“What the hell?” He grumbles, clutching his forehead through his messy black hair.
It’snotcute.
There’s nothing cute about him.
“You know,” I say, forcing my eyes to stay focused on my mostly dry cereal. “You wouldn’t feel like shit if you didn’t get wasted every night.”
“Maybe,” he agrees around a bite of donut. “But then I would feel like shit every night, so.”
I look up at that admission, something in me hoping there might be more to Mike Pierce. Why he does what he does. A reason for all the drugs and the alcohol and the women.
But then he shrugs. “Sober and my hand vs. Drunk and a hot chick. That’s not that difficult of a decision.”
I nod through the disappointment. No reason then. Just Mike being who everybody says he is. I don’t know why I do this to myself.
“You’re grumpy today,” he says into the silence.
The understatement of the century.
He’s moved to the couch when I get home from work, blanket pulled up to his chin, a horror movie playing on the TV that I actually see him jump at.
I shake my head, going straight upstairs, in no mood to deal withhimright now.
My entire shift today was a disaster.
We were out of three ingredients, and no one seemed to care, leading to unsatisfied customers taking out their anger onme. And then, to top it all off, my boss, a lady who’s gotta be at least Nate’s age, won’t stop hitting on me.
This never used to happenbefore.
I’ve just begun to take off my work clothes, my shirt landing on the floor, when Mike stumbles into my room without knocking.
“Hey, Alex—”
The words die on his tongue as he comes to a complete stop, still clutching the door handle, his eyes roaming over my torso with something I can only callhunger,while time around us feels suspended.
He doesn’t finish his sentence.
He stares at my body while I’m frozen in place, watching him look at me.
Finally, only when his eyes start to trail down further, am I able to snap out of it. “What the— Can’t you knock?!” I challenge, even though I let him look for way too long.
I grab my shirt from the floor and tug it back over my head so fast that I almost forget how to do it for a second, which is even more embarrassing than him seeing so much of my body.
He doesn’t seem worried about that, deflating dramatically when I pull my shirt back down. “Where did that body come from?”
“Shut up, what do you want?”
“Well…” he draws out, going over to sit on my bed, bouncing up and down.
Is this dude for real?
“I came to tell you I’m having a few girls over tonight, and if you want, you can come hang out with us. Remember that girl from the party last weekend? She’s got this roommate, and I told her that I have a roommate and we thought—”
I interrupt his ramble with a scoff.
He pauses, looking up at me from the bed, and I almost feel a little bad when he asks, “What?”
But that goes away quickly when I remember what I’ve been forced to live with for the last two weeks. The parties, the girlsevery single night, seeing him drunk more than I’ve seen him sober.
