Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
WE GO HOME AND I TAKE THE FIRST SHOWER. WHEN I’m back in the bedroom and Dan’s in the shower, I think of my mom and how absolutely dreamy she’d find Dan. She’d call him devastatingly handsome and close her eyes as she described him to her friends. Like a model, but also a firefighter, she’d say. And that wouldn’t be too far off. I’m smiling at this thought because it gives me a little perspective on what it would be like to be my mom, a believer. To really let yourself get excited about big love. I think I would like to be that brave.
I text her: I hate that I’m missing movie night.
She replies right away: No worries! I’m headed to the Hollywood Bowl
Me: Well that’s better than movie night Mom: Nothing is
Which is exactly what I was hoping she’d say.
I dry my hair in the bedroom so as not to hog the bathroom. I’m not doing a complicated straightening thing because I’m sort of over it and the humidity will undo all that work the second I walk outside.
Dan comes in from the bathroom in just jeans, toweldrying his hair. His white towel covers his head and shoulders, leaving his torso on full display with no one there to stop me from running my eyes down the ridges of his abdomen. I keep drying the same clump of hair, hypnotized by the inch of skin just over his top button. Is there a zipper under that button, or is it buttons all the way down? I need to know. When he tosses the towel on the floor, his hair is standing straight up. He turns to me and tries for an oof face, knowing full well how crazy his hair looks, but he catches me staring. He gives me a smile that tells me he’d be happy to answer all of my questions about his zipper. I smile back, but the din of the hair dryer in my ear keeps me from saying anything. He sits down on my bed and pulls a blue T-shirt over his head. He doesn’t speak, and neither do I. When I turn off the hair dryer, the room is completely silent.
We’re looking at one another. I could take three steps forward and I’d be right in his personal space.
“You got your line?” I ask. No one kills sexual tension like I do.
“I do now, I probably won’t when I’m up there all wrapped up in the chaos. I really hate this stuff.” He runs his hands through his wet hair.
“Is that your date outfit?” he asks.
I look down, and I am, in fact, in jeans and the same blue-and-white blouse I’d picked out for our ill-fated first date.
“Yes.”
“Probably would have gone well,” he says. “Though I like that white dress too.” He’s picturing me naked—I can see it in his eyes. It’s my turn to speak, something flirty, I think, but I have the sense of not knowing exactly where I am. My body is telling me that we are alone in this house and that one step forward would change everything, though inside my heart, I already feel like everything’s changed. I am on a tightrope made of something as fine as a spider’s web, and I want to be light enough to cross.
I say, “We should go.”