. His gray joggers hang low on his hips and my gaze skims over where his hand was mere minutes ago. Now I’m forever going to be acutely aware of how big he is. Bigger than any man I’ve ever been with. I know that utterly breathless is going to be my new normal around this man.

“Aunt Tess. You are spilling your smoothie everywhere,” Lottie sleepily points out.

I break eye contact with the sexiest man alive and look down to see the green smoothie has indeed overflowed. “Dammit.” A paper towel appears in my eyeline and I notice a small smirk on Oakley’s face. “Here.”

I snatch it from him. “Thanks.” I begrudgingly wipe the green substance off his pristine white marble countertop. I throw the paper towel in the trash and as I turn around to retrieve a straw from the drawer, I run right into him–only this time, it’s his ass that I run into and my god if that’s not just as sculpted as the rest of his immaculate body.

“Sorry,” we both say, and we move side to side, trying to get around each other, making it even more awkward. He chuckles and finally stays still so I can move past him. I get my straw and jam it into my glass. Oakley goes into the pantry and pulls out his favorite cereal, Froot Loops, and pours it into a bowl.

Lottie’s eyebrows furrow as she observes the way me and Oakley are acting around each other. “Is everything okay with you two? There’s some weird energy going on.”

“Yes,” Oakley and I say in sync. Geez, can we be any more obvious?

Lottie finally gets out of her chair and steals the box of Froot Loops from Oakley. “Are you sure? I thought I heard you scream ‘Oh my God!’, Aunt Tess.”

Oakley spills his cereal all over the counter, clearly flustered by how that sounded and knowing why I was saying that phrase in the first place.

“Oh, that!” I laugh it off and hope I can sell this narrative I’m about to pull out of my ass. “I, um, saw a spider in the shower and it was…the biggest spider I’ve ever seen.” Oakley presses his tongue against the inside of his cheek, trying to mask a smug smile. Heat returns to my core when I remember how his tongue felt against my tongue and how much I’d like to feel his tongue in other places. I clear my throat. “That’s all.” I sip my smoothie, hoping Lottie bought my story.

Lottie finishes assembling her cereal bowl and sits back down, mindlessly sloshing her cereal to and fro. “Did you kill it?”

I exhale. She knows how I’m deathly afraid of spiders, any insect really, so she bought my story hook, line and sinker.

“Yeah, did you kill it?” Oakley tilts his head as a spoonful of sugary colorful deliciousness enters his mouth.

And though it’s a straight-up lie, I say, “Yup,” putting extra emphasis on the “p.”

I couldn’t sleep a wink last night. Flashes of Oakley’s hot, wet body, covered in suds, invaded my mind. Not that I’m complaining. There are worse things than images of your hot roommate naked and wet and completely ripped. If I were to look up the definition of washboard abs, his abs would be the first image that pops up.