Page 31 of Faking It
I stand there for a few moments. Watching Mick go through some kind of mental checklist of things he needs to do on the dashboard calms me down some.
Zane is still a jerk, but we’re stuck together. It’s going to be a long eight weeks walking on egg shells but I can do it for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Forcing myself to let it go for the time being, I walk into the bedroom without acknowledging Zane at all. He’s sitting at the desk with the blue glow of the laptop creating a halo around his head. I start opening and shutting the drawers of the mini-dressers to try and find my pajamas. It takes me a second but I find them and then head to the bathroom and lock the door behind me.
I take my time removing my make-up, washing my face, and changing into my pajamas to the slow rocking of the bus as it makes its way down the highway. When I emerge from the bathroom, Zane is standing there, midway through pulling his arms out of his dress shirt.
We both freeze. Our eyes meet. His stutter over me temporarily before they regain their customary guarded edge. Frozen in indecision, our eyes hold as he removes his shirt and lays it on the bed. There’s a ghost of a smirk.
“You dropped something.” He says the words without any emotion and then tosses something to me that was sitting on the bed.
In reflex, I try to catch whatever it is and in the process drop everything in my hands—dirty clothes, shoes, cell phone—including the box he threw. When I bend over to see what it is, every single part of me flushes a deep red.
And I want to kill my mother when I stare at the ‘Trojans’ label on the box of condoms looking back up at me.
Flustered and more than embarrassed, I gather everything on the floor in a frenzy and try to bury the box of condoms in the mess of clothes. When I stand up, Zane has moved in front of me, bare chested with abs and tan skin and biceps on display, and a smile playing at the corners of his mouth.
“Here I was thinking your big plans between shows was knitting sweaters . . . guess you never really know someone until you live with them.”
“It’s not what—that’s not what—they’re my mom’s.”
Oh. My. God. Did I really just say that?
Zane’s laugh rumbling around the small space tells me that in fact, I just did. I lower my eyes and look back at the pile of clothes—and condoms—and get a grip on my mortification.
Like it could get any worse . . .
“Missing something?” A lift of his eyebrows. A taunt in his smile.
I snap my head up to find that bare chest eye-level, way too close, and the black, lacey thong I’d taken off in the bathroom, currently hanging from the tip of his index finger.
I was wrong. It can get way worse.
How do you grab your used panties from a man and retain your dignity? It’s rather impossible. But I hold my chin high as my face probably turns a million shades of red, and I take the scrap of lace from him and add it to my pile.
More than done with this conversation in which I only served to embarrass myself further, I try to slink away without any more interaction with him.
But he doesn’t move. He just stands there with his head angled to the side, those green eyes of his searching mine. Everything about him is clouding my personal space in a way that makes every part of me beneath my sleep shorts and tank top become more than aware of everything about him.
“Do you mind?” I ask.
“For a woman who has no problem speaking her mind, why does a little thing like a box of condoms and some sexy panties get your tongue in a twist?”
“I told you, they’re not mine.”
“The panties or the condoms?”
He’s loving every second of this. I see it in the way he twists his lips. The gleam in his eye. The smug expression on his face.
“The panties are mine.”
“Oh, and the condoms are your mom’s?”
“Yes. No.” I huff out an exasperated breath hating that the mere glimpse of his bare chest has me all flustered when I don’t get flustered. I rarely get embarrassed . . . and I sure as hell am never at a loss for words. “Just . . . never mind.”
“So who’s the lucky guy?” The single lift of one eyebrow asks way more than those five words do.
“Will you shush?” I part whisper, part warn as I look over my shoulder to the front of the bus. Sure the door is shut blocking us from seeing Mick, but just knowing he is there in such close quarters has me on edge.
