IF YOU WANTED TO TAKE YOUR SHOWER WITH ME, YOU ONLY HAD TO ASK
25
Nuri : I slept so well.
Nuri : Crazy what a full quiet night can do.
Prudence : Are you enjoying the breakfast buffet still?
Nuri : You crazy? I woke up at like 7.
Nuri : I’m enjoying the hot tub at the spa right now.
Prudence : 7? I thought you had a full night…?
Nuri : It is a full night! My mom brain is fucked up.
Nuri : Can’t sleep past 5 usually. 7 is a late morning.
Prudence : I thought your kids were big sleepers?
Nuri : They are! I just need the couple hours of alone time…
Prudence : My god. Motherhood sounds like hell.
Nuri : It’s not.
Nuri : I love my kids more than anything else in the world.
Nuri : But my alone time is still sacred.
Prudence : You want us to leave you alone tonight? So you can enjoy some time with yourself?
Nuri : Don’t be ridiculous.
Nuri : I don’t need any social batteries to hang out with you.
Nuri : In fact, I’m thinking tonight, let’s sit our asses on the beach and drink wine. Catch up.
Prudence : With the guys?
Nuri : Nah, let’s ditch them.
Nuri : You and I. GIRL’S NIGHT!
PRUDENCE
“Um, Nate?” I ask, puzzled.
I hear his footsteps before he stops right behind me.
“Something wrong?”
“I—uh… I swear I’m really looking, but I don’t get how that shower is working.”
He chuckles, but doesn’t say anything as he side steps me to fiddle with the buttons . Why are there buttons? My knowledge of showers stops with faucets.
“Yeah, it’s a control panel. This button here controls the pressure. This one is for the temperature, and those on the side are for the different shower heads and jets.”
I look up to study the large rainfall shower head. On the sides are a few massage shower jets. He catches my confused face and shakes his head with a small smile.
“Just press on this one to get the water warmed up while you get ready. Stay on the side so you don’t get drenched, alright?”
“Okay…”
He steps away and I get inside the shower to press on the button. Wait, which one was it? That one?
I’m on the side and he isn’t fully out of the shower when I press it, too embarrassed to ask him to confirm.
I yelp in surprise when the side jets turn on with a high pressure and in my panic, I try to press on the button again. But it might not be the same one as the water starts to pour from above, and the sides are not stopping.
“Aaaah, damn, what have I done? Where is—AH Fuuuuu—”
The jets on the side stop when I press another button but the shower head in front of my face turns on, and DAMN that water is cold.
Nate’s chest suddenly plasters to my back and his hands appear in front of me to tap a couple of buttons before the water stops altogether.
I’m frozen—quite literally—in place, my arms at an odd angle in front of me, mouth gaping in shock. Nate—that ass—laughs.
“If you wanted to take your shower with me, you only had to ask, you know?” he asks from behind me and the rumble of his chest against my back says everything about the way he’s not holding his amusement.
“Who the hell uses buttons for a shower?”
“People who sometimes lend this bathroom to disabled patients who can’t use their hands to grasp and turn handles,” he answers matter-of-factly.
I groan and slap both my hands on my face. God, I’m stupid. Of course a physiotherapist would have basic amenities that are disabled friendly.
“I’m sorry, that was a dumb thing to say.”
One of his hands moves to squeeze my shoulder gently.
“Don’t worry about it, there’s nothing to apologize for. Next time you can use my bathroom, it has regular faucets.”
“Next time?” I ask, turning my face slightly and catching his amused face.
“I mean, if you ever find yourself drunk again, or if Jack and Ikram are… Well, actually I’ve learned this morning that they did not actually have sex. So you might be safe from any scarring vision for the time being.”
Next time. I mean, with our weird and embarrassing exchanges yesterday and this morning, I’m guessing it might happen at some point. I still can’t believe drunk me betrayed sober-me like this. I should be glad she didn’t mention the dirty thoughts and dreams I had since I spent three hours on his lap last weekend, and after our little yoga episode…
The faint memory of him standing so close to me, his hips just between my knees, in his kitchen is not helping this dirty brain of mine either. And how I wanted him to kiss me? Drunk me is not allowed to be out in his presence ever again.
“Those eyes of yours…” he says, barely over a whisper, and I realize my back is still plastered to his front and I’m still staring at his face while his hand have slid down my arm to reach my hand.
“What about them?”
“You have the same look you had yesterday. When you were blabbering about my eyes and the way I sound and smell.”
“Do I?” My voice sounds a little squeaky and I clear my throat to try to get a little more composure. “I’m—I mean I wasn’t thinking about that now.”
“Call me intrigued, then. What is going on inside that mysterious brain of yours?”
I scoff awkwardly. If he only knew…
“I’d hardly call my brain mysterious.”
His chest moves again in silent laughter, and I turn my face away so he doesn’t see me blush.
“I’m gonna take this shower and I’ll head home to get ready,” I say, turning around and taking a step back to put a little distance between us.
His eyes widen and his throat bobs before he turns his face away from me.
“Uh, yeah. I’ll let you get to it. I’ll be out for a run, so just… Leave the shirt in the laundry basket. I’ll meet you guys at the restaurant.”
And with that he hurries out of the bathroom, not sparing me a second glance.
Did I say something wrong? He went from a little flirty to almost running away.
I take a step outside the shower and catch my reflection in the mirror.
Okay, I get it. And I’m back to being mortified.
At least now, we’re kind of even… I mean, I felt his cock hard against my ass for three hours, and now he basically saw me naked. Maybe not naked but this soaked white tee-shirt doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. My cold—hence, hard—nipples clearly visible through the fabric, and I’m just glad the bottom part didn’t stick to my skin to reveal the absence of my underwear.
Which was nowhere to be found this morning and I can’t seem to remember much besides the fact that I wanted to be naked under that damned shirt.
I wish I could drown in that shower.
Because even though Nate Reed, the object of my latest fantasies, told me he was done avoiding how he felt about me, he ran out of the room the second he saw my breasts through my tee-shirt.
It could simply mean he didn’t want me to feel embarrassed and decided to leave before I noticed. But it could also mean he didn’t like what he saw, and maybe now he’s not so sure about it anymore. But what could be wrong about my boobs for him to run away?
When I manage to limp back to the house, Jack is standing in the kitchen, holding himself to the counter while he waits for the espresso machine to be done pouring.
I stop for a second while he hasn’t spotted me. Jack is standing. I almost forgot how tall he is. All long and lean limbs. Wide shoulders but not much muscles. His hair is up in a messy bun, and he’s wearing one of his usual flannel shirts and old jeans.
Seeing him up like this hurts. It hurts so much that I want to yell and cry at the universe for putting him in his wheelchair in the first place. He doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him. He doesn’t deserve to be in so much pain, no matter what our father says. Jack should be happy. He should be able to go hiking and take walks on the beach with Ikram. He should be allowed to make plans for his future, to smile and actually think about it when someone asks where he sees himself in five or ten years. Instead, whenever someone mentions his future, there’s this bland face and fake smile. The dullness of his eyes. The quiet resignation.
“Hey, Jack,” I say softly, and he turns with a surprised look and kind smile on his face.
“There you are! I was starting to think you decided to move out,” he taunts as I stop next to him, grabbing a cup to pour myself a coffee. “Sorry about last night. I placed the tie thinking you would enter prepared and with caution. I didn’t think you’d spend the night somewhere else.”
“No worries. I was actually a little too drunk to think much about it. How did it go?”
He shakes his head slightly, turning around to grab some sugar. “We didn’t. Have sex, I mean. The date was amazing though.”
“Then, why not—”
“Ikram wants to take things slow. Get to know each other better before we… try to.”
Try to . Sex became difficult for him by the end of his previous relationship. But Ikram knows. And Jack seems to be feeling better…
“Sure. I guess it makes sense, if you guys are serious about it.”
“We are. I… I really like him.”
I smile when he turns his face back towards me. His eyes are sparking with something they haven’t in a while: Hope.
“I really like him too.”
“I’m just—” he says, before stopping himself with an anxious sigh. “I’m worried. The main reason I didn’t want to date anymore was that… I didn’t want to leave people behind, you know? I still don’t. And it’s scary. Like I really want to fix things with Nate, but I feel selfish for coming back to his life when I can die at anytime and—”
“Stop thinking about that,” I cut him off, my throat so tight I’m not sure how the words managed to get out. “We’re all happy to just be a part of your life. To be here, with you. Don’t think about what’s coming after. It’s for us to figure it out.”
“But what if—”
“Just live, Jack.” The pressure behind my eyes snaps, a tear escaping and falling down my cheek. “After everything, don’t you think you deserve some happy things? You’re sick, yeah… But it doesn’t mean you can’t love and let people love you.”
I take his hand, squeezing it tight in mine, and our equally teary gazes hold. He’s leaning against the counter and I’m just standing there, in front of him, trying not to cry. I wish I could go back in time and space, and be able to stop our parents from making him believe that he didn’t deserve all these simple things. From making him feel unloved, unsupported, and unwanted in our own family.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, a tear slipping out of his eye and rolling down his cheek. I reach out to wipe it with my thumb.
“I love you. All the important people do. Don’t think about the ones who don’t, because they don’t deserve your attention for one second. Focus on yourself, and the ones who actually want to spend whatever time we have left with you.”
The next thing I know, I’m swallowed and surrounded by his long arms, held tight against his tall frail frame. And I’m grateful for his decision to exclude me from his health care. Because for the first time in a long while, I feel like his little sister again.