Chapter 12 #2
I think about this for a second. I see what she’s saying—me wearing gray sweats around her is kind of like if she walked around in what she was wearing this morning in bed. Or the shirt she has on now without a bra. I could just admit that she has a point, but what’s the fun in that?
“So,” I say, drawing the word out. “What you’re saying is that basically you can see the outline of my junk when I wear sweats.”
“Yep.” She eyes me defiantly, even though I can see the heat creeping into her cheeks.
“So it’s really not that different than if I was just walking around in my boxer briefs after all.”
“Exactly,” she says, sounding relieved that I see her point.
“Good, then I’m only wearing boxer briefs at home from now on. So much more comfortable anyway!”
She looks at the ceiling, then back at me. “You have missed the point by a mile!”
“I think I’ve actually arrived at the perfect solution. I hate to wear clothes at all. And if you can see the outline of my”—I gesture at my crotch and watch her blush even more—“anyway, I might as well have even fewer clothes on.”
“Beau.” She says my name as a single-word sentence, in the same way my mom said it when she was reprimanding me when I was a kid. “You know that was not my point. It’s common courtesy to wear clothing when you have a roommate.”
“Really? Because when I’m rooming with Lance and Drew, none of us care when someone walks around in their underwear.”
“This. Is. Not. The. Same.” She spits every word out as she sets her cereal bowl on the counter. I am laughing so hard inside, but I think I’m doing a pretty good job of appearing serious about this line of thinking. She’s so easy to rile up, and honestly, she’s pretty sexy when she’s pissed off.
“Why not? We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“Because I’m not a guy, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
Oh, I noticed. I just shrug. “If you say so.”
She steps around the side of the peninsula so only the corner of the stone countertop separates us. “Are you saying you’re”—she points her finger right into my chest—“not sure that I’m”—she points her finger back at her sternum—“a girl?”
That fire in her eyes has me leaning in closer, like a moth attracted to a flame. “Of course you’re a girl,” I say, and my eyes sweep down to her chest even though I didn’t give them permission to. “You said I hadn’t noticed, and I was disagreeing with that.”
“You are infuriating,” she says, her eyes locked on mine now that they’ve found their way back to her face.
Her cheeks are flushed, her lips are as thick and kissable up close as I’d imagined them in my dream, and she’s so damn close.
If we each leaned forward a little bit .
. . “I’m going to go get dressed and take Winston for a walk,” she says as she pulls back, stepping back into the kitchen to grab her cereal bowl.
“Are you sure you want to do that? It’s blustery out there. The lifts are even on a wind hold,” I tell her. And the forecast is that the snow is going to get heavier with the wind continuing to pick up.
She glances out the window for maybe the first time this morning, then squints her eyes at me. “Is that why you’re home today? I forgot you should be at the mountain, even though it’s a weekend.”
“I do try to give myself a day or two off here and there to recover. So with today’s forecast, I suspect I’ll be home all day.”
“Is it going to get worse out there?”
I tell her the forecast, which apparently motivates her to take Winston for a walk now while she still can.
I remind her that he’s likely to be tired from his big ordeal last night, and encourage her to keep the walk short, then set about determining whether it would totally send her over the edge if she came back from her walk and found me lounging on the couch in my boxer briefs.
If you ask me, it’s the best kind of bad idea.
In the end, I decide that whatever satisfaction I’d gain from watching her lose her shit wouldn’t be worth the cost. Even I know that there’s a thin line between pissing someone off for fun and making them actually hate you, and it’s not a line I want to cross, no matter how amusing the journey.
So when she comes back inside with her nose raw and red, her eyes watery, and her hair wet from the snow that got under her hood, I take Winston from her and suggest she take a warm shower instead.
She looks at me like I’ve just offered her a million bucks, and it occurs to me that my small gesture, her adoring look, this feeling blooming in my chest .
. . maybe it’s better than pissing her off.
Winston is exhausted, so we settle into the living room.
I take one of the chairs that sits kitty-corner from the sofa, and he curls up on the rug at my feet.
Down the hall, Sierra is singing in the shower as I pull my phone out and open up Winston’s social media account.
A smile pulls at my lips when I see the number of notifications.
In the early hours of this morning, after my frustrating shower, I took the photo I sent Sierra a few days ago and posted it.
I mean, I’m nothing if not competitive, and we did agree that whoever posted the photo with the most likes would win our little bet.
I figured that if the photo she took of me and Winston was so popular, this one—the selfie where Winston is cuddled up asleep on my bare stomach—would likely be too.
And it paid off because as people woke up this morning, they apparently really liked the puppy curled up sleeping, or they really liked the body he was sleeping on.
The caption reads: Who wouldn’t want to snuggle up with this guy?
And in reading the comments section, I realize I should probably have been more clear about which “guy” I was talking about.
I don’t know how long I’ve been browsing the comments before Sierra is asking me what I’m reading so intently.
I glance up and my chest hurts. She’s too freaking beautiful.
She’s in the same knit joggers and Henley she was wearing before her walk, her face totally free of makeup, and her wet hair piled in a big, loose bun on her head.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just over here kicking your ass in our photography contest.”
“What?” she shrieks, her voice joyful. I hold my phone out and she leans forward to see how many likes and comments this morning’s photo has already.
“Oh my God, Beau. That’s awesome. So many people love Winston, he’s bound to find a forever home.
Let me see,” she says as she swipes my phone from my hand and scrolls up.
Her thumb pauses over the screen, her eyes are a little unfocused. I can’t read the look on her face, which scares me a bit. “You are unreal.”
What is that tone? It’s like bitterness and disappointment were mixed together, then sprinkled over her words.
“Our little bet is over,” she says. “I can’t compete against these types of pictures. You might as well be naked. That’s what’s got so many people liking that photo. Photography skills have zero to do with why this photo is getting so much love.”
“Rewind,” I say, sitting forward and resting my elbows on my knees as I look up at her. “I am not naked. I am very clearly wearing pants.”
“Yeah, gray sweatpants, which I think we just established, are . . . revealing. And we can pretty much only see your crotch anyway. All these comments,” she says, looking down at the phone as she scrolls through them. “They’re about you, not about your photography or about Winston.”
I’ve never been so tempted to tell someone about my photography account in my life.
I feel like she would understand my passion if I were honest with her, but the alarm bells are going off in my head.
Warning, warning, you shouldn’t care about her opinion .
. . you’ll be gone in two weeks anyway. I’ve never cared what anyone thought before.
If people don’t understand me, screw them, move on.
I don’t know why that feels so wrong in this situation, but it does.
“You did say that whoever got the most likes on one of their photos would win. Why would you think I wouldn’t post a photo that was going to get a lot of attention?”
“I guess I just didn’t think you were so . . .” She looks away toward the windows, like she’s trying to think of the right way to say this.
I stand, and stepping over Winston where he sleeps on the rug I take a step toward her. When she looks back at me, I’m close enough that we’re sharing the same air. “So . . . what?”
She hands me back my phone. “So desperate for attention.” Her voice is quiet, like she’s ripping the bandage off some sort of wound and isn’t sure what the repercussions might be. Will there be an explosion of blood and pus? Or is it an old wound that’s healed?
So I do what I always do when someone hits a little too close to home, I redirect. “Not desperate,” I say, my words as low and quiet as hers, “just not afraid of attention. Which I think begs the question, why are you so afraid of being seen?”
I can feel the air she sucks in as it pulls away from my face. She’s breathing in my words, trying to trap them so she doesn’t have to face them.
“I know who I am, Sierra, and I’m not afraid of people seeing me. I don’t need to hide. What are you hiding from?”
“This feels a lot like gaslighting,” she says, taking a step back. “Don’t try to make me believe I’m imagining your attention-whoring tendencies by redirecting this to be about me.”
I look down at her and hope she can’t tell that our proximity has my fingers itching to touch her, my mouth trembling to taste her, my arms aching to wrap themselves around her. Instead, I deflect. “Are you denying that you intentionally step out of the spotlight whenever you have the chance?”
“I don’t know.” She looks at the ground. “I’ve never really thought about it.”
“Well, maybe you should.”
“And maybe you should think about why you constantly need to be the center of attention.”