“No.” Oh no. I’m not going home with him and sleeping in his bed. I wasn’t born yesterday.
“Now, Goldie, despite all evidence to the contrary, I believe you’re a standup woman. If you pinky swear to keep your hands to yourself and not take advantage of me, I’ll believe you.” He wiggles his pinky in my direction.
I can’t even do the pinky swear because I don’t know if I can keep my hands off him. After what happened in the kitchen, he’ll be lucky to make it to his house unmolested. Spending a whole night with him by my side? He’s going to need a chastity belt.
At my hesitation, he points upstairs. “Or you can go upstairs and enjoy Ace’s floor show.”
I tell myself that I’m agreeing to go with him because it’s the only good choice I have left.
“Fine.” I grab one of the coats from the hall and shrug into it. But there’s no way we’re sharing a bed. Absolutely no way. “You’ll be sleeping on the floor.”
13
Lucy
“Are you really making me sleep on the floor?” Matt lies on four yoga mats taped together while I’m ensconced in his cozy bed. His room is about the same size as Ace’s with a small refrigerator, a desk, and a chair situated by the window overlooking the back of the house and into the common area all the houses share. It’s why they call this particular set of student housing the Playground. The guys party out there during the warmer weather and throw snowballs during the colder weather, or so Ace tells me.
There’s a door situated slightly behind the chair that leads to the bathroom. All the bedrooms have their own bathrooms. How nice for them. How awful for the cleaning crew.
Matt also has a nice large bed, larger than my twin, but instead of the sofa running across the far wall like in Ace’s bedroom, there are the yoga mats.
His bed smells nice, like citrus and…well, him. Of course, I like it, as I seem to like everything about him, and surreptitiously take another deep sniff. I’m going to have to buy an orange and rub it on Heather so that the smell starts having a negative connotation. Otherwise, I’m going to get excited at breakfast every morning.
Want any orange juice?
No, ma’am. It makes me orgasm. Can’t drink OJ in public now.
“Yes, I’m making you sleep on the floor. Why do you have the mats there anyway? If you had a sofa, you’d be able to sleep on that instead of the mats.”
“Because I like to stretch. Good stretching equals fewer injuries. But these mats are meant for stretching, not sleeping.”
“I know you don’t have practice tomorrow and that you don’t have practice for like three weeks, so I don’t care.” I stare at the ceiling so I can avoid looking toward Matt. He got undressed in his bathroom but came out wearing flannel sleep pants and no shirt. And those sleep pants are somewhere on the floor between us. He’d taken them off under the thin blanket covering him.
I almost swallowed my tongue at the sight of shirtless Matt, so I huddled under the covers, hands clenched together, exerting as much control as I can so I don’t launch myself at him. “You’re the reason I have to sleep here anyway. If you and the rest of the team hadn’t made Ace miserable, he wouldn’t have come home with a woman and essentially kicked me out of my room.”
“Why were you there again?” he asks.
I can hear the skepticism in his voice. It’s so typically male of him to think the opposite sex can’t be friends. Ace and I’ve tried to explain it. Most of my female friends get it. Ace’s friends assume we slept together and when Ace moved me into the friend zone, I continued to hang around hoping he’d realize what a prize I truly was.
“Because Ace is my best friend. Has been since third grade. We met in the nurse’s office. Ace had childhood asthma, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know,” he admits. “What were you in there for?”
I prevaricate, not willing to get into the whole diabetes thing tonight. “Wasn’t feeling well.”
He moves again on the mats. It can’t be comfortable down there. I can feel myself weakening.
“What if we sleep with the pillows between us like the Puritans did?” he suggests.
I can’t help but laugh. He’s got a one-track mind. “Did you take that class, too?”
“You bet your ass I did. Who knew the Puritans were so horny?”
“I don’t think it was the Puritans who were horny. I think it was Professor Collinsworth.” Professor Collinsworth is a tiny woman who looks like a raisin with white hair. Her class, Early American History, is all about sex and violence during the colonial period.
“When did you take that class? Were we in that class together?” There’s more rustling, and I can’t help myself from glancing in Matt’s direction. I find him lying on his side, propped up by an elbow, his golden, perfectly formed chest highlighted by the moon.
“Yes, but not until last semester. I didn’t know about it until my roommate Charity told me that it’s a great filler class.” A class to pad your GPA.
“Ahh, my student advisor signed me up for it second semester sophomore year.”
“You have Public Safety with her.”
“Describe her for me.” His head falls onto his hand as if he’s settling in for a nice, long chat. There’s something irresistible about a man who wants to listen about nothing and everything. I mentally add that to the reward column, which keeps getting longer each moment I spend with him.