“I’m roasting. What the fuck is the deal with the heater?” he said.
“Daria put in a work order. I asked her yesterday.” The furnace in our hall was on the fritz and wouldn’t work for three days straight, then it would suddenly start working but wouldn’t stop. That’s what you get when you live in an old building in New York City.
I started to shimmy out of my tights. “Turn around,” I commanded, but he continued to watch me. “Turn around, I’m gonna change.” He finally did. Begrudgingly. I threw on a summery flower dress that was sitting in a pile of clothes on my bed, then I sat down on the floor and watched as Matt kicked off his shoes. He slid across the hardwood in his socks and tried to pry open the window. “It’ll get cold in here really fast if you open that.”
He turned and eyed me, wearing next to nothing in my tiny spaghetti-strap dress. And then he took his shirt off. My breath hitched every time I saw him shirtless. His shoulders were broad but his waist was narrow, and he wore his jeans low on his hips, sometimes with boxers, sometimes without. That night he was sans boxers and wearing the shoelace belt I’d made for him.
“Whatchya lookin’ at?” He walked toward me, smirking.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I was looking at your cool belt.”
“Sure you were.” He grabbed the bottle of tequila from my bookshelf, took a swig, and handed it to me, but I waved it off. I couldn’t drink another drop. “My other belt broke. My mom’s going to make me a new one when I’m there for break.”
“She makes belts?”
“Yeah, she’s crafty.”
“How does she do it?”
“She uses little metal tools to create designs in the leather.” He pointed to the leather strap on his camera, which was resting on my nightstand where he had left it the day before. I didn’t look over. I was still busy staring at his happy trail . . . which didn’t escape him. When I looked up at his face, I saw that his eyes were on me, unblinking.
I shook myself out of the daze and reached over to pick up the camera. There was an intricate pattern of circles and triangles perforated into the leather. “That’s really cool.”
Hovering over me, he held his hand out. “Come on, dance with me.”
“What? No.”
“Get up here and dance with me, chicken.”
“I’m not a very good dancer and I’m too tipsy.”
“You seemed to be pretty good at that little flirty thing in the lounge with what’s-his-face.”
“I feel stupid about that. Please don’t bring it up. Anyway, you were the one doing body shots with Jennifer Aniston.”
“She does kind of look like Jennifer Aniston, huh?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Come on, get up here. I’ll lead. All you have to do is follow.”
I took his hand and stood up. I laughed nervously but he didn’t hesitate; he pressed one hand into the small of my back, grabbed my other hand in his, and pulled me into his bare chest. “Hand on my shoulder, Gracie.”
The song “With or Without You” by U2 came on. Matt swayed to the beat then pushed me back and twirled me around. When he brought me back in, our bodies were even closer than before. He dropped his head down and kissed my bare shoulder. My heart was racing. His skin was hot against mine. We stopped moving and stepped away from each other, just a few inches. I ran my index finger down the indentation of his obliques and admired the sculpted muscles of his lower abdomen. The deep V of his abs seemed to point down, sending my eyes on a little trip south. I could see from the way his chest was moving that his breathing had picked up, too.
“What are you doing?” His voice was low.
“Sorry . . .” I tried to pull my hand away from his stomach but he grabbed it and put it back.
“You don’t have to stop.”
I put my hands on his waist and slid them up his hard sides to his chest and the soft tuft of hair in the center before they came to rest behind his neck. We began to sway, like we were slow dancing. His eyes were closed but he was smiling. “Mmm. My turn.”
“You don’t take me seriously, do you, Matt?”
His eyes shot open. He pulled me flush to his body so I could feel him hard against me. “Is that serious enough for you?” he said, roughly.
I pushed him away and staggered sideways. He sat down on the bed and tapped his foot on the CD player to stop the music. Leaning over, he set his elbows on his knees, letting his head fall between them. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” I shuffled across the floor, feeling embarrassed for the first time in a long time. I plopped down next to him and threw my arm over his shoulder. We lay back across the bed and stared up at the ceiling. I rested my head on his arm like we had done so many times before.
“It’s not fair for me to do that. I’m really sorry, Matt.”