“Here.” Adam set something black and neatly folded on her bed. “You can use this if you want.”
She studied it skeptically. “What is it?”
“A T-shirt. I slept in it yesterday, but it’s probably better than the dress you’re wearing. To sleep in, I mean,” he added, a faint flush on his cheeks.
“Oh.” She picked it up, and the T-shirt unfolded. She immediately noticed three things: it was large, so large that it would hit her mid-thigh or even lower; it smelled heavenly, a mix of Adam’s skin and laundry detergent that had her wanting to bury her face in it and inhale for weeks; and on the front, it said in big, white letters . . .
“?‘Biology Ninja’?”
Adam scratched the back of his neck. “I didn’t buy it.”
“Did you . . . steal it?”
“It was a present.”
“Well.” She grinned. “This is one hell of a present. Doctor ninja.”
He stared at her flatly. “If yo
u tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
She chuckled. “Are you sure it’s okay? What will you wear?”
“Nothing.”
She must have been gaping at him a little too much, because he gave her an amused look and shook his head.
“I’m kidding. I have a tee under my shirt.”
She nodded and hurried into the bathroom, making a point not to meet his eyes.
Alone under the hot jet of the shower it was much harder to concentrate on stale sushi and Adam’s uneven smile, and to forget why he’d ended up allowing her to cling to him for three whole hours. What Tom had done to her today was despicable, and she was going to have to report him. She was going to have to tell Adam. She was going to have to do something. But every time she tried to think about it rationally, she could hear his voice in her head—mediocre and nice legs and useless and derivative and little sob story—so loud that she was afraid her skull would shatter into pieces.
So she kept her shower as quick as possible, distracting herself by reading the labels of Adam’s shampoo and body wash (something hypoallergenic and pH-balanced that had her rolling her eyes) and drying herself as fast as humanly possible. She took out her contacts, then stole a bit of his toothpaste. Her gaze fell on his toothbrush; it was charcoal black, down to the bristles, and she couldn’t help but giggle.
When she stepped out of the bathroom, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing plaid pajama pants and a white T-shirt. He was holding the TV remote in one hand and his phone in the other, looking between the two screens with a frown.
“You would.”
“Would what?” he asked absentmindedly.
“Have a black toothbrush.”
His mouth twitched. “You will be shocked to hear that there is no Netflix category for movies in which horses don’t die.”
“An obscenity, isn’t it? It’s much needed.” She crumpled her too-short dress into a ball and stuffed it inside her bag, fantasizing that she was stuffing Tom’s throat. “If I were American, I’d totally run for Congress on that platform.”
“Should we fake-marry, so you can get citizenship?”
Her heart stumbled. “Oh, yes. I think it’s time we fake-move-to-the-next-level.”
“So”—he tapped at his phone—“I’m just googling ‘dead horse,’ plus the title of whatever movie sounds good.”
“That’s what I usually do.” She padded across the room until she was standing next to him. “What do you have?”
“This one’s about a linguistics professor who’s asked to help decipher an alien—”
He glanced up from his phone, and immediately fell silent. His mouth opened and then shut, and his eyes skittered to her thighs, her feet, her unicorn knee socks, and quickly back to her face. No, not her face: some point above her shoulder. He cleared his throat before saying, “Glad it . . . fits.” He was looking at his phone again. His grip on the remote had tightened.