32
I wait in bed on Sunday morning for as long as I can, hoping that Sam will bring me up a coffee, because it would be romantic and telling if he did, but he doesn’t.
I actually wait so long that I eventually begin to worry that everyone will think I’m slovenly, so I get up and have a shower.
I don’t know why it happens, but I feel a pang of sadness as I stand under the running water at the memory of that night and my mother shoving me all heart-and-soul-mangled in here, freezing cold, to wash away the sins I didn’t commit.
The bathroom’s been redone since then… It looks different, new tiles, new fixtures… The bath, shower, and vanity are all in the same places but have been replaced, which makes it stranger, because it makes it feel like I’m remembering something from a bad dream, but I’m not. It’s a weird abstract reality I lived once upon a time, and my mind walks around this old house and I try to think of a room here where I have a happy memory.
I’m standing in front of the mirror, staring at myself with a towel wrapped around me, when there’s a knock on the door.
I frown at it. “What?”
“It’s me,” Sam says through the door.
I adjust my towel and check my reflection. I’m bare-faced, but my cheeks are flushed pink from the heat, so at least my eyes look bright. “Come in.”
He walks in and freezes when he sees me towel clad.
He stares at the towel two seconds longer than he probably should have according to social etiquette, and it makes me smile, though I try not to let him see.
“I, uh…” He trails, blinking a few times—his cheeks going pink too. “I just wanted to see—” He swallows and focuses very intently on my eyes. “Whether you were awake…”
“While I was showering?” I tilt my head. “You wanted to know whether I was awake when I’m upright and in a room that’s not my bedroom?”
He nods, though it’s reluctant as the silliness of his statement begins to settle upon him. Nevertheless, he decides to double down. “Mhm.”
“Well, would you look at that!” I give him a look. “I am.”
“Good.” He nods a few more times, his eyes round and bright. “Okay, well—”
He turns to leave.
“Why don’t you bring me coffees in the morning?” I call after him, and he stands frozen for a second before he swivels on his foot and turns around.
He lets out a single laugh.
“You did once,” I say, “and then you stopped, and I thought you would—I think you said you would.”
He nods, coolly. “I did.”
“But you haven’t since.”
“I know.” He’s smirking now, that asshole.
“And you like coffee so much, and I thought you liked m—” I cut myself off and press my lips together, glancing up at him.
Penny’s eyebrows shoot up and he smirks playfully. “What’s that now?”
“You do, though, right?” I ask, shifting on my feet, crossing my arms over my chest.
He tries not to smile. “I do what?”
I know he knows what, so I give him an impatient look, but he just shrugs airily, waiting for my answer. I growl at the back of my throat. “Like me?”
He peers down the bridge of his nose, and he looks more amused than I’d like him to. “Yeah,” he says.
“No, but I mean, like-like —”
“Like-like?” He scoffs. “What are you, eight?”
I fold my arms over my chest. “Answer the question.”
He nods his chin at me. “Ask it better.”
I square my shoulders and look him straight in the eye. “Sam Penny, do you have romantic feelings for me?”
He thinks for a second, and the way his mouth is pursed makes me nervous for the splittest of seconds.
“My feelings for you are…strictly romantic.” Then he adds as an afterthought—“And often sexual.”
I snort a laugh, and he grins. “Are you not going to ask me how I feel about you?” I blink, ready to give him my answer.
He shakes his head, unfazed. “No, I know how you feel about me.”
“Oh.” I swallow. I don’t know why that felt like such a sexy thing to say.
“I thought about it, by the way.” He ducks his head so he can see my eyes. “The coffee. I just thought it was obvious, and I didn’t—I wasn’t sure whether we were…” He squashes his mouth together, amused. “…being obvious?”
My eyes are a bit round now. “Oh.”
“Oliver would probably notice,” he tells me, which is true. “Tenny would notice,” he adds, which is—somewhat oddly—definitely true.
“Right.”
“They can notice?” He looks for my eyes. “If you want them to, I d—”
“No.” I shake my head, my cheeks going pink at the thought of my brothers knowing that Sam Penny and I like-like each other, and I’m grinning like a big loser at the thought. “It’s not a big deal—”
“Have mine,” he tells me, offering me his mug, but I don’t notice what’s in his hands because I’m distracted (always distracted) by his face.
“Your what?”
“I meant my coffee, but…” He smiles. “You can have my—fuck—have whatever you want. Have everything.” His tongue is pressed into his bottom lip, his pupils are dilated, and his gaze flickers from my eyes to my mouth to my eyes to my mouth to my eyes, and he swallows heavily.
I take a step closer to him, which means there’s nothing, barely inches between us, and I glance up at him.
I didn’t see it last night, but the fishing he did yesterday left some pink along the bridge of his nose and across his cheeks. It makes his eyes stick out in a way that makes my skin prickle, and his lips look bitten pink. I think that’s from the sun too, but I wish it was from me.
I get a nervous swirl in my stomach as he peers down at me, waiting—the corner of his mouth is pulling up as he does his best to look serious. You know how anticipation and nervousness can feel the same? They feel the same.
I’ve never kissed him before. He’s just kissed me. And he’s going to kiss me back, I know he will—obviously—but I just can’t believe I might get to have a nice memory in this bathroom.
I push my hand through his hair, which I’ve never done before either. There’s fistfuls of it; it’s thick and tousled and his head moves with my hand, but his eyes don’t sway from mine and he doesn’t move a muscle—he just stands there, waiting for me to kiss him.
This is the first time I notice our height difference. Until now, him being the initiator of the kisses, he has, I supposed, always tilted his head or ducked or something to facilitate it, but my tip toes aren’t going to cut it. I perch up on them anyway, and he’s still watching me, waiting.
I hook my arm around his neck and pull him down toward me, and a smile cracks over his face as our mouths touch. His arms fold around me and he pulls me in and holds me snug against him as he kisses me back, deeper.
He lifts me up onto the bathroom sink, but his kisses don’t miss a beat, and my towel is probably in a bit of a dicey situation, but I don’t mind because my hands have the top button of his jeans.
His stomach tenses as I graze it, and he smiles as I trace the top of his Calvin’s.
He pulls back for a second, his eyes searching for something in mine. Permission, I think. And I wonder if we’re going to…? Here and now on this sink. I don’t mind; I’d take him anywhere. It’d be my absolute pleasure (pun semi-intended).
I pull him back toward my mouth, and he tugs me by the back by the hair, his mouth moving to my neck—
“Sam?” Oliver calls out from the other end of the house, but definitely on the same floor.
Sam and I jerk apart.
“Fuck,” I whisper.
He shakes his head and whispers, “I’ll just go out—”
“And what, you were just hanging out with me in the bathroom while I’m naked? No—that’s not—”
My brain switches into overdrive. The options are finite. Suspicion is likely no matter what direction we go. If we risk Sam just walking out as though he was in here alone, we risk Oliver walking in and seeing me.
Denial would be futile. There’s nothing we have to discuss that anyone knows about that’s pressing enough for a towel conversation alone in a bathroom upstairs—
I grab a toothbrush and shove it into Sam’s mouth, run the faucet, and put my mouth to it right as my brother walks in.
“Oh,” is what Oliver says when he sees me in the towel.
I look up at him, consciously blankly, swish some water around my mouth, then spit it out. “What?”
Sam grins over at him, toothbrush hanging from his mouth, and I swallow my heart whole because he’s so hot.
“We’re talking about church,” Oliver says.
“I’m not going,” I say.
“Did Gige just say she’s not going?” Tenny says from outside the door, and then he pokes his head in. “Hello—put some clothes on.” He nods at me in the towel. “What’s going on here?”
“You’re all in my bathroom.” I emphasize the my .
“That onion tart gave me weird breath.” Sam shrugs, half telling me, half telling my brothers, and he’s a better liar than I’d have thought.
Oliver’s watching me closely, the corners of his mouth pulling out. Contempt. Whether it’s conscious or not, I can’t tell, and I’m fractionally ashamed to admit, I care increasingly less.
“So you’re not going to church?” Penny says to me right as Savannah appears at the doorway also.
I shake my head.
“Me either then,” Oliver says.
“Let’s take the boat out!” Savannah claps her hands together once.
I roll my eyes. “Is there a better place to have this conversation than my bathroom?”
Sam looks over at me, curious. “I thought you liked God?”
“They’re talking about church, not God,” I clarify. “And actually, I said I like Jesus.”
Tenny rolls his eyes. “They’re the same thing.”
“No.” I shake my head again, resolute. “Jesus came down from heaven to save us from eternal damnation, but God just stayed up there. He was like…pretty hands-off in the saving of the world.”
Tennyson makes a face like he disagrees. “Other than the sacrificing of his one and only son.”
“Right,” I concede.
“So we’re going on the boat?” Oliver asks, looking only at Sam, who shrugs amicably.
“Sure—whatever you want.”
Oliver smiles warmly, then glances down at himself as he walks away. “I’m getting changed—this is not a boating outfit.”
Tenny stands at the doorway, eyes flicking from me to Sam. He looks at Oliver walking down the hall, then nods toward Sam’s toothbrush. “You might want to put some toothpaste on that, man.”