18. Kodi
CHAPTER 18
Oh my God.
Call me crazy, but when I texted Brian an hour before coming over for our predetermined appointment time, I expected him to greet me at the door.
Clothed.
So when I hear his voice upstairs, telling me to make myself at home, I don’t think twice about coming up to deliver some of my stuff from college that might help him navigate his record keeping. I didn’t think he’d be showering at 5:00 pm.
That is, until I see him dripping wet, naked at the top of the stairs.
“Um, I–I’m so sorry!” I squeak, before turning around and bounding back down the couple of stairs to the ground floor. Unfortunately, my brain realizes the awkwardness of the situation a little more quickly than my legs, which are still frozen in place after halting their ascent.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever had your brain scream run while your legs are in a hormone-induced state of shock, but in case you haven’t, allow me to fill you in. Literally, every part of my body is on a different wavelength, and I’m pretty sure my nervous system short-circuits. Here’s a snapshot of what that looks like from the top-down.
Eyes: OH boy, y’all we got a code red right here.
Brain: MAYDAY. MAYDAY! Get. Away. From. Naked. Manchest.
Throat: Incoming! There’s a blockage here but our girl needs words!
Heart: dum-Badum-Badum-Badum
Stomach: Guys, I’m feeling bubbly and gassy and nauseous all at once here, can I get some confirmation from thyroid as to what’s going on?
Ovaries: Um, I might have an update for you, stomach.
Legs: Ovaries, I’m getting the signal you want to move forward, right?
Brain: Legs, abort! About face! ASAP!
Ovaries: No, no, no, Brain, we’ve kissed this guy, this kinda seems like my territory–
Me: ABORT! ABORT!
By the time I wrestle control of my limbs back under central command, all of me has already gotten tangled. So instead of gracefully returning from whence I came, I just kind of…crumble. Tumbling backwards like a marionette down the stairs.
“Kodi!” Brian scrambles toward me, and my ovaries speak up again.
Oh, he-LLO there, handsome…
“No!” I scream. Not sure to whom–or what, exactly–but it’s out of my mouth before I can accurately pinpoint the subject. Regardless, Brian’s already kneeling at my side, wet hair dripping onto my white work blouse as he checks me over.
With his bare, muscly, just-slightly-hairy chest glistening at me.
“Are you okay?”
I blink at him. Keeping my eyes SQUARELY. On. His. Face.
And his waist for a second.
Dammit!
I catch my breath, before breathing a sigh of relief. The towel is still there.
Sigh.
“I’m fine!” I scramble back from him, but his strong, damp arms hold me in place in his lap. So I squirm.
Enthusiastically.
He lets go, and I end up flopping back frantically, dragging his towel with me as it gets tangled in my scrambling limbs.
Fuck on a cracker!
He reaches for the towel, and I squeak out a noise that’s somewhere between a scream and a gasp for air. I cover my eyes with my hands.
But not before catching a glimpse of curly, dark hair and an enthusiastic blur of flesh that will be burned into my memory forever.
Ovaries: Vagina, you can take it from here, yes?
Oh, FUCK no.
“Uh. I–um. Don’t–don’t move, okay? I’m going to get dressed. Stay right there. You may have twisted something.”
I’m still covering my eyes with my hands like a baby playing peek-a-boo as I hear him dart back up the stairs. “Kay,” I mutter, mortified.
Don’t peek, don’t peek, DON’T PEEK.
I maybe peek.
Ten minutes later, He’s got me on the table face up with his hands holding up my leg. Everyone’s got their clothes on, and the room is dead silent.
Given the absolute mental puree that is my brain right now, I have no intention to break that silence.
From how hot I feel under the collar of my polyester blouse, I’m guessing my face is a shade of red somewhere between firetruck and black cherry. Other than a slight pink tinge to his cheeks when he first ran back down the stairs and gingerly lifted me off the floor, he’s been entirely in doctor-mode since we entered his office.
That’s what I’m going to call it: doctor mode. The way his hands are touching me have that perfectly asexual quality about them again, clinical and warm and setting my limbs perfectly at ease, despite the flashes of hair and muscle and… flesh that keep playing on a looping slideshow in my brain. He was a perfect gentleman as he got me to my feet and accompanied me to the table, hands politely poised beneath my elbows to make sure I didn’t take another spill.
Meanwhile, I was short-circuiting.
My virginal ass is never going to get over the fact that I saw Brian’s penis.
“Can I ask you a question?” I blurt out a few minutes later as he massages the tissue around my knee.
“Sure.”
“Your hands…” I start.
He pauses. “Yes?”
“They always feel so…blank,” I finish lamely. He sets my leg down and tilts his head at me, a ghost of a smile teasing the corner of his mouth. His still-damp hair falls in little clumps against his forehead. I swallow.
“Explain what you mean.”
“Well, like. You know how when someone touches you, like a friend or someone who might be…more than a friend, or even just someone of the opposite gender, there’s like, a vibe there?”
He doesn’t answer aloud, but he nods at me.
“Your hands…don’t have that.”
“Ah,” he says, grasping my leg again. This time, he firmly grabs each ankle and presses them softly into the cushion of the table, before twisting each one a little to each side. “Healy hands.”
“Healy hands?”
“Yeah, that’s what my professor used to call them. Chiropractors, massage therapists–basically anyone certified who needs to touch patients physically for their job, need to be able to turn off the less clinical parts of their brain when they’re working on a patient. For legal reasons, obviously, but also for patient comfort.” He smiles at me, and my stomach does a little flip. “I’m happy to hear you say that about me, though. Not everyone who does what I do quite masters it.”
“So you’re the healy-hands master?” I joke, finally beginning to relax now that we’re having a genuine conversation.
I mean, I know we’re fake dating, and we need to be comfortable with a little PDA in public. I suppose I would have probably seen him without a shirt on at some point in the summer, too, seeing as he goes to the gym and such. That’s not that big a deal; the guys at practice take their shirts off all the time.
But I got more than a glimpse of Brian’s chest earlier. In his home. And I wasn’t expecting us getting into that territory until…
No, not until. Never.
Right?
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” he says. I blink. What were we talking about? “Face down.”
“You know,” I say, turning and grunting a bit as I take it slow, “It’s a good thing you’ve got those healy hands. Otherwise I’d feel a little vulnerable lying here with my face in the cradle.”
“After what you just saw when you walked in the door, I don’t think you’re the one who has any right to feel vulnerable.”
His thumbs press on either side of my spine, and the rest of his fingers wrap around the squishy sides of my midsection under my ribs. For a moment, something changes, and the way his fingers graze my side suddenly doesn’t feel the same.
Where before, his touch was warm and comforting, it’s now sending a cool zing down my back. I shiver, and he pulls his hands away. He hesitates for a second, then moves his hands lower to my tailbone.
The feeling passes.
“Everything alright back there?” My voice comes out muffled by the headrest.
“Yeah,” he says, voice suddenly quiet. He pauses. “Your hip’s just a little out.”
He pokes and prods me for another half an hour, and I moan and groan as he adjusts the more tender spots around my knee. Finally, he helps me into a seated position.
“I’m sorry for barging in when you were–”
“I’m sorry you had to see me–”
We both freeze, having started talking at the same time. Then we laugh awkwardly.
“Can we just forget that ever happened?” His face is so shy as he asks the question, and I breathe a sigh of relief.
“Yes! Absolutely.” I reach out to shake his hand. “Now. What do you say we get to work on that software?”