It was something. It had to be something. If there’s one thing I know about Levi Loveless, it’s that he doesn’t go giving out saucy looks for no reason.
“Okay,” I say, stepping back.
“Okay, you’re going to wear all my clothes?”
I pull the door open.
“Okay, I’m decent,” I say.
“Ah,” he says, and looks at my boobs.
It lasts about a quarter of a second, but it happens. It happens and even though my brain is whispering kid sister, kid sister, I’m starting to doubt myself because that wasn’t a kid sister look.
In general, it hasn’t been a kid sister day.
“Where would you like me?” I ask.
Levi nods toward the back door of his house.
“Porch,” he says. “Let me grab my kit.”
I step aside and he comes in, opens the bathroom closet into which, amazingly, I haven’t snooped yet even though I’m a dedicated, inveterate bathroom-snooper. I’ll open any closet, any medicine chest, any under-the-sink area, because I am that person. Luckily for everyone in my life, it’s pretty much always boring. Everyone’s got Advil and band-aids, and even if you’ve got stool softener or something, guess what, so does everyone.
I crane my neck to see around Levi and into his closet. To my non-surprise, it’s very well organized. On the bottom are a few rows of neatly folded towels, then various bathroom supplies, and then the top two shelves are shoeboxes labeled with various maladies.
Levi pulls out Poison Ivy/Sumac from its place on the shelf between Sunburn and Insect Bites, shuts the door, and we walk out onto his back porch, the dog following close behind.
Every single step I take brushes his shirt against the welts on my back and makes it itch more. I don’t even realize I’m holding my breath until I let it all out, standing on the porch, looking at Levi’s back yard as the dog bounds out and a squirrel rushes up a tree, chattering.
“You all right?” he asks, setting the box on a table.
“Just itchy,” I tell him very, very truthfully.
He grabs a chair, turns it around, gestures to it.
“Sit backward,” he says, then clears his throat. “And pull your shirt up, please.”
I sit as instructed, straddling the chair, and for one second I think: I could just take off my shirt. He did it to me, didn’t he?
And then I’m staring into the middle-distance at the end of Levi’s back porch, the forest beyond it, and I’m thinking of him standing there in the water, waist-deep, his broad body shining and wet as he smirked at me, holding up the hair clip.
He smirked. I didn’t know he did that. Levi Loveless smirked at me while naked and I have no idea what to do with this fact, other than think about it without ceasing.
“Just enough that I can see the rash,” he says behind me, and I remember that I had a task.
I don’t take off, but I pull it over my head and leave it on just my arms. Technically, I’m covered, my modesty intact-ish, but my whole back is bare and I feel naked.
The silence I get in response makes me feel more than naked.
“Does that work?” I ask after a beat, my heart tapdancing.
He doesn’t reply, just brushes his fingers down my back, making a noise in his throat that I can’t quite decipher. It sends a shiver down my back and I remind myself that he’s looking at huge, gross, raised poison ivy welts.
“That bad?” I ask.
“You’re certain you didn’t take a nap on a patch of it while I wasn’t looking?” Levi asks, the chair behind me creaking slightly. My heartbeat hitches in my chest and I focus on the trees beyond his back porch and not on his proximity to my bare skin or the fact that one wrong move could leave me topless.
“Oops,” I say, trying to sound lighthearted, and behind me there’s a latex snap.
I glance over my shoulder. He’s right behind me, knees spread wide around my hips as he pulls blue latex gloves onto his big hands.
“I’ve learned to be overcautious,” he says, the hint of a smile on his face. The inside of one of his knees brushes my outer thigh, and it sends a buzz through me even though my entire brain feels like it’s taken up by nothing but itching. “Besides, I’ve seen worse.”
I’m unconvinced.
“Have you?” I ask, still looking over my shoulder at him.
“Sure,” he says.
“You’re an awful liar,” I tell him. “At least give me the honor of having the craziest poison ivy you’ve ever seen.”
“Will that make you feel better?” he asks.
He touches the back of my neck, lightly swiping a few stray hairs away. I have to hold my breath and close my eyes, and it’s only partly because of the itching.
It’s mostly because right now, I very, very badly want Levi Loveless to touch me, and I want more than a fingertip on my neck. A lot more.