I’d thought it would be the shower that’d be able to help him after his shitty day, but knowing it was my stupidity that’d done it was heady shit, I tell you.
Still, the embarrassment was there. “Do you want me to leave you so you can shower?”
Shrugging off the shirt, he leaned down to peck me on the nose. “I’d prefer for you to join me in it, or at the very least sit on the counter and keep making me laugh. But, if you’d rather go and wait for me in your room, then I can deal with that.”
Maybe two hours ago I’d have run for the room. Maybe twenty minutes ago I’d have jumped onto the counter. Now, I wanted to get into the shower with him.
So, turning my back to him, I undid the sash and dropped the robe, then moved quickly under the spray, only just remembering to angle slightly as I passed the one jet that was poorly positioned.
When I’d designed the room and had seen the commercial for the shower online, I hadn’t trusted my family not to fuck it up, so I’d hired a plumber to come and install it. Admittedly, I’d found his card near the door at the grocery store, but plenty of legit companies did that. The key indicator that I probably shouldn’t have answered was when he turned up in a sparkling back van with ‘The Big Pipe Master’ written on it. I also should’ve called my brothers when he offered to show me how good with my pipe he’d be and then followed it with the offer to show me how his pipe would fit. It’d been never ending, and even now, I shuddered when someone said the word pipe. Anyway, after two hours of hearing the bullshit, I told him I’d show him how well his pipe fitted up his ass, and he’d hurried through the job after I’d made a big deal out of calling Tate to see how he was.
My penance was a showerhead with the power of a jumbo jet engine placed at nipple height. He’d also gotten some, though, because three weeks after it, I’d seen on the local news that he’d been arrested for harassment and sexual assault, so he was probably living the feeling of fitting pipes into areas of his body daily now. Nah, I couldn’t wish that on someone, but I could hope he felt as uncomfortable and dirty as he’d made us feel.
Two hands gently landing on my shoulders and pulling me back into a hard chest were a much better focus than what I’d been thinking about, so I took advantage of the position and leaned back even more into Parker.
“Is that head there meant to be that low?”
Considering there was a head currently poking me in my ass cheek, it took a moment for me to understand what he was talking about—the exact same thing I’d just been thinking about.
“Uh, not really.” That was the right answer for one, the wrong for the other. If the other head would just move a couple of inches down and to the left…
“Huh. Is it meant to feel like that, too?”
One hand left my shoulder to fiddle with it, but it was useless. No matter what you did, what buttons you pushed on the display, the shitting thing was like a fire hose. Well, at least what I assumed a fire hose would feel like. I wasn’t stupid enough to stand in front of one that was spraying out water. But now that I thought about it, I’ll bet one of my brothers or cousins had done it. Maybe I could ask them?
Clearing my throat, I pointed behind us at the area where a control panel was. “It doesn’t matter what settings you press, it just stays like that. I think the plumber did something when he was installing it,” I started, stopping when I realized I might be heading into territory where I’d have to explain why the man would do something like that. “Like, maybe using a wider pipe, so more water comes through it,”—hell if I knew if that was something that’d happen—“so the force is disproportionate to what comes through the others.”
I was going to hell for lying and also getting some sort of literary award for the story I’d come up with.
Leaning over, I nabbed the bottle of body wash and sponge and squeezed out way more than was necessary on top of it, before turning around and beginning the task of washing away his bajiggidy feeling, stopping any further conversation about the shower. The guy was already in jail sharing his showers with other men, what did it matter now?
I was conscious of his eyes on me as I did it, but if I looked up, there was a real risk I’d throw the sponge at him and run away. With my luck, I’d probably slip on the floor and go ass over tit down the stairs, and then get carried out butt naked in front of everyone.