But, alas, my last name may be Thompson now, but I am still a McKenna through and through. “A-okay, Captain Steroids!” I say brightly. “Could you be any more jacked?”
He shrugs. “You know I like to work out.” I swear he flexes his arms and chest on purpose. Either that, or he has a severe case of muscle spasms and should seek out the nearest acupuncturist as soon as possible.
“You look like you like to eat bricks,” I say. Because it makes so much sense.
He laughs. Ye gods, that sound.
I laugh, too, but only because I don’t know what we’re laughing at. His is the most erotic laugh I’ve ever heard, all dusky and full of gravel. I sound like a chipmunk getting run over by a car. Inappropriate erections, french-fry stress sweat, and dying chipmunk chortling. I am not fit to exist in this world.
I eventually stop braying and there’s this weird crackle of electricity in the air as we look at each other. My skin thrums with the current of it.
“It’s weird,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
He catches my eye. “You. Here.”
I’m confused by the sudden change in subject. “In Tucson?”
He shakes his head and gestures between us. “Here. With me. You know. Us. I think I’d forgotten how this could be.”
I’ve pushed him too far. Goddammit. “It’s weird.”
He nods.
“Good weird or bad weird?”
He sighs and says, “The best kind of weird there is,” like it’s the easiest thing in the world.
Instead of replying with something devastatingly witty (since apparently I think I’m still capable of such things), I gape at him, opening and closing my mouth, showing him my best impression of a trout dying on dry land.
He says nothing more, just grabs a shirt and a pair of cargo shorts out of his bag before turning and walking out of the room.
But not before I see the small smile on his face that makes every single resolution I’ve ever made about Dominic Miller go flying right out the window. It’s good to know my convictions go by way of the wind over such a little thing. Either that, or at some point in the past four years, Dom was initiated as a voodoo high priest and I’ve just been cursed with some hoodoo.
Either way, I am so completely and utterly fucked.
20. Where Tyson Beholds the Awesome Wonder That Is Paul Auster
EVER HAD to sleep next to someone while making a conscious effort not to touch them accidentally at any point during the night? Especially when said bedmate apparently considers normal sleepwear to be some raggedy workout shorts and nothing else?
No?
Well, it blows. Like a lot. And by “sleep,” I really mean stare at the ceiling and wonder just how my life has gotten to this point, trying to go back day by day through my entire life to find out which of my actions are deserving of the karmic ass-kicking I’m currently receiving. Let’s see. Beach hippies. Drug use. Not living up to my full potential. Almost accidentally burning down the house one year to destroy the turkey so we could have a vegetarian Thanksgiving. Being completely and totally awesome. Geez. Take your pick. It literally could be any one of those things and many, many more. It’s hard to live a morally good life when you have a propensity for shenanigans.
It doesn’t help that the big oaf snoring loudly next to me (I knew it!) apparently has the propensity to splay out across the entire bed like he’s the only one in it. I watched as he got closer and closer and closer (never mind the fact that I was watching him while he slept—I tried not to think about how creepy that made me), and all the while, the space I had available to me became smaller and smaller. Eventually, I ended up in a tiny corner at the top of the bed, my butt against the headboard, wrapping myself around the pillow and glaring at Dominic, who I was by then convinced was doing this on purpose and had joined the ranks of villainy to conspire against me.
I last until about five thirty, when I jerk myself out of yet another doze where I’d fallen into a surreal dream where Dominic had awoken to find me draped across the top of him. That itself was okay (well, as okay as something like that can be), but then I opened my mouth to give some sort of explanation, and a bucket of fried chicken legs fell out of my mouth onto Dom’s face. I tried to apologize, but then Dom started eating the chicken and that really grossed me out and I tried to run away only to fall into a pit filled with hippies in a drum circle, all smoking doobies and trying to put hemp necklaces around me. I don’t even want to try and begin to analyze that. I don’t want to know what that says about my fragile psyche. Something chickeny, to be sure.
I turn to slide out of the bed carefully, doing my best not to wake him so he doesn’t see me scowling at him, muttering under my breath as I try and cast hexes in his general direction, even though I haven’t yet become a high priest capable of such things. Apparently I’m incapable of multitasking after only having ten minutes of sleep because instead of standing on my feet like a normal person, my knee catches the slightly open drawer of the dirty perverted nightstand, knocking it open and onto the floor, followed quickly by the bowl of condom
s and at least four different kinds of lube. I couldn’t have made more noise had I blasted a trumpet in his ear while surrounded by a flock of blue-footed boobies during mating season.
I bend down to pick up everything I’ve knocked off the table and have managed to grab a couple of items off the floor when Dominic says sleepily, “What are you doing?”
“Just cleaning. Go back to sleep.”
“What you got there?”