“No, Hartley.”
He let go, but his brown eyes were exasperated. And who was I kidding? I was totally stuck, and he was bent on helping me. “Piggy-back works better,” I said in a small voice.
Without a word, he turned around and knelt in front of me on his good knee. I wrapped my arms around his chest, and he reached back to hook his hands under my knees. I rose into the air on his back and he limped for the door. The room spun gently, and I realized I was more drunk than I’d thought.
“Okay,” he said. “Leaning on the banister, and going slow, we’ll make it.”
Going slow. Because of his healing knee. Very slow.
Damn.
“Hartley?” I quavered as his back pressed into my bladder. “I really need to pee.”
“Seriously?”
“Would I lie about a thing like that?”
He stopped walking, poised on the landing between Dan’s door and the neighboring room across the hall. Between the two rooms was a shared bathroom. Hartley put a hand on the door.
Before he pushed it open, the neighbor door swung in, revealing Stacia in a sexy silk nightie. No wonder he’d seen my chair downstairs — she was Dan’s neighbor. “Hartley? What the hell? You said you were just brushing your teeth. Aren’t you coming to bed?”
“Looks like no,” he said. “Excuse us.”
When he pushed open the bathroom door, the automatic lights blinked on, blinding me.
“Just set me on the toilet.” I said in a tiny voice. “Please.” And then kill me. Because this is mortifying.
He eased me down and then stepped a few feet away, his back to me.
“Um, Hartley? Can you leave?”
“I’m not looking.”
“Please.”
“Christ, Callahan,” he said, the weight of the world in those two words. “Don’t fall in.”
Someone just kill me already.
I waited until he left the room before fumbling madly with my pants. I yanked at the waistband, hitching myself out, hoping my body would cooperate and hold on for another ten seconds while I wriggled the way a snake sheds its skin. Thank goodness for elastic waistbands.
In the hallway, Stacia and Hartley began arguing. “My friend needs help, Stass. It is what it is.”
“I don’t see why…” she said.
“You don’t see why,” Hartley cut her off. “Because helping people isn’t your style.”
“This was supposed to be our night together,” she said.
“Was it? I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“Say you’re coming in!”
“Look,” he said. “Leave your door open. We need to talk anyway.”
“Well, that sounds like fun,” she snapped. The door slammed.
I peed for what seemed like ten minutes. Then I inched my clothing back up, hurrying, yet trying not to slip into the toilet. When I flushed, he knocked on the door.
“All clear.”
Hartley came in and knelt down in front of the toilet, and then picked me up again. Stacia’s door was closed, and he got started on the stairs without comment. But it was slow going. Bracing himself against the banister meant letting go of my right leg. I used all my quad strength to try to tuck it in. But it sagged anyway.
From my perch on his back, my nose was inches from his neck. It was the same neck that I had once stroked with my fingers while we kissed.
Hell and damn it all.
When we made it to the third floor landing, Hartley set me down with a sigh. “Half-time break.” He sat down next to me and dug his thumbs into the muscles of his injured leg.
“The extra weight is killing you, isn’t it?” I asked. Another night, another disaster. All I’d wanted was to have a beer with the team, but I’d made a mess of things.
“It was already sore,” he said.
“Liar.” I grabbed my own calf and set it down onto a stair below me. Then I did the same with my other one. Then I pressed myself up with my arms and dropped my butt down onto the next step. Then I started over — move one leg, move the other, scoot down a step. And so on.
I got to the bottom quickly, pausing only once when a group of girls opened the front door and charged up the stairs. “Hi, Hartley!” they sang out as they went by.
“Evening, ladies.” His voice was warm and casual, as if there was nowhere else he’d rather be than sitting in a grimy stairwell with his gimpy friend.
After they passed by and out of sight, I descended quickly to the bottom stair.
“You know,” he said, stepping around me, fetching my chair and pulling it over to the bottom step. “You made that look easy.”