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“I’m not wrong.” He gets up from the bed and follows me with his own toiletry bag. My saucer-eyed reflection says a wild bear is joining me in the bathroom rather than a man.
“Oh. You’re going to brush your teeth too?” I look at him over my shoulder as he reaches around me, his chest so very close to my back. He places his brown leather toiletry bag right next to my rainbow-printed one.
He lifts a brow. “Is that okay?”
“Sure! Absolutely. I’m very excited for you to have godly teeth too.”
It’s terrible beyond reason. Because as I brush my teeth, Derek stands just behind me, also brushing his, and I have to try with my whole heart not to stare at him in the mirror. And once we’re both tending to our dental hygiene like two domestic and completely platonic nonfriend/people/exes, my gaze drops away from his intense eyes just to get a break from them. A little breather, you know? A girl can only look into the gorgeous blue irises of a muscular, scruffy, six-foot-four male for so long.
And that’s when I really take in the tattoos on his arms for the first time. In the bright light of the bathroom, I can finally see what they are.A vicious shark shooting through the white caps of waves, baring its teeth.Cute. That one’s obviously for his team.A skull with a bird perched on the top.Scary but cool.A dragonfly. Clouds with a sun peeking out. Vines with little flowers that wrap up his arm and…wait, what’s that tiny little black one on his inner bicep? It’s like a letter or…
Derek pointedly clamps his arm against his side.
My eyes slingshot to his in the mirror and he doesn’t make an excuse or even bother looking guilty for blatantly hiding my view of that tattoo. Instead, he leans around me to spit out his toothpaste—his chest brushing against my outer arm as he does. He rinses his toothbrush and sets it meticulously beside the sink exactly where he used to put it at my apartment after I told him how my overly neat brain liked for our toothbrushes to line up.
Without a second glance, he leaves me blissfully alone in the bathroom. I barely refrain from sagging dramatically against the door once I close it behind him. The thirty seconds it should take me to change my clothes takes five full minutes because of the silent mirror pep talk I give myself to not lose my heart to my ex-boyfriend again.He doesn’t want you. And even if he did, it would be too messy. Too unpredictable.I finish it off by telling myself to go out there and get my butt under the covers without turning this one-bed situation into a big deal.
I crack the door open. “I’m, uh, coming to bed now. Don’t look.”
“Okay.”
“Are your eyes closed?”
“No.”
“Derek!”
He laughs. “Come on, don’t make this weird,” he says, using the same tone I used earlier when saying those exact words. “You literally stood in front of me in your underwear the other morning without batting an eye.”
“That’s because I was loony, and sleep deprived!”
“You’re always loony, Nora.” But there’s unmistakable affection in his voice that warms me up like a cup of sweet hot chocolate.
“Fine. I’m coming out—but just prepare yourself because I didn’tanticipate sleeping in the same room as you this week and I wore my sexiest pajam…” My words trail off as I step out of the bathroom and find Derek sitting up against the headboard, hands clasped behind his head, crisp white sheets pooling at his tapered waist…shirtless. My bathroom pep talk takes a hike.
Why does he have to be so muscular? And sexy. And tattooed. And…mouthwateringly tan.
I want to jump his bones. I need to jump them.
“Those are your sexy pajamas?” he asks, drawing my eyes away from his nakedness to his face, where my gaze should have been the whole time.
I inch toward the bed. “I tried to warn you. They’re very seductive.”
“I’ve never seen Mr. Rogers’s face quite so large before.”
“I know…it’s really something.” I hesitate before lifting the comforter to crawl underneath the covers. To get in the bed. With Derek.
I’m wearing an XL T-shirt with my dear ole pal Mr. Rogers taking up the majority of the front. The text rainbowing across the top readsI like you just the way you are.I have zero illusions that this thing is actually sexy. But…I’m not wearing pants under it. And unless I’m mistaken, Derek used to think I was pretty cute pantsless.
Derek doesn’t bother looking away the entire time I climb under the covers. He watches unabashedly and then once we are both situated and the light is clicked off he has the audacity to say, “I noticed you still wear your days-of-the-week panties.”
I choke on my own spit. “Oh my gosh—don’t say the wordpantieswhile we’re in bed together.”
“Sorry,” he mutters, but the grin in his voice tells me he’s not sorry at all. It’s a quick peek at the old Derek. The shameless flirt. The onewho always knew exactly what he was saying and how it would affect me. I love it. And for one jolting, radical second, I wish he wanted to be with me again.
“Just go to sleep, troublemaker.” I aggressively punch my pillow into comfort as I rotate to my side. But then I make eye contact with Derek’s feet. ‘ “Umm. Derek? You don’t still run in your sleep, do you?”
“Sometimes,” he says, and then realizes why I’m suddenly worried about it. He sits up and so do I. “This is ridiculous, right? You should move up here. We can sleep in the same bed without anything being weird.”
