My phone buzzed on my nightstand.
Three times in succession.
MIA: There are rich man shoes at the door and the shower is running
MIA: Tell me these are his
MIA: Is Mr. Ass in my shower right now???
Oh my God.
Hand over my mouth, I stared at the text while stilling long enough to listen for the sound of the shower.
Oh yeah.
Totally running. With Iain inside.
I processed this in the peaceful quiet of my room for another few seconds. But then the clock struck seven-thirty and my alarm went off.
MIA: Okay you are totally up GET OUT HERE RIGHT NOW
I burst out laughing, throwing my sheets off my body and getting up fast.
I was barely in the living room a full second before Mia hit me with her omigod eyes and firmly caught my elbow, hauling me into the kitchen while hissing, “What the fucking fuck, Holland!”
I was still laughing as I protested, “What?” because I couldn’t even be sure what she was specifically asking me right now.
But she clarified once we were standing inches away from each other in front of the fridge.
“Holland,” she started patiently under her breath, looking me dead in the eye. “We all went out for Jasmine’s birthday after work last night, and there’s a chance I’m still drunk right now, so perhaps I’m imagining this, but… are those Mr. Ass’s very expensive shoes by my door and is he wet and naked in my house right now?”
I covered my grinning face with both hands for a second before answering seriously, “Yes.”
Now it was Mia’s turn to burst out laughing.
“Oh. My. God,” she hissed. “Holland Jennifer Maxwell!”
I snorted. “That is… not my middle name.”
“Yeah, well you’ve never told me your middle name, and I really needed something for emphasis, because holy shit, you know what’s going on right now, don’t you?”
I sucked in a deep breath. “Uhh… I know what you’re going to say, and to that I say—”
“Pump the brakes?” Mia cocked an eyebrow. “Nuh-uh.” She shook her head fast, getting all worked up on my behalf in the way she was known to do. “I am very much not going to do that, because remember the last time I gave you an assessment about that beautiful man? I said he was definitely attracted to you and harboring an almost debilitating need to fuck the shit out of you, and you said no, but I was right. Remember?”
I crossed my arms, grinning as I remembered that fateful night we snuck into the All-Star party. Still, I heaved a genuinely exasperated sigh as I said, “Yes.”
“Mm-hm.” Mia nodded smugly, tipping her nose up. “So maybe just trust your wise roommate for once and believe me when I say that man has got it bad for you. And I swear, if you try to argue with me right now, I’m going to go to work today and make Morgan give me all the security footage from the bar, because you should have seen Iain when he came in looking for you last night,” she said, and I knew she was being more serious now since she was using his actual name, and because there was a different look in her dark eyes. They were stripped of their usual humor as she said, “He looked like he would stop at nothing for you.”
I swallowed at the sound of those words, my heart beating faster and my brain unable to think of a single thing to say back.
But it was just as well, because right then, the bathroom door swung open and both Mia and my eyes went wide. Serious a second ago, we were suddenly frozen, staring at each other while suppressing twin smiles, because on the other side of our very small apartment, Iain was walking freshly-showered out of the bathroom.
Naked? In a towel? Dressed? Even I was deathly curious, so I could understand why Mia was literally tearing at her hair.
She waited till my bedroom door shut till she closed her eyes and said, “I am never going to know what he looked like coming out of the bathroom just now and that’s just a fact I’m going to have to live with for the rest of my life.”
I snorted hard before groaning a general “oh my God” into my hands as I tried to process everything that had happened in the past five minutes since waking up. But I got about a minute to do that while Mia made coffee.