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I crawl out of bed and stretch as I open the door, yawning. God, I needed that nap.
“There is a race car driver at the door,” Klara announces, wagging her eyebrows.
She knows of Cole, she knows I’m doing things with Cole. But I’ve never told her, or anyone besides Makenna, the whole story.
“Oh my god,” I peer down on myself in my blue flannel pajamas that featuring dancing pancakes. I run to the mirror, and it’s every bit as bad as I imagine, my hair is sticking up, and I have raccoon eyes.
I look like a deranged mental patient.
“You have to stall him,” I beg Klara and race to the bathroom to do whatever I can to fix this mess.
Brushing my teeth at the speed of light, I hear Klara walk back to the front door and let Cole in. I listen to them introduce one another and chit-chat for a second, and then there’s a knock on the bathroom door.
“Em,” his deep voice fills the tiny space of our hallway.
“What are you doing here?” I crack the door and try to peek my head out, but he sticks his foot in the gap immediately and pushes it open.
His gaze runs up and down my hideous ensemble then returns to the abomination that is my bed head.
He looks like he just stepped out of a high-end fashion ad in his dark jeans and untucked white button-down rolled up to the elbows so the whole world can see those delicious forearms.
He has that appearance like he just rolled out of bed, too, but a smoldering, casual look that is entirely intentional. His hair is supposed to be a little disheveled. The more he runs his fingers through it, the better it looks.
Why does he always smell so good?
And I look like a runaway asylum inmate.
“God, you’re beautiful,” he whispers.
“Have you been drinking?”
From the way he’s inspecting me like he’s going to devour me, I know he has not. But he’s very much drunk on something else, lust.
“Pancakes,” he smirks, running his long fingers across the buttons of my pajama top and unbuttoning the top one.
I take his hand and lead him into my bedroom, shutting the door behind us. I’m not that awful of a roommate to subject Klara to the dirty things I know are going to come out of Cole’s mouth when he has that gleam in his eye.
Cole walks around my room slowly, running his hand along my dresser and knick-knacks, taking everything in. He grazes my jewelry box then sees the little metal stick-man. He picks it up, and it seems so small in his hands now.
“You kept this,” he glances at me and spins the steel figure in his palm.
I nod and take a seat on the corner of my bed.
Cole made the little figure out of scrap steel during our metalworking class. Its head is a big machine nut, and it’s attached to a large bolt, and it has spindly little legs. At the time, I teased him that it was an accurate depiction of him—how big his head and ego were.
I couldn’t bear to have photos of us out all these years while I was trying to forget him, but it felt wrong to have nothing, too.
Cole puts the figure back on my dresser. “What else did you keep?” He takes a few steps back to me and starts slowly unbuttoning my pajama top again.
“Nothing,” I lie.
I wonder if he has any mementos of me left in his fancy penthouse. Probably not. I’m sure his other girlfriends would have shut that down. I know I would have. Plus, he’s never been sentimental like I am.
“You left me hanging,” he bends and kisses my neck, pushing my top off my shoulder.
“I feel asleep,” a warm flush overtakes me as Cole pushes me back to the bed and slides his hand into my top to cup one of my breasts.
The texts we’d been sending earlier had gotten downright lewd. The last one I remember from him was a very graphic description of how hard and aching he was for me. There’s something intensely satisfying about having the power to do that to him. Knowing that he drove here in response.
