“And before you judge me — it wasn’t Xaviar.” I round the corner. “I know. I was shocked too. Three weeks of that book and my subconscious picked the last couple of nights to get creative. There were stars, Gerald. Hundreds of them, everywhere, and the one with the silver eyes—”
The words die in my throat.
There are two men in my pull-out.
There are men everywhere, actually. Yesterday comes back all at once — the door, the coffee, the ominous number no one was willing to talk about. Yesterday happened. And then it stayed over.
The fantasy men have taken over my apartment.
No Leif.
Again.
I’m starting to think they invented him to mess with me.
And here’s the thing about pre-coffee brain. It has no filter, no shame, and no supervision.
Also, sleeping men can’t catch you looking. Asleep, they’re basically fictional. And I’m allowed to look at fictional men. Those are the rules. I don’t make them.
So I look.
The problem takes up most of my floor. To be fair, it’s a small floor. To be fairer, he’d make a ballroom look cramped. He’s blond, which I hadn’t fully registered last night with the door and the screaming, and he’s built like the wordbroadwas invented to describe him and then gave up. Flat on his back, one arm behind his head, and the arm alone is a situation — ink starting at his wrist and climbing, over forearm, around bicep, under his sleeve and back out at his collar, so his whole upper body reads like one continuous story I am absolutely not going to stand here and read. His shirt’s ridden up. There’s a strip of stomach that authors would describe as carved, and they’d be right, and I hate that they’d be right.
I have read entire chapters about less.
The trap is folded into my reading chair, built along completely different lines — lean where the problem is massive, dark curlssmashed flat on one side, head tipped back, throat bare. One hand hangs loose off the armrest. Long fingers. I notice the fingers. I stand in my own living room and notice a sleeping man’s fingers, which is a completely normal thing that normal women do.
And Erik. Three years across the hall and I have never once let myself look at Erik, because he’s Erik, and neighbors have rules. Except for the jaw incident the other day which was most definitely wine and not me. That doesn’t count. Asleep doesn’t count either. Asleep, his face has gone soft, his hair is wrecked in a way that suggests it took all night to get there, and his t-shirt is doing absolutely nothing about the chest under—
Where was I going. Kitchen. Coffee. In a minute.
It’s warm in here. The radiator. Definitely the radiator.
Then my lap of the room arrives at the top layer of the pull-out.
It shouldn’t have.
Gunnar. Half on Erik, sitting up, grinning at me like the sun came up specifically for him. Awake, I get all of him at once — the shaved head, the ink climbing right up his neck like it ran out of arm and kept going, hazel-green eyes already on me. He grins wider and the tongue ring catches the light, because of course it does.
Awake. Extremely awake. Awake the whole time, is my professional estimate.
He watched me do the entire lap. Every stop on the tour. I know because the grin says so. The grin has receipts.
Okay. Being caught looking is survivable even if my face is very hot right now. Looking is a normal human activity, like breathing, or crying at commercials. The talking is the problem. How long has he been awake? What did I say out loud? I said stars. Did I say silver? Idon’t think I said silver. I was mid-silver. Mid-silver doesn’t count. And I definitely did not say eyes.
New policy, effective immediately. Dream recaps happen behind a closed door with the shower running, like a normal paranoid person.
His mouth opens and I brace for the end of my life because I am not having this conversation right now.
“Who the hell is Gerald?”
Oh thank god.
Then he looks at me. Looks at the plant and back at me. I get to watch it happen in real time, the math, the terrible math.
“No,” he says.
“It’s not—”
