Eric, great to hear from you. And what a great project! Thanks for those pics you sent. Wow--your brother looks like a lumberjack--where's the family resemblance there? The reno on the Dive Bar worked out so beautifully. Just imagine what you could do changing the space upstairs into studio apartments or something. It would be amazing. Please give this more thought. You sound so passionate when you talk about the carpentry projects you do with your dad. If there's no set d-day on it, this could work out perfectly. Would love to hear more about the spaces when you get a chance.
Cheers,
Alex
As promised, it wasn't knocking that woke me. It was the buzzing of my cell phone over on the table.
I'd had a quiet day, sleeping, mostly. The codeine Joe's mom had sent over had knocked me out nicely. My head still felt light, a bit woozy. More rest was needed. Maybe I'd take a home-cation for the remainder of the week back in Seattle. Disconnect, and take it easy. Give myself a break and take the time to properly recover from this illness. I couldn't even remember the last time I had a vacation. But, no biggie. I loved my work. Graphic designing was not a chore, it was a delight.
A break would be good, though.
Weirdly enough, suddenly the bathroom door opened and out strolled Joe on a cloud of steam and masculinity wearing an extremely small white towel as a skirt. There was a lot of bronzed skin on show. A truly unnecessarily large amount. The buzzing cell phone immediately caught his attention and he rushed on over, picking it up.
"Shit," he mumbled, putting it to his ear. "Hello?"
Standing with his back to me forced me to reassess the skirt. Actually, I'm not even sure it would qualify as a towel. It couldn't. The thing barely covered his ass cheeks. Not that I was staring. Been there, nearly gotten busted at that.
Yeah.
Well, I was kind of not staring. It's harder to ignore a mostly naked man than you'd think. Perhaps this was a real fever dream. I didn't feel particularly hot, but why else would the man be wandering around mostly naked in my hotel room? Oh my God. Unless he was thinking of putting the moves on me.
Whoa. I seriously hadn't seen that coming. What to do? Usually sex with no consequences was an easy call; I either wanted to or I didn't. Despite my best intentions to ignore Joe, he was hot. On the other hand, however, lying was not. I'd let him get close (well, virtually close, if that makes sense) and he'd hurt me. If any lingering feelings for him were still floating around inside of me, it could very well happen again.
"Yeah, I'm Joe Collins. Alex is sleeping, she's been sick. She caught the flu." He waited. "Ah, well..." Again, he listened. In fact, he listened for quite a while. "You're ... I ... Okay, yes, I'm a raging asshole. I should never have done that to her, you're right. But..." He paused. Then he took an almighty big breath, letting it out real slow. "Yes. You're right, there's no excuse for such a willful act of bastardry and I definitely deserve to be castrated and burn in hell for all eternity. Um. Who did you say you were again?" The man massaged his temple, making the muscles in his upper back move. Nice. "Valerie, Alex's best friend. Right. Nice to meet you. Alex spoke about you a lot, when we were emailing." Joe winced, removing the phone from his ear for a moment as a particularly loud noise issued through the cell. "Yes, I can see how that would just remind you what a jerk I am, of course." He nodded. "No. Okay. I will never win you over with charm because I'm slime. Got it." The man hung his head. "Yes, I'm listening. She is a goddess despite her cold, hard heart and I'm a lowly animal. Totally agree." He started rubbing the back of his neck. "Okay. I'll get her to call you when she's up. Great to talk to you, Valerie. Yep ... okay, got to go. There's a whole line of people here who also need to abuse me. Bye."
Visibly sagging, the man commenced muttering obscenities.
Over on the bed, I could hold it in no longer and proceeded to almost piss myself laughing. Valerie was the best. The absolute best.
"Oh, you're awake," he said, pushing the long wet strands of his golden hair back from his face. "I just had a little chat with your friend Valerie. Your phone kept ringing so I thought I better answer or it would wake you up."
I giggled on.
"Enjoy that, did you?"
I nodded.
"Great. I'm glad. Anyway, hope you don't mind. The heating at Nell's place is acting up and they can't fix it until tomorrow. I told her she could have my room for the night and I'd crash here again," he said. "If that's okay with you?"
I shrugged, kind of caught out.
"You're looking a little better, got some color back in your cheeks."
Given how little the man was wearing, that did not surprise me at all.
His shoulders were broad, as befitting a man of his stature. His arms were muscular and his nipples were brown. Both of them. I didn't want to take in all of these details, but what with him standing nearly naked right there, I was forced to. Wise or not, my ovaries had seized control and they wanted to make big strong babies with the man, pronto. Common sense never stood a chance.
"You don't mind that I helped myself to a shower, do you?" he asked. "Eric wanted to go for a run after work. I was already covered in sawdust so the sweat just made it even worse. We had a hell of a busy day. Dad's hands were playing up on him so he couldn't work, but he'd booked in all these jobs."
"You couldn't use your own shower?" I asked, voice sounding only a little rusty. And oh, good God. Now that he was full-on facing me, it was the bulge below his waist that was really the issue.
Not my type. The man was not my type, no matter how fascinating I apparently found his body. Once I got back to Seattle, I really needed to get laid.
"Hey, great. You got your voice back." He smiled. "Eric was in the shower and I didn't want to wait around any longer. I was worried about how you were doing. Plus, the water heater isn't that big and I wanted to leave some hot water for Nell."
"Right." I took a soothing deep breath, pretending to swallow his obvious lies. As pickup lines went, Joe's needed work. I blew my nose. "Um, no problem. But would you mind putting a towel on? Or pants, maybe? Pants would be good."
He laughed, making bits of me quiver. Bits that frankly should have known better.
"Alex, this is a towel."
"Ah. No, it's not."
"It is. See?" The man held out his arms, modeling the freakishly small piece of white cloth.
"No, no." I pressed my lips together tight, anger and aggravation growing in me by the second. "That's like a hand towel. Christ, I'm not even sure it's that. It's probably more of a glorified face cloth you've stretched somehow."
Chuckling, he shook his head. "Alex--"
"Hell, I can almost see some of the essentials. That's ridiculous."
"Yeah, but you're half hanging off the bed to take in the show."
"Oh, I am not. I just had to cough." I forced out a fake cough or two, holding my fist up to my mouth. We were in the friend zone, goddamnit. No perving allowed. Still, I could feel my face flushing, my nipples getting perky.
"Alex, relax. I saw you in your underwear. Now you've seen me in a towel. Why are you getting so worked up about this?" Hands on slim hips, his tongue played behind his cheek. Like stringing me out like this was all highly fucking amusing. Asshole. Hell, he even had a little golden treasure trail. A scattering of hair starting at the belly button and leading downward. My fingers wanted to follow the trail so badly. They basically itched, the little bastards.
"Look, it's okay. I know what you're doing," I said, my croaky voice thick with recrimination. "But I just don't think it's a good idea between us."
"What am I doing?"
"We should on
ly be just friends," I stated. "And this goes a bit beyond that."
"Friends don't let each other use their showers occasionally?"
"Friends don't strut around showing off their assets." I did not giggle nervously. That was someone else. God, what an awkward situation. "I could see less skin at a strip joint!"
"Fuck me," he muttered, smiling.
"Normally I might be open to the idea of doing that," I said. "Just the once, mind you--for fun or to get it out of our system or whatever. But this situation is a freaking mess. I've already been hurt by you. Emotions were involved despite my better judgment. Having sex with you now, even as friends, would just be stupid."
He looked at me all wide of eye and said very slowly, "You want to have sex with me?"
Everything stopped. Every little last fucking thing.
"Alex?"
"I, um..." Over and over my jaw worked, yet nothing came out. Total panic stations. My brain had blanked, most likely fleeing the room. "I think maybe I'm a little high on the cold and flu meds. Yeah, that sounds about right?"
He just gave me another serving of that questioning look.
"No. No, I definitely don't want to do anything naked with you."
He blinked.
"You thought about having sex with me, though?"
"What?" I faux cringed.
"But you said--"
"Forget about what I said. And stop saying sex."
Joe just stared at me.
"I thought you were trying to start something. I mean, you can't blame me for thinking this is a setup." Curling my feet up beneath me I leaned forward, ready to attack. Or defend. Or something. "Somethings wrong with Nell's heat, seriously?"
He grabbed the back of his neck. "Shit. Alex, it's okay. No need to be embarrassed."
"And Eric was in the shower? That story is so lame, it's like something out of a bad porn film. You might as well tell me you're the pool boy," I said, packing in all the scorn I could manage. "I'm not your type, remember? Then you come over here, parading yourself in front of me like some lumbersexual gigolo. So that yet again I get led on and wind up looking like a complete idiot! What kind of sadistic near-naked asshole are you?"