13. Benji #2
“I know what you meant,” I said, and did as he suggested, kneeling and leaning my head over the sink, pressing my cheek into the cold porcelain. “But no wonder everyone knows about you if you talk like that.”
“Sorry. I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, for fucks sake, could you please relax? This is already weird as it is.”
“Okay,” he whispered, took a deep breath, and leaned over me. He brushed some hair away, but unlike before, he was now way more reserved, careful not to get too close. He kept at least ten inches between us, hunching in a way that couldn’t have been comfortable.
“Don’t be like that,” I groaned, grabbing his leg and pulling him closer. “We’re two dudes. Who cares? Just get it over with.”
Sam paused. I couldn’t see his face, only his feet shifting, but after a second's thought, he eased into being close to me and wiped my head more confidently than before.
The next ten minutes were dominated by the alternating sensations of a warm, soaked cloth rubbing over my head and Sam’s cooling breaths huffing each time he checked whether his efforts were working.
As strange as it all was, it got easier to let him take charge with every pass, until even the press of his legs against my back almost felt comforting.
“Okay,” he eventually said and reached for the towel. He patted it against my head, pausing after each pat to check before repeating the motion five times. “You can sit up now. Last step, hopefully.” Sam opened the box of gauze, tore open a packet, and pressed it to the back of my head.
“Are you going to wrap up my head now?” I joked.
“It said to press gauze on the wound for fifteen minutes straight.”
“ Fifteen Minutes?”
“Without peeking.”
“You have to be kidding me. It can’t be that bad.”
“Let’s just do it,” Sam said, not whispering his word for the first time since we’d snuck into the bathroom. “Whoever wrote these instructions will have had their reasoning to do so.”
“Do you always do what you’re told to? Even if it’s by some random person from the internet?”
“I do when I think it’s the right decision.”
With that, he asserted himself, pressing the gauze against my head and pushing me into my place.
I could’ve fought it, but the warmth of his legs against my skin was cozy enough to make it bearable—not that I would’ve admitted that under oath.
We stopped talking and, as suggested, stayed like this for fifteen minutes.
Sam timed it with his watch to the second.
And I couldn’t believe I let it happen without protesting.
The trickiest part of us coming back home started when Sam decided that I was good to go.
I quickly rubbed my towel over the tiles to clean up the worst of the mess, but even when the bathroom looked okay, my shirt was still colored a very noticeable pink that my parents should never see.
And I was still bare-chested. So even though my room was only a few feet away, we had to make sure this last stretch of our journey wouldn’t be our downfall.
I looked at Sam, intending to motion for him to be quiet again, only to realize we had a bigger problem.
A few drops of blood had found their way onto his shirt.
They weren’t there when we came in, so it must’ve happened when.
.. fuck. It hit me. I had pulled him closer when he leaned over my head; that must’ve been it.
He hadn’t been leaning awkwardly because he was afraid of touching me, but because he didn’t want to get himself dirty.
“Shit,” I whispered, pointing at the stains.
Sam glanced down, and as soon as he saw why I was agitated, he tugged at his shirt for a better look. “Oh no.” His eyes darted up to mine, wide with fear.
“Do you want to wash it off? I can give you a shirt of mine for your way back.”
Sam’s hands trembled, but he slowly nodded.
The confidence he’d shown when helping me was gone, replaced by what must’ve been dread—probably of how anyone would react if they saw the blood.
Sure, he lived alone, but I wouldn’t put it past his parents to occasionally do control rounds to make sure he was behaving as instructed.
He turned to the sink and shuffled toward it, unable to take his eyes off the shirt.
“It’ll be okay,” I said as calmly as I could. “There’s a lot less blood than on mine. We’ll get it out.”
Sam tugged the shirt over his head, revealing his slim frame.
Not a single hair marked his chest, but to my surprise, he looked a lot more manly than I’d expected.
The line of his collarbone stood out sharply, guiding my gaze down to the slight taper of his waist. He wasn’t ripped, no six-pack, but the lean muscle across his torso shifted with every movement.
The sun had left a light tan on his forearms, leaving the rest of him pale by comparison, and somehow that contrast made it impossible to look away.
He held the shirt under the tap, rinsing the blood off with care, and thankfully for him, it came off easier than for me.
“See? I told you it would come off,” I said. “We can hang the shirt up in my room to dry.”
“That’ll take hours. I can’t burden you with hosting me that long.”
“What if I want you to stay?” I frowned. I hated how he was always trying to be so polite, even when it did him no favors. “I mean, someone has to make sure I don’t fall asleep, just in case I have a concussion.”
“If you had one, we’d probably already know,” he replied, frowning hard for a moment, before his expression softened. “But I guess if you want me to stay, I can’t just leave now.”
“We already know that your bike fits in my car. I can give you a lift later.”
“No, you really don’t?—“
“I will drive you home. No discussion. It’s faster than biking. And safer.”
Sam turned off the tap and wrung out his shirt.
My hand still on the knob, I waited until he was done, and a quick nod from him reassured me to finally turn it. I switched off the bathroom light and, after giving our eyes a second to adjust to the dark, pulled the door open, letting a streak of flickering light spill inside.
I pushed my head through the gap.
Nothing had changed. The TV’s lights and sounds still dominated, and there was no movement to suggest that my parents were about to catch us. I set one foot carefully in front of the other, making my way toward my room with Sam right behind me.
It was only a couple of steps. All we had to do was stay quiet. Once we were inside with fresh shirts on, it wouldn’t matter anymore if my parents approached us.
But my next step—the very last one I had to take—landed on a floorboard that gave out a long, splitting crack .
We both froze, holding our breath; the silence that followed felt somehow louder than the sound itself.
Then, sharp as a knife?—
“Benji, is that you?” Mom’s voice cut through the living room.
“Yeah. Hi Mom,” I replied, yanking my door open and ushering Sam into the darkness of my room. “We just came back and, uh, will hang out in my room now.”
I managed to hide my shirt behind my back right before Mom walked around the corner and turned on the hallway light. She narrowed her eyes.
“Did Sam already leave?”
I knew it was too late. Even though Sam was hidden behind me, there was no way we could pretend he had already gone home. This would only make things worse.
“No,” Sam said, and pushed his head past my shoulder.
“Why aren’t you two wearing your shirts?”
At that moment, I wished I didn’t have to live with them anymore. I was twenty-two, after all, and shouldn’t have to report every little thing as if I weren’t capable of living my own life. As much as I loved my mother, I hated being interrogated like this.
“It’s a little embarrassing, Ma’am— I mean Linda ,” Sam said. “When we visited the lake, I tripped.”
A cold shudder ran down my spine. Sam’s words sounded genuine, but they sure weren’t the truth.
“Oh no,” Mom said, her hands floundering forward as if they wanted to examine him. “Did you get hurt?”
“No, no. Everything is fine. But I got a nosebleed afterward, and when Benji helped me up, it spilled on both of our shirts. We just tried to wash it off, but unluckily, we only got it out of mine.”
He held his shirt up to her. She stepped closer, her eyes inspecting every inch of the fabric.
“I was wondering why you two spent so much time in the bathroom. But now it makes sense.” She took the shirt out of Sam’s hands and fixed her eyes on me. “Where is yours?”
I pulled it from behind my back and handed it over.
“You can’t just use cold water. The best is a saline solution.” She looked at us, drawing a long breath. “Let me take care of that. It’ll be like new in an hour. If that’s not too late?”
Sam searched for my face. I shook my head hard, and he echoed the motion.
“Definitely not too late,” he said.
“What has he done now, Linda?” Dad yelled from the living room.
“Nothing. Everything under control,” she shouted back, then turned to us. “You guys should put on some clothes. Go lend him one of yours, will you? This will take a little while, so you two relax.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Putnam.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
And with that, she hurried past us toward the bathroom.
Sam and I locked eyes for a moment. I shook my head with a grin. I couldn’t believe that he lied so blatantly—and that it actually worked.