Chapter 2
TWO
MATTHEW
Troye was the kind of guy who could’ve benefitted from a good spanking. Jesus, the guy was a brat. Not on purpose, I didn’t think. His bratting wasn’t some sort of calculated thing to get a rise out of me but was more the result of his heightened emotions. He was basically crack to me.
Or he would’ve been if he hadn’t gotten me thrown off a flight.
As it stood, I was closer to chucking Troye out a second story window than I was to taking him in hand.
Usually, I loved a guy who was a little rough around the edges.
A little imperfect. A little impulsive. But I’d just been through four hellish days of meetings.
I’d wanted my aisle seat, a six-hour nap, and then my nice warm bed.
Now I'd have to settle for a hotel room… except everything near the airport was booked.
My heart sank as I thought about stretching out on the airport floor and trying to sleep or trying my luck in the chairs. I wasn’t sure which was worse. I tried to get a room at the airport hotel, but before I could pay for it, it clicked over to no vacancy.
“Fuck.” I voiced my frustration out loud and Troye side-eyed me.
“What’s the matter? Didn’t get a room? Oh, well. Floor for you, bed for me. See you never, I hope.” Troye started to walk away, his backpack casually slung over his shoulder.
I didn’t know what possessed me. Maybe a demon, maybe travel fatigue, but I grabbed my bag off the floor and legged it after him. Though I had a few inches on him, his legs moved remarkably fast, and I had to work to catch up.
When I finally stepped up beside him, he nearly jumped out of his skin.
“Are you following me?” Troye asked, sounding offended and perplexed.
“Yes, actually, I am. See, you got the last room at the inn, and I’m dead on my feet. If it weren’t for you, I’d be on my flight right now, and I could’ve slept there. Instead, I’m delayed overnight, and most of tomorrow as the airline plays musical chairs with our flights, thanks to you.”
Troye stopped in his tracks, causing a bunch of people to jostle us as they moved around him. Even when he wasn’t doing anything, he still managed to be a fucking menace.
“You are not coming to my room.”
“Our room.”
“I paid for it.”
Troye’s indignation made him red-faced—which shouldn’t have been cute.
It should have been irritating to watch someone get so worked up over self-inflicted problems. But Troye had this brown hair that flopped in his face, looking all soft, a direct contradiction to the hard line of his mouth.
His pouty mouth. His bottom lip was practically biteable.
“And you got me thrown off my flight. If you’d have calmed down and talked to the flight attendant, they’d probably have found you a seat. It was their fault, after all, for overbooking the plane.”
Troye narrowed the eyes shooting daggers at me. Maybe he thought he was being intimidating, or he was waiting for me to get tired of being stared at, but I quietly waited. Now that I had him pegged as the brat he was, I knew exactly how to deal with him.
To his credit, he held out longer than I thought he would until finally, with a heavy sigh and a drooping of his shoulders, he relented.
“Fine,” he said, seeming to deflate more as he spoke. “You can share my room.”
Troye didn’t wait for a response; he just turned and started power-walking through the airport.
The man moved like he could medal in walking if there was a contest for that.
And not that speed-walking they do at the Olympics.
No, Troye was too graceful for that. His strides were quick and even, and I secretly wondered if he was trying to kill me.
If I suffered a heart attack, he wouldn’t have to share his hotel room with me.
He didn’t manage to lose me, though, and I waited at the desk with him as he changed his booking to two people.
We were given keys to the room, and Troye didn’t seem as dedicated to his impressive pace on the way to the room.
It was a good thing I didn’t require conversation to keep me entertained because he was clearly giving me the silent treatment.
Or maybe he was worn out from traveling.
When he opened the door to the room and didn’t say a word before vanishing into the bathroom, I knew he wasn’t just tired. He was angry, so the silent treatment it was.
The hotel was nice, in a basic kind of way.
It wasn’t going to win any awards for style or comfort.
It was painfully beige with hints of blue, like the comforter that was folded up at the foot of the bed.
The one that matched the chair in the corner.
The only chair. The only place to sit that wasn’t the bed. The singular bed.
Oh, Troye was going to be so pissed. I dragged my suitcase to what I had declared to be my side of the bed.
I laid it on the floor and opened it up.
Grabbing a pair of pajama pants and a clean t-shirt, I quickly changed.
I left my baseball cap on my suitcase and ran my fingers through my hair to try and give my hat-hair some life again.
In the bathroom, I heard the shower turn on.
Clearly Troye planned to be a while. As I waited, I got comfortable on my side of the bed and started looking for places I could order dinner and have it delivered.
If Troye managed to leave the bathroom in time, I’d even ask him what he wanted.
But after ten minutes, it became obvious that Troye wasn’t ending his shower anytime soon.
I ordered a selection of dishes from an airport restaurant, sticking to safe foods, things that most people liked. I got a medium pepperoni pizza. A burger with an order of fries. I even ordered a mushroom alfredo in case he was vegetarian.
By the time the food arrived, Troye was still in the bathroom, though the shower had turned off.
“I ordered us dinner,” I said through the door. “Did you want to come out and eat, or should I just leave food at the door? I will need to use the bathroom eventually, though, so you can’t stay in there all night long.”
Troye’s response was muffled, but he’d definitely told me to eat shit.
I grinned. “Well, I’ll be eating my choice of the food I bought, or you can come out and have first pick. The choice is yours.”
I went over to the small desk they’d tucked against the wall and laid the food out. I was about to make my selection when the bathroom door opened. Troye came out, still sulking.
The fact that the room only had one bed hadn’t seemed to bother him. Or maybe he hadn’t noticed.
“I didn’t know what you liked, so I grabbed a few things. Pepperoni pizza, a cheeseburger with fries, and a mushroom alfredo.”
Troye stomped over to the desk and opened each container before settling on taking the pizza, and then the mushroom alfredo.
He shot me a look like he was daring me to challenge him on his decisions.
But I didn’t care. Secretly I liked that he was still working himself up.
He’d tire himself out eventually, and then he’d either calm down or crash out. I was prepared for either.
I grabbed my burger and fries and went to my side of the bed and sat down. Leaning against the headboard, I rested my food in my lap, mirroring Troye perfectly.
“What are you doing?” he asked. His hands stilled, the pizza box open, but the food remained untouched while he gaped at me.
Flipping open the cardboard container my food was in, I snatched a fry up and bit it in half. “Eating.”
I grabbed a different fry and held it out to him. Two people could play the brat game. I knew perfectly well what he meant, but playing stupid was infinitely more fun. “Want a fry?”
“I don’t want a fry. I want… what are you doing in my bed?”
“Well… there’s two people. There’s one bed. So unless there’s a spare bed in your backpack, it looks like we’ll be sharing tonight.”
The color drained from Troye’s face, and I’d have found his reaction funny if he didn’t look genuinely upset.
“What?” he squeaked. “I thought… usually there’s like a fucking couch or something. Where’s the couch?”
“No couch. Just a bed and a super uncomfortable cuck chair.”
“A what?” Troye blinked at me, then shook his head. “I don’t care, actually. And I might share my room, but I draw the line at sharing my bed.”
“I’m not sleeping on the floor.”
“Then sleep in the bathtub. Or in the cuck chair.”
“I’ll stay on my half, I promise. You can even have your pick of the blankets. You won’t even know I’m here.”
“I promise you that’s not possible.” He glowered at me. “I’m not sharing my bed.”
“Well, I’m not sleeping on the floor. If you want to, be my guest.”
Troye wrinkled his nose. “I try to make a habit of staying off the floor of public spaces.”
“I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the idea of sleeping on the floor at the gate either. So thank you for letting me stay in your room. As much as this whole thing is your fault, I still appreciate it.”
Troye’s stomach let out an angry-sounding growl that went on so long that his eyes widened and some color returned to his cheeks.
“Eat up,” I told him, motioning to the pizza.
He sighed then closed the box and set it on the bed between us.
“I probably can’t eat the whole pizza and the mushroom alfredo. So we might as well share the pizza.”
Troye opened the container with the alfredo and unwrapped the disposable fork with a grimace. “I miss when these things were plastic. I know that the wood ones are better for the environment, but they taste like… like trees.”
I hadn’t counted on the third way Troye might end his tantrum. With defeat and a profound sadness that was directed at the fork but probably went deeper than having to eat off a piece of wood.
Nonetheless, I carefully lifted the container with my food off my lap and swapped it out for his alfredo. I took the fork from his hand and then motioned to the burger and fries that were now in his lap. “Eat up.”
“Are you sure?” He blinked like he was trying to keep tears at bay, and I pretended not to notice.
“Eat. You’ll feel better when you have some food in you.”
The blush on Troye’s cheeks deepened. “Thank you,” he said quietly as he reached for a fry.
I ate off the weird-tasting wooden fork, and Troy happily ate the fries, and then the burger, and then a slice of the pizza.
When he was done, he carefully wriggled so he was lying down.
We were currently on top of the covers, separated by a stack of half empty takeout containers.
We knew nothing about the other person, and yet I felt strangely close to him.
We’d gotten off on the wrong foot, and maybe we’d still go our separate ways as adversaries who formed a temporary truce, but for now, a peace had settled between us.
I tried not to read too much into it, but he just checked so many of my boxes that I found it hard not to let myself daydream a little.
Troye was a brat but not without cause, and not for the sake of being a pain in the ass.
I think he just…was himself. And sometimes he got a little wound up in the moment.
He clearly lacked impulse control as evidenced by the way he’d thrown himself into my lap.
Something I hadn’t thought about until now because I hadn’t let myself.
Because I’d really liked the way it felt to have him in my arms and that wasn’t the kind of thoughts you were supposed to have about a stranger causing a scene on a packed airplane.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it. And worse was that I didn’t want to.