She was wearing a sundress that fit close to her skin and hugged her curves, and as I glanced down along her figure when her back was too me, I focused on that “remarkably great ass” Shawn had been talking about. It was round, and she still looked toned and tight under the clingy fabric of the dress.
When she turned to look at me, she seemed to suddenly realize I was shirtless. Of course my eyes were moving over the light gray cotton material of her dress, focusing entirely too much on the small swell of her tits, so clearly I’d realized she had breasts too. Her eyes wandered quickly over my chest, straying down to my stomach, and then bouncing back up to my face. She cleared her throat and looked away for a moment, swallowing visibly.
I kept my mouth shut, waiting to see where she was going to take this.
“I always loved this house,” she said as she looked around the empty room that was still very much a work in progress.
“What did you like so much about it? The dark brown carpet that reeked of my dad’s cigarette smoke, the equally dark paneling on pretty much every wall? Or maybe it’s the avocado green cupboards in the kitchen?”
She just smiled this small smile that took me back to another time. She didn’t realize it, but she was a walking memory to me—everything about her meant something. And this smile was a chastising one—not real chastisement, though. The kind that looked more like she was trying to hide a crush by playfully scorning something I said. I got this smile a lot “back in the day,” as Shawn would say. But it was unexpected now, and when I saw it, my stomach muscles clenched tight and my throat constricted.
“No?” I asked. “It must be the tan linoleum in the kitchen that’s been peeling since the last time you were in this house.”
“Bingo,” she said. “I’ve a thing for peeling linoleum.” She wandered around the room for a moment as I watched her. “It’s got good bones,” she mused.
I smirked. “Does it? Does anyone actually know what ‘good bones’ means, or is it something we’ve all just picked up from watching too much HGTV?”
She shrugged. “Maybe it means … the footings are poured deep … the studs up to code.” She shook her head as she shrugged. “Just … good bones.”
“Well it has some skeletons in the closet if that’s what you’re trying to say.” I stared at her, and the lightness in her expression faded slowly before my eyes.
She ignored my comment as she wandered again. “I didn’t realize Shawn still lived here. You two were good friends in high school.” She approached the nearby window, looking out toward the dirt parking area out front.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“Does he know?”
She brought me up short with that question for a moment, or rather, her willingness to ask it so bluntly right out of the gate. Of course I’m the one who referenced the skeletons, so should I be surprised she’d bait me as well? Instead of dealing with the weight of that question, I smirked. “No, Hell. He doesn’t know how much you used to have a crush on me.”
She stared at me expressionlessly. “I didn’t… That’s not what I meant,” she finally said quietly.
“I know.” My sarcasm was gone, and I stared at the floor between us for a moment, taking a deep breath. “No, he doesn’t.”
She nodded, but her focus shifted out the window again for a moment, and when she looked back, her eyes glanced down along my torso, quickly flitting over my skin. She couldn’t seem to let go of the fact I didn’t have a shirt on, or maybe her eyes just didn’t want to cooperate, because she kept glancing away as though embarrassed she couldn’t stop looking at me.
“How is he … Shawn?” she asked nervously. “I didn’t realize you two were still friends.”
“We’re not. He’s just still here, and seeing as I am too now…”
“So does that make us friends?” Her lips pulled up slightly, but just as quickly as the small smile appeared it fell.
“BFFs til the day we die,” I remarked, letting my lips pull up too. “So what’s with the social visit? Didn’t think professors were supposed to fraternize with their students.”
“Just getting your attention,” she repeated my line from class a few days before.
I laughed and crossed my arms on my chest. “Well, you did. You always did.”
Her cheeks instantly blushed. “So where’ve you been all these years? What have you been up to?” Her expression was cool. She may have nothing at all in common with Shawn, but they certainly both had a shared resentment for my abrupt departure from Hazleton eleven years before.
“Not much,” I responded. I wasn’t one to fall into verbal traps easily, and rather than let her resentment drive the conversation, I decided to shake her up a bit. “I bounced around here and there. Drank some drinks, did some drugs, ate some … *.” I smirked at her. “Fucked some too… Among other things.”
“Oh…” She looked around awkwardly for a moment. “Well, that’s…” She nodded.
“How about you?”
“I … uh … had some drinks,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t—”
“Eat any *?” I asked.
She smiled nervously. “It was on my shortlist. But I was busy.”