I snatched the paper back and Eli and I stumbled out into the hall, barely holding it together before laughing our asses off. The painting was probably our only inside joke that didn’t include Brody.
The kitchen counters of Eli’s apartment were bare save for an espresso machine that was worth more than my car. On the breakfast bar was a note in his familiar slanted handwriting.
Your room is the first one off the hallway. I’ll be home late. —E
Home.I was in Eli’s home. And for a short while, it was mine too. A sharp chill ran up my spine at the thought.
After I got Marlon settled with his bed and a chew toy full of frozen peanut butter, I brought the first load inside, including my bedding.
When I let myself into the guest room, I didn’t expect to find a mattress on the floor bachelor pad–style, but I also hadn’t expected a room that looked like it came straight out of an Anthropologie catalog. There was a sage-green arched cabinet in the far corner just waiting to be filled with books and knickknacks. The queen bed was made with a fluffy cream duvet and pillows that looked like they could absorb every neurotic thought I’d ever thought until my brain was blissfully empty. The headboard was a mauve tufted velvet arch to complement the cabinet and the closet was full of unused hangers—the fancy slim velvet kind. It was more like a hotel room than a guest room.
With the bed already made, I stored Brody’s pool house bedding on the top shelf of the closet like a forgotten trophy. I’d never been the kind of woman to have the luxury of multiple types of bedding, but maybe this was indicative of a new era. An era where I owned white shirts that weren’t stained and I remembered to send my dry-clean-only clothing to the actual cleaners.
I spent the evening getting settled in and ordered myself a poke bowl for dinner. When I got to my toiletries, I ventured into the shared bathroom. Were it not for the half-burned cucumber melon candle and electric toothbrush charging on the counter, I would have no idea which side was Eli’s.
Just about every bathroom I’d ever had looked like a drugstore had thrown up on the counter, but since Eli had set such a tidy tone, I found a home for each thing in the cabinet under the sink.
I opened the drawer in the middle of the vanity, hoping I might be able to store my toothpaste there, but instead I found an unopened box of condoms and a few small bottles of lube.
Slamming the drawer shut as though I were in danger of getting caught, I decided to leave the toothpaste on the counter. Eli could handle toothpaste on the counter. It was better than toothpaste in the lube replenishment drawer, which would immediately indicate to Eli that I knew he had a lube drawer. It threatened the kind of embarrassment I’d felt the one time I attempted to shop for lingerie to wear for Brody and then immediately ran into my high school geometry teacher and his wife while she shopped for new bras post–breast reduction. I was holding a thong. A crotchless thong. (Granted, if you asked me, all thongs might as well be considered crotchless, because my vagina has been known to swallow thongs. Surely I wasn’t the only person whose vagina was wider than that appalling excuse for a gusset.) The continued embarrassment of that interaction still kept me awake some nights.
By the time midnight rolled around, I was still wide awake. Or maybe it just felt too weird to fall asleep knowing that Eli could walk in the door at any moment. So I decided to take out my notebooks and see what notes I could piece together onTheWunderkind.
The problem was the couch was fucking cozy. I could say a lot of things about Eli, but the man knew how to buy a couch. As I settled in, I found myself slipping into a reclining position until I was just fully horizontal with my head on the armrest and my notebook on my chest.
TheWunderkindwas about a young female piano prodigy who was older now and less remarkable with age. She fell for a charismatic boy at college who always seemed to stumble into good luck. In so many ways, it was a story about me and Brody. Except for the part where I was once a prodigy.
I got only a few pages in before my vision began to blur. It didn’t help that Marlon was already fast asleep between my legs.
I should have been a big girl and taken myself to bed. It wasn’t like I needed to stay up and wait for Eli. He didn’t have a curfew. It didn’t matter where he was or who he was out with. I wasn’t his keeper. I was his roommate.
Briefly, I wondered if he would bring someone back here at some point. I mean, he could. It was his right, of course. But surely with these old, thin walls, I’d hear everything.
And something about that thought made my chest tighten and my abdomen burn. It was a very confusing combination of sad and horny.
My eyes were so, so heavy. Heavier than anything I’d moved today. Heavier than the boxes of sex toys I’d carted down the street in the stifling heat.
* * *
“Vera,” someone whispered a few seconds later. Or maybe it had been a few hours. “Let’s get you to bed, Vera.”
“It’s so comfortable,” I whined, my words coming out mushy and my tongue feeling too big for my mouth.
“It is a great couch,” the voice confirmed. Arms were pulling me up into a sitting position and then helping me to my feet. “Up, up, up.”
My vision was just two little slits, but it was enough to see Eli, his hair a little wild, almost windblown or like someone had run their fingers through it. How was he so handsome? The insides of a person should match their outsides. Not that Eli hadn’t been perfectly nice lately. He was letting me stay with him, but thememoryof Eli... that was not nice.
“I want to sleep here,” I said, falling back down to the couch, but he yanked me up before I could reach my destination.
“You’ve spent enough time sleeping on couches lately.”
I growled at him and began to stomp off down the hallway.
He pulled at my elbow. “Wrong door. Back this way.”
Inside my room, I stumbled to the bed and he threw back the duvet before I could face-plant directly on top of it.
“Good night, Vera,” he said as I yanked the covers up over my shoulder until I was perfectly cocooned.
