“You’ll be here to puke and not to look at me naked,” I say.
“I don’t mess with Logan’s women,” he says. Then he goes on to say, “Ever. It’s a brother thing.” He burps and I worry that he’s about to toss up his cookies again, but he doesn’t. He smiles at me and walks out, closing the door behind him.
“I’m not Logan’s,” I say more to myself than to him.
He opens the door back up, startling me. “Yes, you are.”
Logan
Kit’s in my bathroom and she’s naked. Or she will be in just a minute. I look down the hallway at the closed bathroom door. If it was any other girl, I’d be in there with her. But with the tattoo this girl wanted, I already know there’s a vulnerability there that no one gets to see. I don’t want to make her run away. I want to get to know this one. I’ve never had this kind of curiosity about a girl before. I usually sleep with them. Then I send them home. That’s one of the reasons why it surprised me so much to find Terri in my bed tonight. She knew what we did wasn’t the start of a relationship. I never bought her flowers or candy or took her on a date. I never bought her dinner. I just said let’s go with my eyes and led her back to my room. Why she thought I might want a repeat performance is beyond my comprehension.
I go get another beer and Paul glares at me like the time I let the toilet lid fall on his dick when he was seven and I was four.
“How did you end up with her?” he asks.
I shrug. I found her in the subway tunnel busking for change.
“And she followed you home like a lost puppy?”
No. I had to carry her. You saw me. Why is he asking so many questions? It’s not like I’ve never brought a girl home before. I followed her to see where she was going after I bought her dinner. And she stood in line at the homeless shelter until they closed the doors. They were full. She didn’t have anywhere to go, so I brought her here.
He’s still glaring at me.
What? I ask.
“I told you not to mess with that one.” He sits back, huffing out a big breath. “She’s not like the others.”
I know that. I’m going to sleep on the couch, dickwad. I’m not going to sleep with her.
His brows shoot up.
Shut up, I sign.
“You’re going to sleep on the couch.” He might need a two ton jack to pick his jaw up off the floor.
I nod. How’s Matt?
“Sick.” He takes a swig of his beer. “I don’t think he wants anyone to know.”
I nod.
His brows are still up. “You’re really going to sleep on the couch?”
I nod again, raising my hands in the air to say what the fuck.
He shakes his head. “I just don’t believe it.”
I have a heart.
“Yeah, but it usually gets overruled by your dick.” He takes a sip of his beer. “Does she know you put her tattoo on your wrist yet?”
I shake my head. Not yet.
“Are you going to tell her?”
Why should I?
“Maybe because it’s personal to her. I still don’t understand why you wanted it.”
He’s going to get a permanent crease between his eyebrows if he keeps scowling like that.
I don’t understand it either. I look toward the bathroom door again. Does she look familiar to you? Like you’ve seen her before?
He shakes his head. “I don’t think so.”
I nod and shrug. I would say she just has one of those familiar looking faces, but she’s so fucking beautiful that can’t be the case. She’s gorgeous. She would stand out in a crowd. And that’s not just because she’s in my bathroom naked.
“How’s your nose?” Paul asks.
I shrug. It’s fine. Nothing I can do about it either way. And I kind of deserved it.
The bathroom door opens up and she comes out. She’s wrapped in a towel and her hair is wet and hanging down over her shoulders. She looks like she just brushed a comb through it. She doesn’t have any makeup on. There’s no black stuff around her eyes and I see she has a line of freckles across the bridge of her nose. She ducks quickly into my bedroom, and I sit back, forcing myself not to go and see her. She probably wanted to get dressed somewhere that’s not all steamy.
I get up and go to the bathroom, closing the door behind me. The mirror is fogged up from the steam of her shower. The countertop is clean for the first time in months, and she even cleaned the toilet and the shower before she got in it, apparently. Everything is all clean and shiny. I assume it’s because she’s a girl that she felt the need to clean it before she used it. It looks nice and I remind myself to tell her thank you.
She left her shampoo bottle in the shower, and her soap. It smells nice in the bathroom for a change and I realize it’s her stuff that left that clean scent in the air. Makes me want to go and sniff her. I want to bury my face in her hair to see if it smells as good as the bathroom does.