Page 17 of Room Serviced
They’d burst out onto the mezzanine overlooking the lower floor with its ornate desks and group of leather armchairs, a wall of windows looking out onto the hotel courtyard. It was a beautiful, picture-perfect library. It was also, very obviously, closed.
“Are we trespassing?” Sloane asked, the first thing that came to mind. She still wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t going to meet Max’s eyes, either.
“Shit. Sloane. Hey,” he said, completely ignoring her valid question as he reached for her shoulder, then stopped short.
Sloane couldn’t look at his face, but she could tell he was hesitating for some reason, frowning in her peripheral vision, and she wanted him to stop looking at her and stop frowning about it.
“Listen,” he started. “I’m gonna do something a little weird. If you hate it, you have my total permission to punch me in the face, okay?”
That got Sloane to look at him again. She managed to ask “What do you—” before Max wrapped his arms around her in a firm-but-gentle hug.
“Oh,” Sloane said after several seconds. Her arms were still at her sides. “God, I thought you were going to, like—” Tentatively, she raised her hands and put them on his back.
Max was warm through his shirt and solid. So totally not a ghost. Unless ghosts were solid.
Sloane bit her lip and started laughing silently. “I thought you were going to lick my eyeball or squeeze my earlobes or something.”
“You gotta ask nicely for that,” he said, voice low and rumbly in her ear. Sloane didn’t hate it.
“Have you ever?”
“Licked someone’s eyeball? Or squeezed an earlobe?”
“The first one, mostly.”
“No. But I’ve touched earlobes. Does biting count as squeezing?”
They were still hugging. Max was perfectly still, hands stationary on Sloane’s back, his head next to hers. His mouth was close to her ear, actually, which also wasn’t terrible, and when he spoke it felt…nice.
Maybe he’d bite her earlobe if she asked? She didn’t, but she did shift her feet to change position a little, let her fingers find the valley of his spine.
“I guess it’s squeezing with your teeth,” she said. “Do people really lick eyeballs?”
“You said it, not me.”
“Someone must.” Max was a couple inches taller than her, so she readjusted a little and rested her cheek on his shoulder. It was a nice shoulder. She’d noticed this before, but appreciated the confirmation.
Then Sloane squeezed her eyes shut, screwed up her face, and made herself say, “Sorry I was such a bitch a few minutes ago. And thank you for not letting me throw myself to my death through a rickety trapdoor.”
“I didn’t realize you were claustrophobic,” he said.
“I didn’t realize I was that claustrophobic,” Sloane admitted. “I knew I don’t love tight spaces, but I’m fine in elevators and porta-potties and stuff. Sorry.”
“I’m the same way with heights,” he admitted. Sloane pulled slightly away to look at the railing around the mezzanine, maybe five feet behind him. He must have felt it, because he pulled back enough to glance behind himself, only one hand still on her back. “I’m fine now, but if that railing weren’t there, I’d probably feel different.”
He turned slightly, and Sloane let a hand fall from his back. The other one she kept there, and if it drifted a few inches down his spine, he didn’t seem to mind. Max still had one of his flattened against her, unmoving in a way that felt careful and gentle. Like he’d been with that empty tumbler, months ago, at the wedding.
They probably were trespassing. Or if they weren’t trespassing, at least their presence would require an explanation any minute now. They should go and deal with all that. Instead, Sloane stood there in the dark, the door standing open behind them, and asked, “Whose earlobe did you bite?”
Max made a noise that was half a laugh, glanced away, and—Sloane was nearly certain—blushed.
“I don’t have a list,” he said.
“Anyone I know?”
“Probably.”
“Okay, is there a probable list? We don’t know that many people in common.”
