Page 10 of Warm and Dry

Forest looked at it and his jaw gaped open. "You really don't have to do that."

"I know." I put it on the coffee table and sat down.

After a second of pause, he sat down next to me and held out his hand.

Over the next few minutes, I carefully cleaned up the scrapes and put ointment on them to fight any growing infection. Forest was quiet as I held his warm hand in mine and took care of him.

He didn’t even try to pull away.

It felt good to take care of him and even better that he let me.

"Okay." I applied two bandages and then clasped his hand in mine. “You’re all set.”

He cleared his throat and looked me in the eyes. "I have a confession."

I smoothed the edge of his bandage down. "Okay."

"I didn't actually lose a sock."

I pulled his hand to the center of my chest and looked into his eyes. "I know."

"You knew and went along with it anyway?”

I nodded and had to fight the urge to pull him into my arms for a kiss. “You’re just too cute to call out.”

A red flush rushed up his neck, but he leaned closer instead of back. "I wanted to see you again and didn't have your number…"

And there it was. No more games or deflection. He was ready to be honest, and I was here for it. "I'm glad you came back."

"Yeah?" His shoulders lowered and a wall of tension seemed to roll right off them.

"Yeah."

We relaxed on the couch and spent the next hour talking about his game and his teammates and his job. He settled against the couch cushions with his jacket off and one foot tucked underneath himself.

The shift in his demeanor was small but significant as he slowly began to trust me.

Then Forest asked a ton of questions about the building and what I did before becoming a laundry-preneur. His joke, not mine.

“I worked for a mechanical engineering company for a while. We had contracts with most of the laundromats in the state, so I knew how to work on everything. When this building went up for sale, I knew it was what I wanted to do next.”

"So you can just fix everything yourself?" He sounded both surprised and impressed.

"For the most part. These new machines are basically computers, so they aren’t as straightforward to fix as the old ones. But I know how to swap out motherboards, so that’s kinda the same thing."

He smiled at that, probably happy to hear we had a lot more in common than either of us expected. Outside the window, the afternoon light was fading, so I turned on a few lamps before it got dark in the room.

At some point, I realized I'd been watching him talk more than I'd been listening. It wasn’t because he was boring but because his whole face lit up when he was excited about something, and I couldn’t get enough of it.

When he finally looked at his watch and sighed, I knew what was coming next.

“I should probably get going.” Forest stood up and put his jacket back on. Then he picked up the single gray sock from where he'd set it on my coffee table and slipped it into his pocket. "Don’t wanna forget this here.”

"I’d keep it safe if you did." I winked when he glanced back at me.

“Thanks for the coffee.”

“Anytime.” I walked him down to the door and opened it up.