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Before I can tell her she’s gone just as crazy as my sister, she’s telling me goodbye and calling out to Dad to turn the television down because she has some exciting news for him. She hangs up, and I groan with defeat. She’s impossible when she gets an idea in her head. She’s like a steamroller with no brakes.
And she wonders where Mia gets it from.
Reed smirks down at me as he kicks off his boots. “Your mom thinks we’re doing the nasty, doesn’t she?”
“The nasty?” I snort, and laughter follows me around the room. “Who the hell even says that anymore?”
“Old dudes… like me,” he says, flopping down on the end of my mattress like it’s just the most natural thing in the world for him to be here. He smiles as he bounces slightly, sitting cross-legged on the end of my bed. “You tell me then, Tink. What are the kids calling it these days? Screwing? Ramming? Pounding? Shagging? Intercourse? Making love?” He pulls his bottom lip in between his teeth and makes a show of enunciating the word. “Fucking?”
I swear I blush a thousand different shades of red.
“Did you get some rest?”
“Yes, thank you.” My eyes are drawn to the distressed holes cut into his jeans, and I can see there’s dark hair scattered over his thighs but no tattoos from what I can tell. I don’t know why this surprises me. But it does. Why did I imagine he was covered in ink? I wonder where else he has tattoos and where he doesn’t.
“What are you doing here?”
“Did I wake you?”
“You did.”
His chin jerks forward. “I did not. You were just on the phone?”
“Okay, so I wasn’t asleep. I just took a shower, and then my sister called me. After that, my mother rang me, and then… I dunno… some long-haired musician breaks into my apartment and starts hurling profanities at me.”
“I didn’t break in,” he argues, climbing across the mattress toward me. “You should really lock your door.”
“It was locked!”
“Yeah, and I picked the lock in, like, thirty seconds. You should invest in a security system, Tink. You never know who could come sneaking in here at all hours of the day and night.”
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like that,” I say, pointing a finger in his general direction. He’s got a weird expression on his face and I don’t know what to make of it. “Did you come over for a reason?”
He sucks in his cheeks and nods. “When’s the last time you checked your emails?”
“I don’t know. Yesterday, I guess. Why?”
He shrugs, a silly smile plastered on his face. His face is really confusing me right now. He doesn’t say anything else. He just sits on my bed in front of me, my foot touching his thigh. But I don’t move my foot, and Reed doesn’t move his thigh, and I’m a little preoccupied with the fact that Reed isn’t moving his thigh to react straight away.
“Check your fucking emails!” he shouts.
I startle, nearly jumping clean off the bed. “Alright. You don’t have to yell.”
He drops his head in his hands, grumbling under his breath, rubbing his eyes hard with the heels of his palms. “Please check your emails, Brinley,” he says with a forced volume reduction that I can tell is frustrating the heck out of him. “If it’s not too much to ask.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you.”
I don’t know what the big deal is.
Swiping at my phone until the screen illuminates, I tap on my email icon. I start scrolling through the list of emails I’ve missed over the past few days, my eyes roaming over the different subject lines, and it makes no sense to me why Reed is suddenly so obsessed with me checking my emails. He’s so bizarre sometimes.
And very pushy too, if I’m being brutally honest.
