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"Sounds good," I said, genuinely meaning it.
Then I went ahead and took a bath of a respectable length. By my standards. So it was a two hour long bath by normal standards.
But, well, after the anxiety melted away some about Bry and all that, another idea crossed my mind. I was having a date. With a man I had already made out with and, sort of, dry-humped in my living room the week before. So, if things followed the way they would usually, those things and more could happen.
That meant, um, that some extra attention needed to be paid to some grooming.
So I did that and I slathered on lotion he had packed for me and slipped into the clothes he had picked out, feeling just the smallest bit of embarrassment at knowing he had gone through my underwear drawer seeing as he had matching bras and panties all stacked in the kitchen.
But, if things went the way I hoped, and was somewhat mildly terrified they might, the end game was for him to see my panties and bras anyway. Preferably as he pulled them off. Maybe with his teeth.
Okay.
I was getting ahead of myself.
When I walked back out, Ryan was in the kitchen chopping vegetables and put them on a platter that I would put good money on the fact that he hadn't bought it for himself. What man thought of things like having serving platters?
"Feel better?" he asked, having somehow heard me even with his back to me.
"Yes, thanks. Um, where did all my stuff go?" I asked, walking over to the island that had been stacked when I left but was suddenly only covered in snacky foods for our little New Years Eve date. Even the idea of that made my belly do a little butterfly flutter, something I wasn't sure I experienced since high school.
"Clothes are in the second drawer in the bedroom. You took your bath stuff. Your laptop and books are on the coffee table in the living room."
He was... moving me in?
I mean moving the books and laptop to the living room wasn't strange at all; he needed the counter space to put out the spread. But putting my clothes in his dresser? He was the kind of man who dressed well; he had to have used all his dresser drawers. So had he emptied one out for me?
"You didn't have to..."
"I figured you're not feeling too comfortable with your apartment now. You seem good here."
He let that hang, waiting I thought, for some kind of agreement. "I am," I agreed, taking a look around. It was nothing like my apartment. Everything was dark and streamlined. While my apartment was always neat, I had knickknacks and personal items to make it feel homey. Ryan didn't have much in the way of that aside from maybe the framed pictures of his nieces. It shouldn't have been comfortable to me. It was the opposite of everything I thought I found relaxing. But somehow, it still was. Maybe because it was so much of him. Maybe my comfort wasn't in the place itself, but the person who owned it, who lived in it, who touched everything inside it.
"Good. And like I said, you're welcome for as long as you need. It made sense to put things away."
He said it so casually, shrugging it off like it was no big deal that I almost believed it. That was until I remembered the boyfriend I dated from eighteen to twenty-two wouldn't let me have a drawer at his place until I demanded it with an ultimatum.
It said something when a man willingly, without having been asked, made room for you.
And right about then was when the full weight of understanding came over me- I was going to be living with Ryan freaking Mallick.
It was also right about then that I caught my reflection in the microwave. The words blurted out before I could stop them. "Ryan, how long until my eye goes down?" I asked, meaning the swelling.
The knife he was cutting with settled down on the board and he turned slowly, giving me a sympathetic smile. "No way to tell. Everyone heals differently. Some people will see a difference in a couple days; others take weeks or months to be honest. You need to ice it though," he added, going to the freezer and pulling out a fresh icepack and wrapping it up. "Twenty on, thirty off," he told me, giving it to me.
"Thanks," I said, giving him a small smile and moving over to the couch, flicking on the TV and laying down to follow orders.
Somehow, maybe due to the lingering headache in my temples or the stress of the last day and a half, I drifted off.
There was a tickling sensation down the side of my face, making me grumble and swat at it. "Leave me alone, Rochester," I mumbled, only to hear a low, deep chuckle that, yeah, even half-asleep I knew didn't belong to my cat.
