Page 33 of While the Sun Shines

“Are you using it right now?”

“No?”

“So?”

She’s naked under that towel. And she’s going to be in his shower, water sliding over her—

He draws his hand down his face. “Yeah,” he says, “just—uh—a second, okay?”

Drew darts into his bathroom. He needs a real sponge, but a wad of toilet paper will have to do. The stains beneath his bottle of shampoo, a quick swipe of the drain. He grabs his towel from its heap on the floor and sets his toothbrush neatly inside of the medicine cabinet, rather than just leaving it on the edge of the sink.

When he opens the door, there she is, long legs and bare arms and a smile on her face. Drew tries to smile back just as easy and casual. “Just like we’re married, right?”

He winces. What a weird fucking thing to say to someone who just had a guy in her room overnight.

But she only shrugs. “Just like,” she says and he tries not to listen as the shower turns on.

He blows out a breath. This is cool. She’s in there, in his shower, naked. He shoves his hands into his hair and grips tight enough it smarts a little.

Outside. Cheese. He needs to go make cheese and ignore how the patter of water changes as she steps under the stream. Push away the thought of steam filling his bathroom, water coursing over her in that same small space where he also showers.

Don’t be a creep, he tells himself. Go, he thinks. Through the door, down the stairs, and into the kitchen.

But Drew’s rooted in place. From his bedside table, the photo of himself and Penny stares back at him, bright smiles and shoulders pressed together. That’s weird, isn’t it? He has three framed photos in his room, and the one he keeps next to his bed is of her.

None of Whit or Cooper or even a damn cow. Just his family and that one photo of himself and Penny that he’d filched from Whit last summer. And then he’d gone and put it next to his bed, too, when the other framed photos are over on his dresser.

How obvious. How embarrassing.

“Drew?” Abelardo asks.

Oh.

Oh no.

“Morning,” Drew says as brightly as he can, shoving a book in front of the picture frame as he turns around. “Sleep okay?”

Abelardo nods, his hair artfully tousled as he stands in Drew’s doorway. At least he’s wearing clothes. Sweatpants and a T-shirt that make him look like a fucking loungewear model. “Mind if I use your shower, too?” Abelardo asks.

Fuck. “Of course not. Go right ahead.”

“Thanks.”

“Need anything else? A towel?” The last of his sanity? His goddamn bedroom, that Abelardo and Penny can just move into?

“Penny gave me one.” Abelardo holds up a light green towel.

No fucking touching, Penny had said when she’d bought that set of towels. No boys, not ever, had been the rule. He and Whit, and then Cooper, were to leave them the hell alone if they happened upon one in the dryer and, most certainly, hanging on the hook in her bathroom.

And there’s a green towel, held casually in Abelardo’s hand.

“You don’t mind?” Abelardo asks.

“No,” Drew says. He shuffles backward a step. Turns toward the door, and shit, he should hide that frame of him and Penny better—how completely mortifying—but grabbing it now would just draw more attention to it. And keep him here longer. Quickly, he pushes past Abelardo. “Not at all,” he calls from the hallway and jogs down the stairs.

Outside, he climbs onto the tractor, turning the engine on before he’s even sitting and throttling it up until the roar fills his ears.

A bad idea, to turn the RPM up so high without letting the engine warm up first. Take care of your equipment and it’ll take care of you, Uncle Bert used to say, patting the worn hood of this same tractor.