Page 68 of Wish I Might
“Just grab the damn mattress,” she ordered.
With her on one side and him on the other, they wrestled it off the box spring and up on its side.
“Why doesn’t this thing have handles?”Nash asked, grunting as he fought to keep the wobbling mattress upright.
“Because it was on clearance.”Bailey used her hip to brace her side, then nudge it forward.“They don’t put the fancy mattresses with handles on clearance.”
“Jesus, it’s fucking heavy.”
She would have agreed, but she didn’t have the breath for it.They shoved and scooted the slab of memory foam, flaccid and heavy, to the top of the stairs.Stopping to pant, one shoulder wedged against it, she wiped a hand over her dripping brow.“I say we just push it down.”
“I feel like I should object to that, but I’m too hot to figure out why.”
“Then push,” she told him, and put her back into it.
They managed to get it down the first stair, and for a moment it looked as though it would slide smoothly on its edge down the wooden stairs.But halfway down it slowly slumped over, hit the wall, and stopped moving.
She stared at her clearance mattress, now folded in half and filling the stairwell.“Well, fuck.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Then why didn’t you say something?”
“Just shut up,” he muttered and walked down the three steps to where the mattress waited, limp and unmoving.He shot her a glare over his shoulder.“Are you going to help or not?”
“Not,” she muttered, but stomped down the stairs to squeeze in beside him.
“I’ll go high,” he said, raising his arms to grab the top of the mattress.“You go low.”
“Fine.”
But the hallway was narrow—apparently the designers of the 1926 Sears Crescent also hadn’t figured on more than one person going up or down at one time—and with Nash’s big body taking up most of the space, there was no room to face forward.So she turned, tucking her right shoulder against the mattress.
Unfortunately, that put her head in his armpit.With her face all but smashed against his ribs, she huffed out a breath.“This is ridiculous,” she muttered, then grunted when his elbow hit her ear.“What the hell?”
“Sorry.That tickled.”
It would’ve been funny if it wasn’t a thousand degrees in the stairwell.“Just push,” she ordered, and leaned into the mattress while he did the same.
But the mattress stayed stubbornly stuck, not shifting by even an inch.So she pushed harder, really driving her shoulder and her hip into it, Nash grunting above her as he put his back into it, and for one glorious second she felt the give that meant it was moving.
Then it was gone, tumbling drunkenly the rest of the way down the stairs to land half on the floor and half against the wall.And suddenly pushing on air, Bailey went diving after it.
She let out a shocked squeak, arms flailing so that one hand knocked painfully against the railing and the other grabbed fruitlessly at air, and for a few glorious seconds she was flying, weightless and euphoric, a bird in the sky.Then something hard and heavy slammed against her back, and she went face down hard into memory foam.
For a second she lay there, stunned and breathless, the world still oddly suspended.Then Nash said, “Fuck me,” the words vibrating against her back, and she realized the reason she had a mouthful of sheet was because he was pinning her down.
“Geph off meph,” she mumbled.
“You okay?”he panted, bathing the back of her neck in hot, wet breath.He moved, and though she thought he was trying to get off her, he was shoving her deeper into the mattress.
“Geph off meph,” she repeated, and jerked an elbow back.
“Ow.I’m trying,” he said, grunting and groaning, and a second later the weight was gone.
She rolled to her back, gratefully sucking in air.“Okay, that sucked.”
Nash loomed over her, his hair falling over his forehead, his eyes sharp with concern.“You okay?”
