Chapter 9
9
Rose had decided to be asleep when Tom got back to the cottage. Easier said than done, even though she was running on fumes. Her brain felt like it was downloading a decade’s worth of software updates on one bar of cell service.
When Tom came in, his steps more confident than when he’d left, Rose shut her eyes to a crack and positioned a pillow over her head. Avoidance was not a healthier coping mechanism than smoking, but with lungs like hers, it was the one she had.
Tom climbed the ladder to the loft without unnecessary noise and peered into the bed nook. Rose held her position, curled in the center of the bed, pretending to be asleep. He must have bought it, because he slid back down the ladder and went to check the water heater with a hand on the tank. Apparently satisfied with the temperature, he began to strip.
Off went the black waffle-knit T-shirt, tossed to the couch.
Off went the blue jeans, discarded in a puddle on the floor.
Rose wanted to be a good person. She paid her taxes to the penny. She volunteered. She donated. She generally tried to treat people as she wanted to be treated. Voyeurism was wrong.
However, she didn’t think Tom would mind if she looked at all that sun-kissed skin he’d just exposed—in fact, he’d probably be flattered at the bolt of heat the sight sent zipping through her body. Tom was anything but shy. If he was putting on a show, he wanted someone to watch. So she looked. Tom had a soft spread of dark fuzz across his chest and trailing down across his stomach, and she knew what it felt like under her fingers, but she imagined pressing down and feeling nothing but solid muscle coiled underneath.
Rose expected him to go after his socks next, or perhaps move closer to the shower stall, but Tom slipped his thumbs under the frayed band of the boxer shorts that already concealed very little of the muscular shape of his thighs and leaned forward to slide his underwear off.
Oh God. She was going to spontaneously combust if she kept watching.
Rose sat up and tossed a pillow down at him.
“Modesty, Tom,” she said in a rebuke that would have been more convincing if her mouth had not been so very dry.
Would his boyfriend really not care if anything happened? Was that what they’d hammered out on the phone just now? Maybe she’d feel better if she actually confirmed it with Boyd somehow.
“So you are awake,” Tom said, grinning cheekily up at her. He caught and held the pillow just at waist height, so she was not longer confronted with a view of the forbidden mountain, so to speak, but he cradled the pillow in his hands as though preparing to toss it right back at her.
“I’m awake now,” she said, jerking the covers up like she was ready to go right back to sleep, but she probably undercut this posture by staring directly at the pillow.
“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before,” he said very innocently.
He knew it was a different view from before. He was fishing for compliments. Yeah, it’s really nice, Tom. You must have worked really hard. I bet you could support my body weight on like five different muscle groups. Though your cock is still very good looking too; I’m glad you didn’t go too porny with the manscaping.
If Rose had been running on full steam, she would have made sure to sound snarky and aloof when she replied.
“Gah,” she said instead, rubbing her face with her hands and peeking at him through her fingers. “Please put a towel on. I can’t right now. No striptease until I’ve slept.”
Tom made no move to cover himself, tipping his head back to laugh at her instead. “Babe, I could accurately describe the location of every single freckle on your body. You’re bothered by some nonsexual nudity?”
Oh, he was definitely trying to mess with her. He wasn’t letting this go without specific feedback, but she was going to expire if she let herself think about it.
So she tossed a second pillow at him. He retaliated by dropping the first one.
“I’m just taking a shower!” he insisted, hand pressed between newly defined pecs instead of over his heart.
“It’s nonsexual nudity?” she asked, unconvinced.
Tom’s expression grew even more delighted. He squared up his hips and spread his feet as though trying to stand on full display.
“Why, does it feel sexual to you?” he all but purred.
Rose was running out of pillows, but she hurled another just to make her point.
Tom finally turned to get in the shower, which shifted him out of her direct line of sight but instead gave her a view of all the muscles down his back, as well as the round ass that—
She still had one pillow left. Maybe she could smother herself with it. Or at least starve the horniest of her brain cells of oxygen.
“Do you remember when I was in Equus , our senior year?” Tom shouted up at her.
Of course she did. He’d been so good in it—he’d played the main character, Alan Strang. She’d cried at every single performance. But that probably wasn’t what he was referring to—he was reminding her that most of Boston had seen his kit when he’d appeared naked onstage. That had actually been nonsexual nudity.
“Oh my God. Yes. I can’t believe Adrian didn’t tell his girlfriend you’d be naked in that play,” Rose said, speaking toward the ceiling. Served Adrian right for dating a snotty French literature major who’d offered Rose highly unnecessary diet tips. Tom and Rose had made Adrian dump her soon afterward.
“She never looked me in the eye again. Every time she came over, it was like I had a bull’s-eye painted on my crotch.”
Rose could perfectly visualize the scene at the big house in Somerville they’d rented that year. Adrian’s love life had been a chief medium of entertainment: all his girlfriends had been terrible. Tom and Rose had been the smug, judgmental couple lifting scoreboards over breakfast when he brought someone new home.
It was nice. They’d been happy. It was the closest Tom and Rose had ever gotten to domestic, even with three other roommates and their hookups and random houseguests cluttering the space. No, actually, Rose had been thrilled to make like a 1950s housewife between interviews and her scanty senior schedule, baking custard pies and elaborate casseroles for ten people.
When she looked back on it now, it was with a faintly embarrassed lens on the memories. She’d thought the rest of her life would be like that, when it was obvious in retrospect that she, like everyone else in the world, had just had a good time in college, and she ought to have savored the experience as a temporary joy.
“What was her name?” Rose asked. “Ellen? Elena? She tried to say it was Hélène for a while, but nobody bought it.”
She heard the water turn on.
“It was Helen! And God save you if you called her Ellie,” Tom called from the bathroom. The shower door clanged shut.
Tom would be in there until the hot water ran out, so Rose could go to sleep now. She used to tease him about his long showers.
It only takes like five minutes to jack off. What are you even doing in there?
Thirty minutes of aftercare, Rosie, because I’m treating myself right.
But really he just liked to sing and practice his lines and let the water run over his back and wrinkle his toes. Rose could hear him singing now: a little scatting as he worked his way up to the falsetto chorus in “Smooth Criminal.”
She sighed and put her last pillow over her head. It wasn’t a terrible pillow, but it was ineffective at blocking her awareness of Tom in the shower. Wet. Naked. Lonely? No, Jesus Christ, Rose Kelly, keep it together. He’s fine taking a shower alone, and you haven’t cleared anything with his boyfriend.
Thoughts of little drops of water sliding down Tom’s hip bones were easier to focus on than Tom’s singing. She’d missed his singing. He had a wonderful, rich baritone, and several of his professors had tried to push him toward music instead of theater, since he played the piano as well as he sang. But Tom didn’t have the patience to compose, and he only practiced if he had an appreciative audience for his Broadway standards and Beyoncé medleys.
Tom’s music was supposed to have been the soundtrack to her life.
As Rose breathed into the mattress, Tom followed “Smooth Criminal” with “The Weight” and then “Tomorrow.” Rose laughed when she got it, even if it was pained.
“Three songs about girls named Annie,” she called.
“You’re so good at this!” Tom called back.
That had been an easy one, but Rose finally rolled onto her back and looked up at the close, floral-stenciled wood ceiling. She was very awake.
Since Tom was giving out free tickets to the show, Rose propped her head on her arm and watched as he got out of the shower and toweled off with slightly more modesty than he’d shown during his entrance.
He did a little shrug when saw her looking—not in a vain way, instead almost apologetic.
“Just so you know, this is for the play,” he said, apropos of nothing, with a wave at the defined plane of his midsection. “You might want to take some photos. I probably can’t keep this up after the Broadway run wraps.”
“Too time-consuming?”
Tom would go to three dance classes in a row if he had the time and money, but as far as Rose knew he’d never set foot in a weight room.
“Yeah. Hours a day. I’ve hated every second of it. And, God, I miss eating cheese.” Tom looked at her expectantly, as though he were waiting for her permission. As if she’d ever tell anyone to give up cheese.
It was also none of her business what Tom did with his body, not just now but ever, so Rose shrugged. “I bet cheese misses you too.”
Apparently encouraged, Tom stepped into his boxers and concluded the display by pulling on a faded T-shirt advertising a Pokémon movie. Not one of Boyd’s cast-offs. She’d given it to him for Christmas their sophomore year.
How was she supposed to wipe his slate clean while still burdened with knowledge of where Tom’s T-shirts came from or the little shuffle he did with his feet when he was trying to remember where he’d left something? She knew too much about him. He knew too much about her. She could still recognize the charming man who’d left her. And she was still very much the same person who’d been so easy to leave.
Rose heard Tom puttering again in the bathroom. She knew what he was looking for.
“You can use my toothpaste if you didn’t bring any,” Rose said without turning over. “But not my toothbrush.”
“Too late,” he said around it.