Chapter 16 #2
The apartment had one bedroom and one bathroom, and Sloane had to go through the bedroom to get to the bathroom, because apparently it had been designed by some sort of monster or maybe a robot.
The building wasn’t new, not by a long shot, so maybe bathrooms through bedrooms had been some apartment design fad in the 1960s.
A conversation pit would have been preferable.
Max’s bedroom, she noticed completely by accident as he showed her through, was surprisingly neat and cozy.
There were some haphazard stacks of books along a wall and clothes piled onto a chair in a corner, but the bed was made and she’d have bet twenty bucks the sheets were fresh.
The last time Sloane had hooked up with someone who slept on a mattress on the floor, she’d been in college.
She had standards, but—Max had, like, a real bedroom.
The shower, to her semi-relief, was kind of shitty.
It was clean, and it had surprisingly nice stuff in it, but it was small and ugly and no matter what she did, the door managed to drip water all over the floor and she had to soak it up awkwardly with the bath mat.
She took a little longer than she needed to, because she did feel gross from the drive, but also—Sloane needed to think.
She’d spent way more time than she wanted to dissecting crash at my place, and she’d always wound up deciding that it translated to probably another casual hookup.
Which was fine—It was fine! She had a great time casually hooking up with Max!
—but now there had been matching plates and wine and a dinner that had clearly taken time and thought, and…
And Sloane didn’t have hopes for this, but if she did, they’d have been up.
Once she was out of the shower and into the pajamas she’d brought—which included a tank top but not a bra—she’d decided they needed to have a talk.
In the morning, probably once they were in the car and on the way to Last Chance, because there was a possibility she was going to say Are we a thing and he was going to say No, obviously not, what are you talking about and Sloane was absolutely going to get laid before that happened.
Before she left the bathroom, hair still wet, she grabbed her phone and texted Jess.
Sloane
he made fancy pasta and got wine and put out cheese and hummus for an appetizer
“Crash at my place” why are men like this
Jess
lolllll I told you so
he bark yet?
Sloane left the last message on read.
Max was in the living room, laptop in his lap, feet on the coffee table, when Sloane walked back in.
“Thanks—I feel better,” she said. “I don’t know why long drives make you feel so gross. You’re just in the car.”
Max glanced up as he closed his laptop, looked at her tits, then looked back at her face. “You find everything okay?”
“Sure did,” she said, and ran a hand through her wet hair, like that would help it dry. “You sure you’re not seeing someone?” she teased.
“What?”
“You don’t have some significant other you didn’t tell me about?”
Max stared at her for a few long seconds, like he was buffering. It dawned on Sloane that she’d fucked up.
“No,” he said, “What—”
“It’s fine if there is,” she said for some fucking reason. “I mean, I didn’t—”
“There’s not,” he said, somehow bewildered and vehement all at once. “What are you talking about?”
Sloane was never going to try initiating a flirty conversation again, because she clearly couldn’t be trusted.
“Your shower stuff is really nice,” she said.
There was a several-second pause.
“My shower stuff?” he echoed.
“You have, like, leave-in conditioner,” Sloane said, like it was justification. “And body wash.”
“Yes, I have a body that needs washing.”
Sloane had soared past fun and flirty by several miles and was starting to pray she didn’t crash-land on the dunes of weird and hostile. “Men usually don’t,” she said, and had to close her eyes at how dumb that sounded.
“It’s body wash,” Max repeated, though he finally sounded more amused than hostile, so that was something.
In her defense, the last guy Sloane had hooked up with regularly had kept a bottle of Dawn Powerwash in his shower, next to a bottle of drugstore two-in-one shampoo/conditioner and a bar of soap.
He swore it was to clean the shower, not himself, but Sloane had remained suspicious.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to—sorry. It’s been a long day. I’m kind of scrambled.”
She was still standing in the doorway to his bedroom, and now Max walked around the coffee table, his face softer.
“I’m not seeing anyone,” he said. “And I’m definitely not letting anyone put their shit in my shower. There’s barely room for my shit. I’m just high maintenance.”
Sloane snorted. “Body wash and leave-in conditioner doesn’t make you high maintenance.”
Now he was two feet away, his hands in his pockets, and he looked at her disbelievingly. “You just told me it was evidence I’m secretly dating someone.”
“It was a compliment?” Sloane tried, which didn’t work. “Your hair smells great.”
“I know.”
She could almost smell it from where he was standing, just within arm’s reach. They’d probably be making out already if she hadn’t decided to be completely weird about his shower, which she was going to blame on the long drive and the wine and the everything about dinner.
After a moment, Sloane reached out, slid her hand around Max’s waist, and tugged gently, but he was already moving toward her, a hand on her hip just above the waistband of her pajamas, the other reaching back into his hair.
“You could have just asked if I was seeing someone,” he said, then tilted his head back and shook, his hair coming loose around his shoulders. He’d been right: It smelled great, floral and woodsy, like wildflowers in the forest.
“Yeah, but why do that when I could make it weird instead?” she asked, grabbed a fistful of his hair, and pulled his head toward her, angling her face to the side and inhaling once her nose was buried in it.
“Told you,” he said. His lips brushed against her ear as he spoke, and it sent a shudder down her spine.
“Shut up.”
“No,” Max went on. He paused for a moment, then said, “I take it you’re not seeing anyone, either?”
“Nope.”
“Good,” he said, pressed her against the wall, and kissed her.
An hour later, Sloane untangled herself from the mess they’d made of the sheets and each other, and got out of bed.
She used the bathroom, then grabbed a glass of water from the kitchen.
Max hadn’t done all the dishes while she was in the shower earlier, but he’d organized the mess, at least. There was a window above the sink, and Sloane looked out of it at the streetlights and the building next door.
Far too late, she wondered if she should have put a shirt on.
Back in the bedroom, Max was sitting up, shirtless, knees bent, reading a book. His hair was still down around his shoulders. After a moment, he looked at up her.
“Just to be clear,” she started. “When you said crash at my place—”
“Fuck’s sake,” Max muttered, yanking back the blankets from the other side of the bed. “Yes, I meant Have sex with me and sleep in my bed. It wasn’t a riddle.”
“When I tell people to crash at my place, it’s usually a friend who’s going to sleep on the couch,” Sloane said, getting in. She didn’t bother putting a shirt on.
Max sighed. “The context didn’t help?”
“The context is the only reason I thought I might not be sleeping on the couch.”
“Fine,” Max said, but he was trying not to smile as he put a bookmark in the book and placed it on his nightstand. “Next time, I’ll say Spend the night here so we can fuck before spending a holiday with our families.”
He clicked off his light, and the room went dark, the weight of him sliding in next to her. An arm went around her waist, and Sloane rolled onto her side as Max curled around her.
“Thanks, that’s much clearer,” she said, and drifted off to sleep.