3. “Shake It Out”
THREE
“SHAKE IT OUT”
(FLORENCE + THE MACHINE)
M y alarm went at the usual time.
Five o’clock a.m.
It was set to classical music, which I found soothing in the morning.
Even if it felt like I’d only had two hours of sleep, and what had occurred the night before came instantly to me with how heavy my eyes felt—not to mention my heart—I rolled from my side to my back.
I didn’t make it all the way because I ran into something.
Something solid.
Something warm.
I stilled, except for my head, which I slowly, very slowly, turned in order to look over my shoulder.
It was before dawn. There was only a shadow there.
But even if I’d never seen the man beside me in my bed in shadow (or otherwise), I knew that shadow.
Javi was lying in bed with me.
“Uncool,” he grunted.
His voice sounding in the silence kickstarted me. I scurried to jump off the bed, but didn’t make it very far before an arm hooked around my belly, I was turned to my side, facing Javi, and he clamped down on me.
And I mean clamped .
With that arm tight around me, a heavy leg thrown over both of mine, and my front pressed to his.
Okay, I’d had many a thought about how this might feel, and some of them came with a certain piece of equipment in my hand.
But not even my wildest imaginings were as good as the real thing.
“Umm…” I mumbled because he might feel great but…
What the heck!
“I texted you last night, and you blew me off,” he declared.
“You’re in my bed,” I whispered, my voice communicating the depths of my shock, which ran so deep, if you followed it, you’d end up treading water in the Indian Ocean.
“Do I have your attention?” he asked.
He so completely did.
“You can’t not have my attention,” I pointed out.
“Goal attained,” he replied.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Gave you until midnight to respond. You didn’t. Took me about ten to get here, so around ten after midnight. Found you asleep, decided our shit should probably be worked out after some rest with clear heads, so I hunkered down to wait.”
I would not get stuck on the fact he lived only ten minutes away from me, something that gave me a stupid thrill.
Instead, I asked, “You broke into my house?”
“You didn’t answer my knock.”
In other words, he broke into my house!
“So you’ve been lying beside me for the last five hours?” I queried.
“Give or take ten minutes.”
Oh my God.
That was insane .
I voiced my thoughts out loud. “That’s insane.”
His response was to roll on top of me.
On top of me!
He was heavy (very), way more warm than he was just lying beside me, and he gave me a lot of his weight, which squeezed the breath out of me, all while he pulled his phone out of his back pocket.
I was nowhere near being able to process this change in position, especially considering I hadn’t yet processed my earlier position (just FYI, if I had to process on the fly, I would tell you both positions felt otherworldly good, though this one was a thousand times better).
By the time he took some of his weight from me to put it in a forearm beside me, engaged his phone and started reciting, I could barely comprehend what he was saying.
“ That was fucked up. I shouldn’t have said that shit. We need to talk. Call me. ”
My guess: his texts from last night.
As it was dark, I couldn’t see he was looking at me, I could only feel it.
I hated that it felt good, but there was no way around it.
It felt good.
Any time Javi’s eyes were on me, it felt good.
“So, what have you got to say?” he prompted.
As noted, I was still stuck on earlier stuff.
“You broke into my house in the middle of the night and got in bed with me.”
“I did. I’m here. It’s done, even if I might have lost an inch off my dick from sleepin’ in a room like this. Now, find your way to being with me, Harlow,” he ordered.
It was impossible not to find my way to him since he was my whole world right then.
Though, I thought there were other, more important things to go over.
“You slept beside me?”
“Your bed may be girlie, but it’s comfortable.”
Now I couldn’t process Javi actually slept at my side.
Why that was different than him just lying there, waiting for me to wake up so he could ambush me, I didn’t know.
But it was.
Significantly.
Time to move on.
“There’s nothing wrong with my room.”
“You’re right. It’s tight. If you got a vagina.”
Ugh.
How had I never noticed he was kind of a jerk?
“I’ll have you know I have male friends who think this room is everything ,” I declared snootily.
“They gay?” he asked.
They were.
“That’s beside the point,” I sniffed.
“Only because it makes mine.”
I was offended for the entirety of the LGBTQ+ community. “Not every gay guy is effeminate.”
“Yeah, but most of ’em got good taste, whereas I couldn’t give a shit if my lampshades match my comforter.”
Now I was intrigued. “How did you see that in the dark?”
“You learn to see in it when bein’ in the dark might get your ass nabbed and pushed back into the foster system or other even less fun shit.”
I couldn’t argue that.
Time to move on to something else.
“Can you get off me?” I requested.
“No,” he denied.
“I’m not real sure I can have this conversation with you lying on me,” I gave him my understatement.
“Too late for that. If you wanted to do it another way, you woulda responded to my fuckin’ texts last night. Now it’s gonna be this way.”
Okay.
Wait.
Last night, he laid it out there, his truth, about me.
It was brutal and it was ugly, but I could see, now, he felt bad.
However, it was his truth, brutal and ugly. He’d foisted it on me.
And now I had to make him feel better?
At five a.m.?
“Get off me,” I demanded.
“No,” he again denied.
I pushed at his broad shoulders and was pretty certain they didn’t budge an inch.
Bah!
“Javi—”
“We’re talking shit out.”
“I’m not feeling that at this particular moment.”
“You don’t let messy shit like this fester.”
“Okay, how about making an appointment with me so we can sort this out in order to be able to carry on without any of our friends being sucked into our messy stuff. But that can’t be now. I have plans this morning.”
“At five o’clock?”
“Yes,” I snapped.
“You don’t go to work until eleven.”
“So?” I asked sharply. “I have a morning ritual. I never break my morning ritual.”
“And what’s this ritual that’s more important than working shit out?”
When he said that, he sounded a hint less bossy, but he added more than a hint of curiosity.
“I need to journal.” About you being a big meanie , I did not share. “Make a smoothie. Hit my Pilates class. Come home, have breakfast, shower and get ready to go to work.”
“None of that is important except the last part, babe.”
“To you ,” I retorted. “It is to me .”
“Today, you’re making an exception.”
“I am not,” I refuted. “Rituals are important. They’re grounding. The very definition of a ritual is not making an exception to the ritual.”
He let out a big sigh, and even if it sounded, as well as felt frustrated, the feeling part of that also felt awesome .
Because everything about Javi was awesome.
Ugh!
Why me?
“I was a dick last night,” he started (okay, well, that wasn’t awesome).
You were.
“You were being real,” I amended.
“Harlow—”
“And that’s okay.”
“Babe—”
“Well, not okay, because what you said wasn’t nice. But it was honest.”
“Woman—”
“And it hurt. I didn’t like it. But it’s out there now so we just have to figure out how to be around each other without anyone else knowing how much you don’t like me.”
When I finished speaking, my stomach bottomed out because I sensed everything about him change. Get gentle. He didn’t move a muscle, but even his weight felt lighter.
All this before he whispered, “I don’t?—”
He was cut off at a hammering on my front door.
I sensed him tense as I saw his shadowed head turn that way before mine did.
I then felt the return of his attention and gave mine to him.
“Who’s pounding on your door at five a.m.?” he asked.
“As you well know, I don’t have much to recommend me, including clairvoyance.”
That was when I felt his body tighten, heard (and also felt, and it was way nice) his low growl, and then he rolled off me and the bed.
“Stay there, we’re not done,” he ordered, still kinda growly, and it was still way nice.
Lord, save me.
He then stalked out of my room.
I saw the light come on down the hall and it was at this moment I realized this was my house.
So why was I letting him order me around and open my front door?
I scrambled out of bed and was hustling down the hall when I heard Shanti say, “Holy shit. You sure don’t let grass grow.”
I hit the living room and saw Shanti was in a pair of killer harem pants under a long tunic, and her hair was still up in her silk sleep bonnet.
She looked like an ad for harem pants. Or tunics. Or sleeping bonnets.
“Trust you to be adorable at five in the morning,” she said to me.
“I need those harem pants,” I told her.
“I’ll hook you up,” she replied.
“Yay. Thanks,” I said.
Javi entered the conversation.
“I thought I told you to stay in bed.”
Shanti leaned back a little, her eyes got big, and she hummed, “Mm-hmm.”
My gaze sliced to Javi. “You don’t get to tell me what to do in my own house.”
“Shanti could have been anybody,” he stated.
“She wasn’t anybody. She was Shanti,” I returned.
“You didn’t know that,” he replied.
“You didn’t either.”
“Yeah, but I can break a motherfucker’s neck with one twist if they bring trouble to your door. Can you do that?” he fired back.
I could not, nor did I ever wish to try.
Stymied in this particular conversational thread, I glared at him.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
“Our tête-à-tête is over,” I informed him.
“Our teh-tah what?” he asked.
“Tête-à-tête. It’s French for a private conversation between two people,” I educated.
“I need to teach you Spanish,” Javi muttered.
“ Charla privada ,” I declared.