Chapter 6
Sophie
I didn’t realize being cool with the couch meant becoming one with it, I think, as I step over three pairs of Liam’s sneakers scattered by the bathroom door.
We’ve been “coexisting” for a week now, and as far as I can tell, he hasn’t left that couch—except for his daily runs that happen at the crack of dawn and his brutal calisthenics sessions that turn the living room into his personal gym.
“Hey,” he says, glancing up, then back at the TV. His feet are propped on one arm of the couch, and his head rests on the other. I can't understand how he’s sleeping on that thing—he’s easily a foot too tall.
“Shoot,” I mutter, drumming my fingers against the counter as I try to remember what I’m forgetting. Laptop. I duck back into Cal’s room.
When money got tight a few months ago, I answered an ad for a “freelance content assistant.” Which basically means I write fake reviews for Etsy ebooks and overly enthusiastic comments on TikToks I’ve never watched.
It’s soul-sucking, but it pays. Just not enough.
Not having to pay rent for a couple of months while I’m at Cal’s will help, but with student loan payments and future rent, I’ll need to find something more stable, and soon.
Liam’s flipping through channels on Cal’s massive TV, not really watching anything.
A beer dangles from his hand, another already empty on the coffee table.
I’m in no position to judge since I’m just emerging from bed at 1 p.m. Cal’s apartment is open concept—the kitchen and living room blend into one big space with hardly any privacy.
Which is why I’ve spent the last three days holed up in Cal’s room, rotating between naps and smutty romance novels.
I may or may not be rereading the one about the bad boy MLB player and the no-nonsense publicist hired to clean up his image. Last night, I hit the locker room scene—the one with the publicist, the player, and some very creative finger work, and my imagination may have wandered…along with my hand.
I shake the thought from my head. I need to get it together and not be lusting after my accidental roommate, who has been keeping his obvious distance in the last five days.
“So,” I manage, my voice still a little higher than I’d like. “Good day?” I pluck a sweaty t-shirt off the back of the barstool.
“Yup.” He takes a long pull from his beer, eyes flicking to the shirt dangling from my fingers. “Just toss it on the pile. I’ll get to laundry later.”
I toss it in the pile and set my laptop on the counter—completely dead. I sigh and scan the room.
“It’s next to the armchair,” Liam says, not even glancing away from the TV.
Sure enough, my charger is plugged in there. “Thanks,” I mumble.
“It’s freezing in here,” I mutter as a gust of cold air hits me. I walk over to the wide-open window. “Did you forget you’re in San Francisco, not El Paso?”
Without warning, he pulls his shirt over his head.
My brain short-circuits. His chest is broad, the line of his shoulder looks sculpted from marble, and I can count every single defined ab muscle.
There’s a trail of dark hair that disappears into the waistband of his sweatpants.
When he twists to toss his shirt onto the growing laundry heap, the cords of his forearms pop, and I nearly forget how windows work.
“You can close it,” he says, catching my stare. “Sorry, I run a little hot.”
Boy, does he ever.
I slam the window shut with a little more force than necessary and zip my hoodie up to my chin. “It’s fine,” I mutter. “Let’s just try to keep Karl the Fog outside.”
I pull a cereal box off the kitchen shelf and stuff a handful into my mouth while waiting for my computer to come back to life. I get started on my latest series of “Oh, this book changed my life” posts, shaking Froot Loops directly into my mouth for every heartfelt review I fake.
“You don’t really eat, do you?” Liam asks from his residence on the couch, and I look down at the box in my hand.
“I think the fact that I’m actively putting food in my mouth means I eat.”
“I just mean I haven’t seen you eat an actual meal since we’ve been here,” he says, swinging himself off the couch. He’s not wrong. I don’t really cook. I get distracted easily, so I graze all day long—cereal, cheese sticks, PB&J if I really want to make an effort.
He walks into the kitchen, still shirtless, all lean muscle and that infuriating V of his abs that acts like a neon arrow pointing straight to the waistband of his now dangerously low-slung sweats. I take a few self-preserving steps back as he rounds the counter and pulls open the fridge.
“Do you like salmon?” Liam asks, pulling out a glass storage container.
I nod and try to swallow the lump in my throat. He opens the pantry door and takes out two microwavable rice packets.
“Have you heard of the viral salmon bowls?” he asks, gesturing to the bowls on the open shelf above my head.
“I make a living scrolling TikTok, so yes, I’ve heard of them,” I reply, handing him the bowls.
“I thought you made a living doing art?” he asks, taking condiments out of the fridge.
“Art is…complicated.” He glances over the fridge door like he’s going to say something. “Kinda like baseball.”
“Got it,” he says and shuts the fridge.
Less than ten minutes later, we’re sitting side by side at the breakfast bar, eating the most delicious salmon bowls—the ones that went viral a few years ago but always felt too complicated for me to attempt. Liam threw this lunch together with stuff I didn’t even realize we had in the house.
After we eat, I clean the dishes, then stress-clean the entire kitchen. When my life feels chaotic, scrubbing counters calms me down. Liam offers to help, but I wave him off, insisting that since he cooked, the least I can do is clean.
“I’d hardly call that cooking,” he says, but he gives me my space as he grabs his own laptop and settles back on the couch. “That was more like microwaving.”
I start the dishwasher and put away all the ingredients from our lunch. While I clean, I steal glances at Liam, tapping away on his computer. Sometimes his face is scrunched in concentration, and sometimes I catch him watching me before we both quickly look away.
“What are you working on?” I ask, opening my laptop again after the kitchen is gleaming to my liking.
“I do the taxes for a couple of the guys on the Iron Cats,” he says. “We don’t make a lot of money in the minors, so pretty much everyone has side jobs.”
“You do their taxes?”
“Yeah, Soph,” he chuckles. “That’s my side job.”
I know he doesn’t make a big league salary yet, but he’s doing other guys’ taxes?
He also hasn’t told me why he’s taking a break from baseball, but this is the first conversation in the past week that’s been longer than me asking, “Is this your sweaty shirt?” and him complaining, “Can we please open a goddamn window? It’s a hundred degrees in here.
” I also haven’t told him why all my art supplies are still in a heap next to the front door, exactly where I dropped them at 3 a.m. that first night.
That first night. When Liam slid his hands into my panties and asked if he could make me come.
“You okay?” Liam asks, and I realize I closed my eyes and might have been biting my bottom lip.
“Yup, totally!” I squeak, “Well, we should both get some work done!”
We both work in companionable silence for the rest of the afternoon. True to his word, Liam eventually takes a break, scoops up all his laundry scattered around the house, and starts a load. I don’t say anything when he cracks the window again.
“Thanks again for taking the couch,” I say later, when Liam is making up his bed.
“Sure,” he says, fluffing his pillow. “It makes sense, I’m kinda an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person. I blame it on two decades of early morning practices.”
His forearms flex as he tucks the blanket into the couch cushions, the definition in his quads visible through the tight pull of his shorts. I suck in a small inhale.
“Sorry,” he says, turning towards me when I realize I haven’t responded to him. “Do I wake you up in the mornings? I try to be quiet.”
“No,” I shake my head and try to regain my composure. “Living with five people teaches you how to sleep through—” I pause, thinking of Marshall’s orgasm chant the night I left, “—pretty much anything.”
A few beats of quiet pass between us.
“Okay then,” I say, turning towards Cal’s room. “I’ll let you get to bed.”
“Night, Soph. See you in the morning.”
And for reasons I don’t fully understand yet, I’m actually looking forward to that.