Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
BEAU
I tap on her bedroom door a couple of times and am greeted with a sleepy “Come in.”
I reach down and turn the knob, then wrap my arms tightly around the wiggly bundle of energy I’m holding. I push the door open with my foot, and the second Winston sees her, he tries to jump out of my arms. Luckily, I have a good hold on him.
“Oh my God, Beau!” she squeals as she sits up in bed so quickly the covers fall away. “How do you have him already?”
I let out a laugh as I set Winston down on her bed and she scrambles to her knees. “It’s ten o’clock already, sleepyhead.”
“Did you just call me sleepyhead?” she asks, cocking one eyebrow at me before turning all her attention back to Winston, who is already licking her face.
Someone kill me, please. “I’m fucking turning into my mother, aren’t I? Is this what being an adult is like? You turn into your parents?” I look at the floor, where the dress she wore last night is in a pile by her nightstand. A bra that looks suspiciously like the one in my dreams lies next to it.
“God, I hope not.” She groans and I remember what Jackson said about her having to go visit her mom before the wedding. There’s clearly no love lost there.
I glance up at her when Winston starts jumping up on his hind legs, and it’s then that I realize she’s only wearing a loose cropped cami with the word DREAM across the front—almost like a sports bra without the band across the bottom—and a pair of celestial printed sleep shorts that are so high cut on the sides they might as well be underwear.
Winston manages to get his paw caught on the top seam of her cami and it pulls down under the weight of him, so much so that I get an eyeful of cleavage before I turn my head away.
Now the only thing I can think of is how last night in my dream I could barely contain her perfect breast in my hand, and how the hard peak of her nipple felt sliding along the soft pad of my tongue.
This vision has my dick stirring, even though I’ve already taken care of him this morning.
Shit, this is bad. I can’t get those images of her out of my mind.
They feel so real, even though they are entirely in my imagination.
Maybe her body isn’t half as great as you’ve imagined it, I tell myself.
But when I glance back up, Sierra is leaning forward trying to get Winston calmed down, she reaches her arms out toward him and her cami slips up until I can see the underside of her breasts.
Yep, she’s stacked like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model.
My mind starts running away with all its crazy ideas about exactly what I’d like to do to her body, and now my body is responding and I need to get the fuck out of her room.
“I’m going to get something to eat,” I say and turn toward the door. “Maybe put some clothes on before you come out of your room.”
Her laugh is vindictive. “What’s wrong, Beau,” she calls out. “Hate getting a taste of your own medicine?”
I turn around in her doorway, and she’s up on her knees, having just picked up a squirming puppy. That scrap of fabric masquerading for a top is barely covering her breasts, and one of Winston’s back paws is caught in the waistband of her shorts. “This isn’t a game you want to play,” I tell her.
“Oh yeah?” She raises an eyebrow at me again. “Why not?”
“Because I always win.”
This isn’t how this whole roommate situation was supposed to go. I was going to tempt her, just for the pleasure of turning her down like she did to me when I was seventeen.
It was the winter of my senior year of high school and I thought I was hot shit.
Jackson was home for Christmas and Sierra came up from Boston, where she was living at the time, to stay for a couple nights.
On her last night there, I ran into her in the kitchen after everyone else was asleep.
I’d had a crush on her since I was eleven and I figured now that I was an adult, why not?
So as we stood there having easy conversation, I leaned in and tried to kiss her.
She was all grace and apology, saying she was so sorry if she’d led me on in any way.
It was humiliating, not only because I had zero experience being turned down, but because I figured now I’d have to hear about it from my sister forever.
Except, Jackson never said anything to me, which I take to mean that Sierra never told her. It’s a kindness I probably didn’t deserve at the time.
But now she’s in my head. Instead of this being my opportunity to turn the tables and turn her down, I’m thinking about her every minute of every day.
Maybe it’s because I haven’t had sex since before Jackson’s wedding, and two weeks is an extremely long dry spell.
I should have gone out last night with Lance and Drew, and taken literally any hot girl home with me.
Then, instead of waking up with a raging hard-on next to a sleeping Sierra on the couch, I could have been actually fucking someone who wanted me.
But Sierra needed me last night, and I hesitantly admit to myself that I wouldn’t give up being the one to be there for her—especially not to have sex with some random girl I’ll never see again.
Who are you? I repeat the question I seem to be asking myself a lot these past few days.
Twenty minutes later when she finally comes out of her room, I’m still pissed off—at myself for being so attracted to her, and at her for being impossible to get out of my head.
She’s changed into thin sweater-like joggers and a long-sleeve matching Henley with the top couple buttons undone. It’s something that looks super soft, like cashmere maybe?
She walks past me, completely ignoring me as she grabs a box of cereal from the upper cabinet, and I know I owe her an apology for earlier.
“I didn’t mean to barge in on you earlier. I just thought you’d want to see Winston.” I glance down at the puppy in question, who laid himself down right at my feet the minute he came out of Sierra’s room.
“I did want to see him,” she says, spinning toward me with the cereal box in hand.
And fuuuuuck, she’s not wearing a bra. “What I didn’t expect”—she continues, not seeming to notice that I got an eyeful of her nipples through her thin sweater—“was you in my room hypocritically telling me to put more clothes on. You”—she steps up to me and pokes me in the chest—“who never wears anything but a pair of sweatpants at home. And no,” she says, setting the cereal box down on the counter so hard the bottom corners collapse a bit, “not just any sweats, they have to be the gray athletic fitted ones, of course.”
I pause and look at her, trying to figure what she’s so worked up about. And then I can’t help but laugh and ask, “What are you ranting about?”
Sierra lets out a sound that’s half guttural groan and half frustrated yell, her fists clenched at her sides.
More than anything, I want to hear that sound again in a very different context.
“What are you ranting about, he asks!” she says, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.
“Like you don’t freaking know.” She narrows her eyes at me.
I reach over and grab the cereal box she left on the counter, open it, and shake some into my hand. “I don’t actually know. Is your problem that I don’t have enough clothes on, or that I’m wearing sweatpants all the time?”
“Both,” she says through clenched teeth.
“Would you rather I not wear sweats?” I ask, confused by her logic. “Because I’m happy to just wear my trusty boxer briefs.”
“Oh my God,” she growls as she turns and heads to the fridge. “You are the most frustrating human being on the planet.”
“I’m not sure what’s going on here. What are you upset about?” I ask, genuinely confused. I know it’s never a good idea to ask a woman this question, but really—how else can I figure out why she’s so pissed?
“I’m upset about the obvious double standard,” she says as she returns with the milk, swipes the cereal box angrily off the counter, and starts pouring it into her bowl.
Okay, I’d get it if she was talking about the double standard of me walking around shirtless then wanting her to “put some clothes on,” which I will admit definitely is a double standard.
But it’s one I employed intentionally. I wanted to get her all worked up by seeing me shirtless constantly.
I know what my body looks like, I’m not playing dumb here.
But when the tables were flipped, I definitely wasn’t prepared to see her with so few clothes on—I wasn’t prepared for what it would do to my body, or my mental state.
However, she’s not talking about me being shirtless. This is specific to my choice of pants.
“Can you break down the whole sweatpants thing like I’m from another planet, because I’m clearly not getting it.”
“Where’s your phone?” she asks through a mouthful of cereal. It’s totally unlike her, normally so well-mannered, to talk with her mouth full. And it’s freaking adorable. Is there anything this woman can’t make appealing?
“Right here,” I say, sliding it out of the pocket of my—you guessed it—gray sweatpants.
Of which I have four pairs that I rotate through, because they are comfortable and go with everything.
Unless I am headed to the mountain in my snowboarding gear, or dressed up to go out, I’m pretty much in these all the time.
“Good. Google ‘gray sweatpants’ and see for yourself.”
I follow her directions as she angrily chews on her cereal, her eyes boring holes in my face.
I try to block that out as I peruse the headlines that pop up in my search: Why the ladies like gray sweatpants; Explained: sweatpants season; Guys, here’s why you need to invest in gray sweatpants; Gray sweatpants are lingerie for men.
I click into that last article, which explains how gray sweatpants show the outline of your junk.
And the article is accompanied by a slideshow of famous men wearing their gray sweats, and the author’s opinion on their dick size. What the hell?