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By the time I made it back to the guest room, Kulti was already lying in bed with the sheets pulled up halfway to his stomach, his legs propped up and his tablet reclining against them. I grabbed my nightclothes and stuff from my bag and went back into the bathroom to shower, put on another long T-shirt and socks that went up almost to my knees.
“Are we going for a run in the morning?” Kulti asked from his spot on the bed once I was back in the room, pulling out a new set of running clothes for the next day.
“As long as you can keep up again,” I teased him, setting the clothing on top of my bag and turning around to see him scowling at me. Not saying a word, I winked and climbed up to the top bunk, settling in before I remembered what my dad had said. I got up to my knees and leaned over the edge so I could see him, sitting there on the too-small-for-him bed. “Thanks for helping me today with the yard. My dad asked me to say thank you too.”
Squeaky clean and so relaxed-looking on the bed I’d grown up in, Kulti looked refreshed. He tipped his chin down. “It was my pleasure.”
I flashed him a smile and sat back up, crawling under the covers one more time. I’d barely pulled them up to my chest when Kulti spoke again.
“That was my first time using a lawn mower.”
I fucking knew it! I didn’t say that of course, instead, I stuck with a very grown-up, “Oh really?”
There was a pause before he kept going. “I enjoyed it. I can see why you went to school for it. It’s fitting.”
Wait a second, wait a second. I knew for a fact that I’d never once told Kulti that I got my degree in landscaping. He’d never asked, not once. Sure, I had told him out of anger that I did landscaping work, if he hadn’t already known, but that was the extent of it. There wasn’t a single doubt in my mind that I had never mentioned what university I went to school at, much less what I majored in.
“How do you know what I went to school for?” I asked him casually. I’m sure I was making some kind of stupid face.
“I looked you up. You have it on your profile,” he said without skipping a beat.
What? I sat up again and looked over the edge of the bunk bed. “You did?”
Even upside down, I recognized that he nodded. “Yes.”
“You… have an account?”
He might have frowned, but I wasn’t positive with all the blood rushing to my head. “Get down before you fall over the side of the bed and give yourself more brain damage than you already have.”
Rolling my eyes, I did as he said but only because it wouldn’t be the first time I’d fallen off a bunk bed. I climbed down way too quickly and went and sat on the edge of his mattress, way too interested. “You use social media?”
Kulti stared at me. “Yes.” Then he added, “I have a fake account.”
“No!” I laughed.
“Yes,” he confirmed.
“Can I see it?”
The German looked like he wanted to deny my request but he finally nodded, and a minute later, handed me his tablet. The blue and white page had “Michel Reiner” at the top and some bogus, generic picture of a sunset as the profile picture. His number of friends? 25.
Twenty-freaking-five.
I looked at him over the top of the tablet and felt my little heart break just a bit. “Do you know how many people like your fan page?”
He shrugged.
I looked it up.
The Reiner Kulti Official Fan Page had one hundred and twenty-five million likes.
And ‘Michel Reiner’ had twenty-five.
Something watery pooled in my throat as I handed him back his tablet. “I don’t get on there much but you could add me as a friend if you wanted to,” I offered in a wobbly voice.
“What an honor,” the bratwurst said, but he said it with a small smile so I knew he didn’t mean it like an asshole.
I still reached under the cover and pulled his leg hair. At least I hoped it was his leg hair.
