where my room is?”
He nodded, and my lips twitched.
“You know, that’s kinda like stalking,” I teased him.
He shifted on his feet as he passed a hand over his face before he answered. “Considering I’ve had a crush on you for a year, and I just now got up the nerve to talk to you... I, ah, think you’re safe.” He grinned, showing a dimple on each cheek before turning on his toes and heading back to his friends.
Safe. What a novel word. It goes hand in hand with normal. Neither of which has had a place in my life for as long as I could remember.
I took a sip of cooled coffee as I watched him join his friends. His trappings didn’t leave much to the imagination. As he walked away, I had to admit he was pretty fine. Well, at least his ass was anyway. And maybe those dimples, yeah, kinda cute.
I knew I would never be able to sleep with him. I just... I just... hell, I didn’t know what I wanted. I sighed, dropping my head into my hands. I was smart enough to know the question wasn’t what I wanted, but rather what someone else could handle.
I was pretty confident Taylor wouldn’t be able to handle waking up to find me bleeding in the shower. Let alone my screaming at him the morning after because I couldn’t remember who he was, or, for that matter, what he was doing in my room.
I doubted there was anyone who could take my shit. I pushed my fingers into my eyes, a headache beginning to build behind them. I was just too fucked up and I knew it.
Chapter Four
Cringing over the banging in my head, it took me a minute to realize the annoyance wasn’t in my head, but at the door. Then another moment to remember my coffee date with Taylor. It had been a bad night, full of sweating, nightmares and fear. I ignored the knocking, instead throwing a pillow over my head. What had I been thinking? I was doing Taylor a favor, he would be better for not knowing me.
The knocking continued for another few minutes. He was persistent; I had to give him that. The noise finally stopped on a string of obscenities, and I drifted easily back to the place of nightmares.
I was standing in the shower, head back, peeing down my legs and the relief was Elysian. My eyes opened to a storm-dimmed room, and for a second I was lost, then my bladder rapped hard, forcing me to haul myself up and race to the bathroom.
I barely sat down, and shoved my dick between my legs, when my bladder let go in a rush. The relief was not quite as divine as in my dream, rather uncomfortable actually, and the toilet seat was fuckin’ cold. Stupid piss dreams . I always woke thinking I’d peed the bed. Of course I never had. It was just my mind’s way of waking me before I did.
I wandered out of the bathroom groggy and heavy from having slept too much. I wanted coffee— no— needed coffee, but the thought of running into Taylor had me pulling out the Folgers singles instead. While water for both instant oatmeal and instant coffee microwaved, I found the remote in the bathroom then turned on the flat-screen. I never could find the stupid power button on the thing. If I ever lost the remote, the TV would become a useless hunk of technology because I wouldn’t even know how to turn it on.
With lunch sitting in a lump in my gut, I washed my mug and spoon while trying to talk myself into going to Temptations tonight. What were my options? Crawl back in bed, which actually sounded like a fantastic idea to me, or go check out the club and possibly, very doubtfully, change my life. I knew the right answer, yet found myself grasping the wrong one. Turning the flat-screen towards the bed, I wrapped myself into the softness of flannel. Chicken! Yep, totally.
I managed to make it through most of Pulp Fiction and four hundred commercials before my muscles started berating me for being so-damn-lazy. When I moved I felt the tightening in my legs. The discomfort chased me off the bed, forcing me to stretch thoroughly or suffer the consequences of