Page 59 of With Spite

“Had no clue who you were at the time,” I said. “Just that you were hot as fuck, and you looked pretty when you cried.”

“You think when people cry they’re pretty?” she questioned.

I leaned forward so that my nose was only inches from hers before I said, “I think you’re pretty when you cry. I don’t think about anyone else anymore. I especially haven’t thought about anyone else since you came into town.”

She bit her lip, and I reached up and pulled her lip free from her teeth.

“Let me go get my clothes,” I said and stood up. “Don’t leave.”

Fourteen

I giggle before I argue. Gotta start my engine.

—Bernice’s secret thoughts

Bernice

I had the TV on mute, and I was reading the subtitles of the show I was watching, a C-Drama that had snatched my attention from the moment I turned it on hours ago, when there was a shift outside my door.

Movement.

Then the bathroom door closed.

I looked at the red numbers on my alarm clock, then bit my lip.

I was really thirsty.

Pausing my movie, I uncocooned myself from the covers and shivered.

Thinking I could just be quick since I’d just heard Hux enter the bathroom, I opened the door and walked quietly to the kitchen where I opened the cabinet next to the fridge and glanced inside.

All of my glasses were dirty.

I looked at the dishwasher and groaned.

“That’s what you get for being a procrastinator, Bernice,” I grumbled to myself.

“What?”

I jumped and whirled, staring at Hux in the doorway of the kitchen with his shirt off.

The only light was from the green numbers glowing on the microwave and the moonlight bouncing off the snow shining into the kitchen window.

“What, what?” he repeated as I willed my heart rate to settle.

“Being a procrastinator,” I said. “I haven’t run the dishwasher yet because I wanted to put more stuff in it. But I didn’t cook at home yesterday, so I never filled it up the rest of the way. And I used my last glass before bed to put some warm milk in.”

“Just wash one,” he suggested. “Or use a coffee cup.”

I pointed at them. “They’re too far up there. I’m only five-foot-three…”

“Five-foot-three?” he rumbled, coming closer.

He came into the splash of moonlight spilling in from the kitchen window, and that was when I saw he was wearing a pair of sweatpants…nothing else.

I’d thought the sweatpants craze was a weird thing to go goo-goo eyed over. I mean…they were sweatpants. Men wore them all the time.

But seeing normal men in sweatpants and Huxley in sweatpants…