Chapter Fourteen
Adelaide
“If you don’t mind,” I say, unlocking my front door approximately fifteen minutes later. “I think I might have one of my dad’s shirts. You could change into it while yours dries.”
“Really, it’s fine,” Zander says, like I can’t count every contour on his chest.
I swing the door open and kick off my shoes. Without thinking, I pull my tank top over my head, exposing my years-old nude bra. I feel the flush creep up my chest instantly, and have no choice but to play it off because my shirt is too soaked to put back on.
“Gimme your shirt.” I say, turning around to face him. His eyes dart down to the dip of the bra, then back to my face. “Make it even.”
He chuckles. “You’re the one who took your shirt off first.”
“Ah, yeah, you caught me. I control the weather and I’m trying to get you naked.” He shakes his head, but doesn’t move. “If you don’t want to wear my dad’s clothes, you could just exist without a shirt while I put it in the dryer.”
He swallows, making his throat bob, then reaches for the hem of his shirt. My eyes draw to the inch of skin exposed on his torso with this subtle movement. Okay, I understand the hesitation.
“Only if you exist the same way,” he says and pulls his shirt off in one fast, fluid motion.
I hold a hand out. “Deal. But I’m switching bras. This one’s soaked.”
“I can tell.”
I glance down. It’s a basic, minimal padding, zero underwire bra, glued to my skin from the rain. My nipples are poking through. I shrug.
“I can find something better. Do you want your shorts dried as well, or…?”
“I’ll keep them on, I think. They’re not too bad.”
That’s a fabulous answer. I have many questions about what’s underneath those basketball shorts.
But I don’t think today is the day. Not if I can control myself.
Which I can. I’m a fully capable adult who can wait to see the penis belonging to the guy she likes.
But if he sent me any hints…I’d drop my panties like that.
“Okay,” I say and have to clear my throat. Twice. “I’ll take these to the dryer and then I can show you around. Feel free to explore.”
I escape to the laundry room on the second floor, needing to shake off the image of a wet and shirtless Zander that’s filling my brain. But I know I’m going to go back downstairs and be faced with the exact same image of him. So. Crap.
I peel off the remainder of my clothes and throw them all in the dryer.
And then I realize I didn’t think this through because now I’m fully naked and have no clean clothes in here.
Huffing out a deep sigh, I peer around the doorway to make sure Zander hasn’t followed me up, then book it to my room.
I grab a generic pair of black shorts and a pastel pink bralette.
In the full-length mirror mounted on my closet door, I note you can still see my nipples.
Great.
You know you guys can chill, right?
I close my eyes and exhale. Okay. Nothing is happening right now.
It’s just your brain overreacting to seeing him shirtless and that kiss in the rain and, yeah, maybe he was a little excited too and you could feel that.
But nothing has to happen today. And even if it does, there’s no reason to be freaking out.
It’s Zander. You don’t have to fake it with him.
You’ve never hidden your emotions from him, which is rare, so there’s no reason why you’d have to fake an orgasm for him.
But what if I do?
Okay. Stop stop stop stop stop.
Towels. Just get some towels and go from there.
I step into the hallway. It’s brighter than it was when I went into my room.
I glance out the window at the end of the hall.
The sun’s peeking through a cloud, giving the briefest suggestion of a rainbow.
I pull on the green doors of the linen closet.
My plan was to paint flowers around the edges of this closet. I haven’t gotten there yet.
“Okay,” I say, bounding down the stairs with a pile of towels. “Dry thyself!”
I throw one at Zander, who is inspecting the wood I’ve left on the floor of the alcove beneath my stairs.
The towel lands on his head. He straightens and runs his hands over the towel, drying his hair, before pulling the towel off entirely.
I watch the muscles in his back as he dries his chest and shoulders.
He is a literal thirst trap and I have to stop watching or I risk spontaneously combusting.
I bend and twist my hair into a towel wrap, then set it on top of my head.
“What’s the wood about?” Zander asks, then laughs awkwardly.
“I’m just happy to see you,” I say and skip over to the two by fours. I hand Zander another towel. “So many things to get distracted by in my house and you’re drawn to a random pile of wood.”
“Well, I was a carpenter. I think that’s allowed. What’re you building?”
“Shelves,” I say, then eye him appreciatively.
He wraps the new towel around his waist to absorb some of the water from his shorts.
This does wondrously unfortunate things for my imagination.
“The bench is here already, but I want to make, like, little shelves on the end. It’s kind of self-centred.
But I think it would be cool to have all my books right here as you walk in. ”
“Not self-centred at all. You’ve earned it.” He runs his hand over the pink velour cushion, then the back wall. His eyes scan the wood on the floor and the space I want to build them. “This is doable. Do you need help?”
“I wouldn’t say no. Do you think I can wallpaper them to match?”
“Definitely. This house…” There are stars in his eyes as he finds purchase on every nook and cranny I’ve poured myself into. This reaction and he’s only seen a fraction of what I’ve done here. “It’s like sunshine. You’re sunshine.”
My cheeks flush and I find myself looking down at my rainbow toenails.
“It wasn’t always that way. I didn’t have the balls to change all this until a few years ago.
When I turned eighteen, my dad told me that my mom left me the house.
I don’t know what generous stroke made her decide on that…
but it’s mine. He moved out once I finished my master’s degree.
Didn’t want to be here any longer. Part of me didn’t want to be, either.
I kind of wanted to move away and have a fresh start, but I know what this house means to the family, and I’d already put a lot of myself into the garden, so I thought, why not put my whole self into the house? ”
“Yeah, I can see that,” Zander says and walks further into the innermost workings of my mind.
He smiles as he walks through the archway into the family room.
I thought I would be wasting a perfectly good arch if I didn’t paint a rainbow around it.
“God, this is so you. You’re like a little whimsical elf.
Have you ever thought about writing fantasy? ”
I laugh. “I do love Lord of the Rings, but I know my limits. I don’t think I could ever come up with something like that.”
“I dunno. Seeing all this, I kind of feel like you could do anything.”
I move to tuck hair behind my ear, as one does when a compliment rolls in, but remember I’ve put my hair up in the towel. I untwist the wrap as Zander moves into my garish kitchen. The walls are a bright pink, with vibrant yellow and pale blue accents. He looks back at me and grins.
“What are all these little buildings?”
“It’s a Spice Village!” I say, throwing my towel over a wicker chair pulled into my kitchen table. The purple pillow at the back of the chair slides down.
“What’s a Spice Village?” He reaches out to the scalloped shelf that holds all my ceramic spice jars, then pulls back. “Can I touch them?”
“Yeah, go ahead.” I pluck the chive house off the shelf.
Its roof is purple, with three arched windows.
Vines are painted around the word chive, a pink door below a darling awning finishing it off.
Zander takes it from me gingerly. “They’re this kitschy thing from the 80s.
There’s twenty-four of them, each a different spice as a cute little house.
I started collecting them in university.
Of course, they just brought them back a few years ago, but all of mine are the authentic originals. I’m only missing saffron and tarragon.”
Zander turns the building over in his hands. He beams. “You’re never beating the whimsical elf allegations.”
“Good. I’m a silly little whimsical elf…who is also a goose.”
He places the chives back on the shelf, then picks up my most faded spice jar. The orange roof of cinnamon is dull, almost brown. Its upper windows match the chives.
“Where do you find these?”
“Thrift stores if you’re really lucky. eBay and Etsy if you’re desperate.”
“And you’re desperate?”
“Always.” I bite my bottom lip to hold back a laugh as Zander chuckles. “Can I show you another whimsical elf thing?”
“Absolutely.”
“Okay, are you ready? You said the inside of the house is like sunshine and so me, but just wait for it. And drop the towel. You won’t need it, I promise.”
He does as he’s told, literally dropping the towel to the ground on the spot.
His shorts are still wet, clinging to him in a way that’s the slightest bit obscene, but I can also tell they’re dryer than they were when we walked in.
I extend my arm, offering him a hand. He takes it readily, a dreamy smile on his face.
My heart skips a beat at his dimples, at the smile lines beside his eyes, at the way he seems to melt as he looks at me.
My stomach swoops. I’m such a goner.
I drag him through my cozy dining room, past the board and batten I added earlier this year, and stop in front of the sliding doors to my backyard.
Light filters in through the rainbows of the stained glass window cling I stuck to the back doors five years ago, one of my first ever home improvement projects.
I flick the lock and slide the door open.
The wall of heat hits me. Clearly the rainstorm brought no relief from the late-June humidity.
“You’ll be dry in seconds in this,” I mumble. I jump out onto my flagstone patio. “Welcome to my garden.”
“Holy shit,” Zander whispers.
He stands and takes it in. Beyond the Muskoka chairs on the patio is a yard filled to the brim with plants.
Plants I’ve been painstakingly taking care of since I was thirteen.
I have a bed of fruits and vegetables, making their slow journeys toward summer and fall harvests.
An upcycled wooden pallet, painted a bright yellow and mounted against a wall of the pergola covering the patio, acts as a vertical garden of multi-coloured petunias.
Small houses and pavers surround the tree growing dead-smack in the middle of my lawn, fairy statues, gnomes, and toadstools in its midst. Roses and honeysuckle and hydrangeas and asters and peonies and chrysanthemums, growing, thriving, or waiting for their chance throughout summer.
Rows of flowerpots sit on shelves I added to the perimeter fence.
Flowers I simply could not find room for but needed nonetheless.
“You really are something else. This is…wow.”
“Thank you,” I say, smiling. “Me and my grandma hobbies appreciate it.”
He laughs, and it’s such a sound of pure happiness that I wish I could bottle it up. “You do have a lot of grandma hobbies. How do you get any work done?”
I shrug. “I figure I have lots of time. Women with grandma hobbies apparently live an extra eight years, on average. So prepare to be sick of me, I guess.”
“I could never.”
He walks to the centre of my magnum opus and slowly rotates until he’s done a full 360.
For a moment, neither of us moves. Zander exists in the centre of my garden, and somehow that just makes sense.
It feels right. The sun shines on him, glinting off the honey brown highlights throughout his dark brown mop, contouring the lines and shadows on his bare torso, the still-pink jagged line of his scar.
He’s beautiful and flawed, like every flower in my garden.
None of them are perfect, but together they create something magical.
I want that magic. And despite all I know and all the opinions being thrown at me, I think he might be my magic.
“You know,” I say, joining him in the garden.
I loop my arms around his neck, pulling him to me and revelling in the feel of his skin flush against mine.
“I picked up all these hobbies after my mom left. I was so depressed and felt so unlovable for so long. Then my dad made me a garden in the backyard, just that rickety old bed in the back, told me I could grow whatever I wanted. It all blossomed, pardon the pun, from there.” I swallow back the building emotion.
Zander’s hand cradles my cheek, brushes a tear away.
Okay. Guess I’m crying. “With you…This is the first time I’ve felt so wholly accepted.
She made me feel like I wasn’t worth that. And you—thank you.”
“I never would have guessed you felt that way,” he whispers, and I feel the words throughout my entire body. “You’re just so unashamedly you.”
“Yeah,” I say with a wet laugh. “It’s all an act. I’m a lot less cool than you think I am.”
“Oh, I know you’re not cool. You sustain yourself off grandma hobbies. It’s just that you go for it. I admire that. And of course you’re worth it. If anything, I’m the one who’s not.”
“Stop that. You have to stop telling yourself that.”
“As long as we’re being vulnerable here…
I was feeling…I pulled away when we were at Gran’s because I’m feeling the weight of us being together.
I don’t understand why you’re giving me the time of day.
Trust me, I’m not complaining, I’m just not used to it.
” I bring his face to mine and kiss him, gently.
He pulls back, brushes his lips against my forehead, then leans his against mine.
“I met your ex today. He seemed less than impressed about us being together, and then hearing about you fighting with your dad. Addie, are you sure this is worth it?”
“You met Dan? He kind of sucks so I wouldn’t put any merit into his words.” I sigh, deeply. “You are worth it. I promise. I’m in for this if you are.”
“I think I’ve been in since the moment we met.”