Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Archie
I’ve developed a system for showering.
The system involves a stool, a detachable showerhead, and the waterproof cast cover Leo appeared with four days ago, with no explanation or ceremony. Just a neoprene sleeve with a watertight seal sitting on the kitchen counter when I woke up, like the cast-cover fairy had visited in the night.
It’s annoyingly thoughtful. It’s also much better than the trash-bag-and-duct-tape arrangement I’d been using, which had a success rate of roughly sixty percent and resulted in me blow-drying my cast twice.
However, today my system completely fails.
I’m mid-shampoo—eyes closed, head tipped back, lather situation fully committed—when the shampoo bottle slips off my knee and clatters onto the shower tray.
I lean forward to grab it. This shifts my weight and the stool tips.
What happens next takes about two seconds and involves the stool going one way, my good foot failing to find any purchase on soapy wet tile, and my ass hitting the shower tray with a thud that I’m fairly sure registers on the Richter scale.
The showerhead, which I’d been holding in my other hand, hits the tray and starts thrashing around like a landed fish, spraying water in every direction.
I’m now sitting on the floor of the shower, shampoo streaming into my eyes. My casted leg is wedged awkwardly against the wall, and the showerhead is enthusiastically hosing down the bathroom mirror.
“Fuck.”
I try to push myself up. My good foot slides on the wet tile. My hand slides on the wet tile. Everything is wet tile and soap, and the fundamental betrayal of friction as a concept.
“Fuck fuck.”
I weigh my options.
Option one: stay here until the water runs cold, then stay here some more, and eventually Leo finds my shriveled, pruney corpse wedged in the bottom of the shower.
Option two: call for help, let a man I’ve been deliberately tormenting see me naked and stuck, and never emotionally recover.
I’m seriously considering option one when there’s a knock on the bathroom door.
“Archie? Are you okay?”
Of course he heard.
“I’m fine!” I shout, in a voice that sounds approximately zero percent fine. “Just rearranging the bathroom furniture!”
A pause.
“It sounds like something fell.”
“Nothing fell. Gravity and I are just having a disagreement.”
Another pause. Longer this time.
“Do you need help?”
That simple question shouldn’t be this hard to answer.
I obviously need help. I’m in an untenable position with shampoo burning my eyes and water spraying the mirror.
But asking Leo Brennan for help in the shower means Leo Brennan in the bathroom while I am naked and stuck. There’s a difference between choosing to be provocative—sending him to fetch the Destroyer was a strategic decision—and being genuinely, pathetically helpless.
The first one is a power move. The second is just…need.
“Archie,” Leo’s voice is part plead, part demand.
His voice is closer now, right outside the door.
I manage to find my voice. “I’m naked.”
“I assumed.”
“I’m serious. I’m extremely naked. There’s nothing between God and me right now.”
“Archie, you’re about to add a head injury to the ankle. I’m coming in.”
The door opens.
I use my free hand to grab the washcloth from the shower caddy and slap it over my crotch with the desperate speed of a man trying to protect his last shred of dignity. It’s a small washcloth. Coverage is…optimistic.
Through my shampoo-soaked vision, I look up to see Leo standing in the doorway, surveying the scene.
There’s a brief, loaded silence.
“Don’t say a word,” I warn.
“I wasn’t going to.”
“Your face is saying words.”
“My face is assessing the situation.” Leo steps into the bathroom, sidestepping the lake forming on the floor. The rogue showerhead immediately catches him across the thighs. He doesn’t flinch.
“Right,” he says as he gets closer. He starts to roll up his sleeves. “Can you push yourself back onto the stool if I brace it?”
“Probably.”
He steps into the shower tray. His shoes are immediately soaked. Then the spray from the showerhead, which is doing its best impression of a garden sprinkler, catches him full across the chest.
He looks down at his now-drenched shirt. Looks at me.
“This is going well,” he says.
And something about his absolute deadpan delivery, and having Leo Brennan standing fully clothed in my shower, shoes filling with water, shirt plastered to his chest, face completely neutral, cracks me up.
I laugh. It’s the kind of laugh that starts in my stomach, bends me forward, and makes my grip on the washcloth precarious.
Leo moves closer to me, and my laughter hitches. I don’t think I’ve ever been quite as aware of my nudity as I am now.
He reaches past me to turn off the water.
“Okay.” He braces the stool with his foot and extends his hand. “Grab on.”
I grab on. His hand closes around my forearm, and his other arm goes around my back. I’m wet and soapy, he’s wet and clothed, and the privacy created by the washcloth is becoming increasingly theoretical.
I will my body not to react. My body considers this request and files it under “suggestions I’m choosing to ignore.
” Blood pumps to my groin, reminding me that it’s been quite some time since I’ve been naked and in this close proximity to a guy.
The washcloth suddenly feels about the size of a postage stamp.
“On three. One. Two. Three.”
He lifts. I push with my good leg. There’s an undignified moment where I’m essentially levered upward against him, bare skin against soaked cotton, the washcloth performing heroically under impossible conditions. Then I’m back on the stool, and Leo’s clothes are dripping onto the tile.
“You’re completely drenched,” I say.
“I’m aware.”
But Leo doesn’t leave the shower tray. Instead, he rolls up his sleeves and positions himself behind the stool, and I hear the showerhead click off the holder again.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Tip your head back.”
I obey him. Warm water moves across my scalp, angled carefully away from my face.
His free hand follows, working the shampoo out.
His fingers are firm and methodical, starting at my forehead and moving back.
He does it the way he does everything: like there’s a correct technique, and he’s going to execute it properly.
My eyes close. The washcloth is still in my lap, but I’ve stopped clutching it.
There’s a knot at the base of my skull where I must have tensed up during the near-death experience, and Leo’s fingers find it. Press. My head tips forward of its own accord.
I hear his breathing change. Just slightly.
Something low in my stomach tightens in response.
The bathroom is quiet except for the spray hitting the tile and the steady drip of Leo’s clothes onto the floor.
“I think that’s got it,” he says quietly.
I open my eyes. The bathroom floor is a shallow pond. Leo looks like he’s been caught in a rainstorm, with his shirt molded to his chest, his pants a shade darker from the knee down, and his hair slightly curly from the steam.
His gaze finds mine and holds. Then it drops for a fraction of a second to my chest, just far enough to not be my imagination, before coming back up.
Oh fuck, I’m definitely not imagining the heat in that gaze.
“Your shoes,” I say. It’s what comes out. Of all the things I could comment on, I’m apparently going for footwear.
“They’ll dry.”
He replaces the showerhead and steps out of the tray, his shoes squelching. Then he grabs a towel and holds it open, angling his body away to give me the privacy of his averted gaze.
“I can manage from here,” I say.
“I know you can,” he says.
But he doesn’t leave. He just holds the towel, looking somewhere past my left shoulder, giving me the privacy of his averted gaze while still being close enough to catch me if the stool has any more escape plans.
I take the towel and wrap it around me.
“Thank you,” I say. And I leave it there, without any punchline or add-on.
Leo blinks. Like sincerity from me requires a moment to process.
“You’re welcome,” he replies.
He steps out, pulling the door closed behind him.
I sit on the stool in the quiet bathroom, towel around my waist, steam curling around me. The mirror is fogged. I can’t see my own reflection, which feels appropriate because I’m not entirely sure what I’d see right now.
Something in my chest has rearranged itself, and I don’t know how to put it back.
Through the door, I hear Leo in the kitchen. The click of the coffee maker. A cupboard opening and closing.
He’s making coffee. Probably a cup for me as well because that’s what he does.
I press my wet palms against my eyes and take a slow breath.
This is a problem. This is a very specific, sleeves-rolled-to-the-elbows problem.