“Define night?”
“If the sidewalks are mostly empty, that’s night.” His arm motioned out the windows at the quiet streets. “Otherwise it’s just dark, and then it’s okay for you to be out walking by yourself.”
“You’ve actually put some thought into this, haven’t you?” I said as we moved to the next couple of tables.
“And while I’m on the topic of important life lessons, here’s another one.” He turned to face me, pointing the spray bottle of cleaner at my chest. “If some guy you don’t know comes up and offers to buy you a drink, what he’s really saying is, ‘I don’t have enough money for a hooker, so I’m hoping this twelve-dollar cosmo will serve the same purpose.’”
My hand moved to my hip. “Oh, well we had guys like that where I’m from. Except we didn’t have drinks that expensive. They were like five dollars, or half price on Ladies’ Night. Or so I heard from older friends because, yeah, I never would have snuck into a bar.” When I bit my lip, that’s what gave me away.
Soren grinned. “Wait. You, Na?ve in Nebraska, used to sneak into bars?”
“If that’s some epic surprise, I think it’s you, Na?ve in New York, who has a few things to learn.”
Soren moved beside me, cleaning off the chairs as I wiped the tables. “You really used to sneak into bars?”
“It was either that or go cow-tipping. Both involved figuring out how to handle large masses of meat, but usually the guys in the bars smelled better than the cows in the pastures.”
Soren was looking at me with a new set of lenses. “Maybe you’re the one who needs to teach me a few lessons.”
“My home opener is tomorrow night. You’re going to be there, right?” Soren hollered from the bathroom after turning off the shower.
Finally. He’d been in there forever and I needed to pee. Sharing a bathroom with a member of the opposite sex provided its challenges. If I had a girl for a roommate, I would have just walked in and peed, but that wasn’t exactly appropriate with a male roommate.
Especially the one who’d been in my deliciously filthy dream that might have involved the bathroom counter last night.
“For the thousandth time, yes, I’m going to be there.” I turned off the kitchen sink once it was full. The dishes would need to soak for a while before I could even attempt scrubbing them. Someone had been slacking on cleaning up after themselves lately, but I tried to be more chill about it. With the season getting underway, Soren had been crazy busy. I saw him in ten-and twenty-minutes chunks most days.
“Good, because I got you front-row seats.”
“I didn’t know I needed to have tickets for the game.”
“You don’t. But I taped a big sheet of paper that says reserved on the front row bench.”
“And you ‘reserved’ enough space for me and a couple of friends?” I added another squirt of dish soap to the sink.
“I reserved one spot.”
“Soren, I told you I was bringing Ariel and Jane.”
His head peaked out from behind the door. “You told me you were bringing a couple of model friends, so between the three of you, one spot should be plenty of space.”
“The model jokes were old two weeks ago. Time to move on to something else.” Pulling the fridge open, I looked for my Bing cherry yogurt. I was craving something sweet before bed and I’d finished the last of my dark chocolate squares last night. There wasn’t a lot in the fridge, but I scooted stuff around to make sure my yogurt wasn’t hiding behind the tub of margarine or the bottle of lemon juice. No luck. “Did you eat my last cherry yogurt?”
He was quiet just long enough for me to have my answer.
“Did I?” His tone gave it away too.
“Soren, come on. I don’t want to have to label every little thing I bring into this kitchen.” My stomach growled, making me crankier than I normally would have been over a missing yogurt. I had some money coming in now, so I could afford to feed myself, but time was my problem. I didn’t have much extra to swing by a grocery store every few days.
“I was planning on making it to the store tonight to replace it for you, but life didn’t go as planned.” He walked out of the bathroom wearing nothing but that same small, white towel cinched around his waist. It was practically a singlet for all the coverage it provided.
I looked away from his wet, nearly naked body, focusing on the empty fridge again. “Well, because your life didn’t go as planned, now I have to decide between chemically engineered butter or fake lemon juice to satisfy my sweet craving.”
“You can have some of my Nutter Butters,” he suggested, pausing in the doorway of the kitchen. “Actually, no, you can’t. I ate the last of those earlier too. Dipped in the cherry yogurt.”
When I groaned and shut the fridge, I waited for him to move out of the way. I didn’t want to have to rub against him to pass. My feelings circling Soren were complicated enough without adding the knowledge of what his wet skin felt like against mine.
“But I did do the laundry.”
“How does you doing your laundry help me feel better about stolen cherry yogurt?” Since he wasn’t stepping aside to let me move by, I slid past him as quickly as I could, smashing myself into the doorframe so my skin came in as little contact with his skin as possible.
“Because I did yours at the same time. Your laundry basket was overflowing worse than mine, so I just did them both.” He sounded proud of himself, but I froze.
“You did my laundry?” My stomach swirled as I tried to recall what had been in that basket. “You went through my dirty clothes?”
“Well, yeah, I had to sort the lights from the darks from the delicates. I might be a caveman, but I don’t want my loincloth dyed pink on accident.” He motioned at his white towel which was slipping lower down his hips. Low enough I could just make out . . .
Giving my head a shake, I looked away. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“I know, right? Who would have thought I’d willingly do laundry that wasn’t my own?” Soren’s footsteps padded behind me. He clearly wasn’t getting the clue that I was pissed at him for going through my laundry. “By the way, in case you want a dude’s opinion on the matter, your underwear is smokin’ hot. Like seriously, the things wet dreams are made of.”
“Soren!” I didn’t realize I was pitching my jacket that was draped over the sofa at him until it hit his face.
“I didn’t know they allowed that kind of underwear to be bought, sold, or worn in the Bible Belt. How are the guys going to spend all day working those fields when all that’s on their mind is plowing something else?”
“You are . . .” I grumbled, so flustered I couldn’t think of the right word to sum up exactly what he was.