“Can I borrow a shirt?” she asks. She looks down at her bag. “All my clothes are dirty, and I hate to put on dirty clothes when I just got out of the shower.”
I must have looked at her funny. Because she rushes on to say, “I’ll return it to you tomorrow, before I leave. I just want to sleep in it. Do you have a washing machine?”
I nod.
“Which question are you answering? The shirt? Or the washer?”
“Both,” I say. She smiles at me. I’d talk to this girl all day long if it means she’ll smile at me like that. I take a shirt from a hanger and toss it to her. She catches it and pulls it over her head. After she tugs it down toward her knees, she tugs the towel and jerks it from beneath the shirt. She sits down on the side of my bed and removes a pair of pink panties from her bag.
“Can you turn around?” she asks.
I do, and the fact that I did makes me grin like a kid in a candy store. I hope she can’t see me.
I feel her hand on my shoulder and I turn back around. She’s wearing my AC/DC shirt, and it hangs down around her knees. Damn she’s pretty.
“Can I throw some things in your washing machine?” she asks.
“I can do it for you,” I offer.
She shakes her head. “You are not fondling my panties, perv,” she says, grinning. “Next thing I know, you’ll be sniffing them.” She laughs. I wish I could hear it, because it’s probably the most beautiful sound in the world. It’s not often I wish I could hear, because I can do almost anything I want. But right now, I wish I could hear the sound of her laughter.
I motion to her and she walks out with me to the hallway, where I open the door to the laundry closet. I take what’s in the dryer out, and put it on top. Look like Sam and Pete’s stuff and they can handle their own clothes. I flip what’s in the washer to the dryer, and ask her for her things by holding out my hands. She shakes her head. I step to the side and she starts to take a few things from her bag. She doesn’t have much – just a few shirts, some shorts, a pair of jeans, and what she was wearing today. And the throws in a few pairs of panties. There’s more Betty Boop and I grin at her and shake my head.
I dump in some laundry soap and she starts it, and then she walks back toward my bedroom. “Do you have a blanket I can put on the floor?” she asks.
What the hell? “Why?” I ask.
She looks at me like I’ve grown two heads. “To sleep on?”
“You are not sleeping on the floor,” I tell her. “You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
“The couch is about five feet long. You’re too tall. I can sleep on the couch.” She nods like she’s made up her mind.
I grab her arm gently as she goes to walk by me. “No,” I say. “You take the bed.”
The bed is full size, so it’s not the biggest bed in the world. She draws her lower lip between her teeth and nibbles it. That has to be one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen. I reach out and touch her lower lip with my thumb, gently pulling it from between her teeth. She licks her lips and looks everywhere but at me.
“Are you sure this is all right with you?” she asks.
I lean close to her and pull her into my chest. I don’t know why I feel the need to do that, but I do. She hesitates briefly and then wraps her arms around my waist. I kiss her gently on the forehead. She looks up at me and she looks almost lost. The color is high in her cheeks and she steps back. “Thank you,” she says. She stands up on tiptoe and kisses my cheek almost like it’s an afterthought.
That kiss touches me like the deepest tongue kiss never has. It’s like my breath is trapped in my throat and I can’t draw it in or out.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“Fine,” I say. But I’m anything but fine. She raises her arms to lift her wet hair from her neck and her boobs shift beneath her shirt. I’m instantly hard. “Let me know if you need anything?” I say. But I’m not looking at her anymore. I’m walking toward the door as fast as I can, before she notices that I’m getting hard just thinking about the fact that she doesn’t have a bra on.
She touches my arm and says, “Logan, please don’t tell anyone that I can’t read, ok?” She looks worried and I hate it for her. I hate that she even has to worry about things like this.
“That was between me and you,” I tell her. I like that it’s our secret. Kind of like my talking is.
She closes the door behind me and I hear the thumb lock on the door click. She just locked me out of my own room. I can’t say I blame her really. She’s in a strange place. And she’s surrounded by strange men. But there’s a piece of me that’s glad she locked the door.
I walk back to the living room, taking a blanket with me from the linen closet.
“I still can’t believe you’re going to sleep on the couch,” Paul says.
I can’t believe it either. But I am.
Emily
I’ve been lying in Logan’s bed for what feels like hours, but I can’t sleep. I heard Pete when he came home, and I heard Paul tell him to go to bed. Then the apartment got quiet. No one has made a sound for hours, until now. I think it’s Matthew, because it sounds like quick, muffled footsteps and then an awful gagging noise.
I open the door and look out, the bathroom door is open about an inch, and I’m pretty sure that’s Matthew in there getting sick. He’s miserable, and I want to help him, but I also don’t want to intrude. I tiptoe into the kitchen because I’m thirsty, and I look over at the sofa, where Logan is sleeping. His feet are hanging off the edge by about a foot, and he’s flat on his back, his head bolstered by the arm of the couch. He doesn’t even have a pillow.