“Okay, just checking. Is there anything I can get you?”
“No.”
I was silent for a moment. “Is there still hot water left?” Did that make me sound selfish? I knew Brody’s hot water didn’t last long, so it surprised me she was still in there. “I’m not asking for myself,” I clarified. “I just wanted to see if you were comfortable or…”
I needed to stop talking. There wasn’t anything I could do, and my questions were probably hurting more than helping.
“I’ll be out soon,” she said, and we both left it at that.
About ten minutes later, she came out of the bathroom wearing sweatpants and an oversize Zeta Eta Chi T-shirt.
From the couch, I could see Sophia walk over to the refrigerator and pull out some Gatorade. Then she opened a pill bottle, popped a few into her mouth, and swallowed them down with a drink. It was obvious, at least to me, that we were intentionally trying to avoid eye contact.
“Don’t feel weird about what happened,” I said.
“I don’t.”
Unconvinced, I nodded, even though I’m sure she couldn’t see me.
“Do you feel weird?” she asked.
“Not really. I guess just a little bad that you seem so disturbed by it.” I almost laughed.
“I didn’t see your…” Now she was facing me, one finger gesturing toward my lap before she seemed to realize it only made the situation more awkward to point to my dick and dropped her hand. “Thingy.”
“The anatomical terminology is ‘enormous wang,’” I said, hoping to make her laugh.
She smiled, but it seemed to be more out of embarrassment. “Since I didn’t see it, I can neither confirm nor deny the size of it.”
“Guess you’ll just have to take my word for it, then.”
She rounded the small bar in the kitchen and came over to sit in the chair next to the couch. “I was thinking it might be a good idea to establish some ground rules for living together.”
I’d heard worse ideas. “What’d you have in mind?”
“Well, for starters, probably closing and locking doors if you don’t want someone coming in.”
“I wasn’t the one who minded you coming in,” I said, and she gave me a look that was somehow both cute and chastising. “Okay, so I’ll make sure to close and lock the bathroom door when I’m in there.”
“Thank you.”
“It just feels cramped sometimes with all of the lotions and things all over the place,” I teased.
“Hey, there aren’t that many in there.”
“I counted no fewer than sixteen the other day.”
“You counted them?”
She sounded incredulous, but I couldn’t be sure if it was because she didn’t believe I’d counted them or because the number sounded so high.
“You don’t need all those, you know?” I wasn’t trying to tell her how to live, though I knew it probably sounded like that. “I just mean you look nice without all the makeup and face creams and stuff.”
She was beautiful, really. A smooth complexion, skin that looked soft and smelled like citrus and vanilla. I’d seem like a real psycho if I said any of those things, so I kept it simple.
When she gave me a small smile, some of the tension seemed to evaporate. “Thanks.”
“You could probably narrow it down to ten or eleven and that would be plenty,” I joked.
“Noted,” she said. “Anything else?”
“Uh-uh, it’s your turn.” There was no way I was getting myself in trouble by listing all the things she did to annoy me, even if that list was a short one.
“You leave all your half-filled glasses of water around. I feel like I’m living with that girl from the movie Signs.”
“Well, you’ll thank me if aliens ever attack.”
Laughing, she said, “Shut up.”
“Okay, I promise to try to put my dishes away if you promise to stop drinking and eating everything I bring into the apartment without asking.”
She looked taken aback. “I don’t eat and drink everything.”
I raised my eyebrows. She knew as well as I did that was exactly what she did.
“At the sorority house, we all chipped in equal amounts and we’d take turns stocking up on certain things.”
“Then maybe you should do more stocking up. Because right now, it’s like living with a teenage boy minus the bad hygiene.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“So is the tuna you made the other day that’s still sitting in a bowl in the fridge uncovered.”
“Hey! I thought we were taking turns.”
I chuckled. “Sorry.”
“Okay, last one and then we’ll be even.”
I nodded.
“You need to stop walking around without a shirt in the morning.”
I hated wearing clothing at home but was forced to at least wear pants because I was cohabitating with a female. I looked down at myself quickly before returning my gaze to her.
“I am wearing clothes.”
She breathed deeply and then let out a long sigh, her eyes avoiding mine for a moment before she looked back up at me.
“Are you really gonna make me say it?”
“I honestly have no idea what you’re about to say, so yes.”
“It’s because you’re sexy, okay? You’re hot. You have abs and broad shoulders”—she gestured around my body—“and a muscular chest. I shouldn’t be looking at you like I do or thinking the things I’m thinking. You’re supposed to be my brother. My very gay brother. So can you please just keep on as much clothing as possible?”
She let all of that out in what seemed like one gigantic breath. When she was done, she inhaled loudly again, like she was trying to extract all the oxygen out of the room at once.
“I guess I can do that,” I said.
But hearing Sophia admit she found me attractive didn’t make me want to put clothes on. It made me want to take more off.
Chapter Seven
D R E W
I’d been at the library for over two hours, and my eyes were beginning to blur. When I’d written—literally by hand—my paper a few nights ago, the words had flowed fairly easily. So easily, in fact, that my handwriting appeared barely legible now that I was forced to read it back to myself.
Typing on Brody’s laptop at home had been taking forever, so I thought coming to the library and using a desktop like I had in high school would make the process quicker. I was wrong. I’d been typing for well over an hour but only had a few pages done.
Who the hell wanted to read ten pages from every student in class, anyway? Teachers were just as crazy as I remembered them being in high school.
I was pecking at the keys, my head bouncing back and forth from the page to the keyboard, when someone took a seat beside me.
“You look like my grandmother trying to learn to text.”
I recognized the voice but didn’t look over, afraid of losing my place. I did smile, though. When I finished typing the sentence I was on, I settled back against the chair and brought a hand to the back of my neck to massage it a little.