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Apollo looked her over. “You just do you, Flo. It’s a good look.”
She frowned. “Wish I could say the same.”
This probably need not go on any longer than it had to.
“All right, just let me change and we can go,” I told Apollo.
He held a hand out for mine. “No need. You look–”
“Be very careful how you finish that sentence,” Florence warned.
“Comfy,” Apollo laughed. “You look comfy.”
And I was comfy. Slouchy trackies, slipper boots, a baggy hoodie that might have been his once, no makeup, and my hair in a messy bun. I was the very definition of comfortable.
“Don’t say that like it’s a bad thing,” I said with a smile.
He shook his head. “No. No. It’s definitely not that.”
The look in his eyes told me he was being sincere. He honestly didn’t care what I looked like – what I wore – he just wanted to be with me.
I held my hand to Florence, who threw me my phone. As I put it into my pocket, I shrugged at Apollo. “All right, be it on your head,” I said.
“It’s a risk I’m willing to take,” he said, reaching for my hand again.
I took it and looked at Florence. “I’ll see you later.”
She nodded. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“I didn’t realise such a thing existed,” I teased her, and Apollo snorted like he was trying not to laugh.
She narrowed her eyes at him, but smiled at me. “It is a very small list, true,” she admitted.
“Bye,” I said.
“Have a good night,” she called to me before turning to Apollo. “Treat her right!”
Apollo bowed. “Always.”
I saw the look on Florence’s face. She didn’t believe him for a second. Of course, she didn’t. She didn’t think he’d ever treated me right. But he’d never promised me anything, so I wasn’t really sure that he’d treated me wrong. To me, those were two very different things.
Apollo swung my hand casually as we walked to the boys’ dorm.
“What do you want to watch?” he asked me, sounding like the happiest guy in the world, utterly content with where he was, who he was with, and what he was doing.
I shrugged. “I don’t mind. You didn’t have a plan?”
He gave me a coy smirk. “Not really. I just felt like seeing you, and the rest has just kinda fallen into place. Or not,” he chuckled. “As the case may be.”
We got back to his room without seeing many people. What people we did see didn’t look at us twice. Why would they? It was just Apollo and his girlfriend. They were known to walk around holding hands. That we were headed to his room at almost curfew also wouldn’t have given them a second thought. By and large, the assumption was that we had sex. Whether they thought I was absolutely shit in bed and that’s why he fucked around, or whether he just had serious kinks I wasn’t into, I didn’t know and I didn’t care to. Let them think what they wanted. Nothing they thought changed the reality of the complex situation Apollo and I had found ourselves in.
I dropped onto the couch in his room as he hunted down the remotes.
It was a warm room and I’d always felt comfortable in it. The carpets were blue and golden yellow, the wood a rich walnut, and all the accents were in golds and blacks and whites. His was a room designed for entertaining. Around the fireplace were large plush couches, one facing an enormous TV on the wall. There was an actual bar and fridge. Behind a half-wall partition was his bed and desk, and the doors to his bathroom and wardrobe. Like his room at the Callahan Estate, it was lived in. Piles of clothes and books, pictures and posters, the random paraphernalia that accumulated in a lived in space. He’d never been into tidying and who needed to when you had people for that? True, at school, it was the Saintlings who tidied up after him, but it still meant he didn’t have to do it himself.
Apollo got us some drinks and snacks, and I settled against him as I always did. His arm was around my shoulder and we fell into the old familiar routine, sitting in comfortable silence as we watched a movie. Neither of us felt the need to break the silence until a Christmas scene came on.
“Icannotwait until the Christmas holidays,” he said excitedly.
