Page 16 of Wildfire
You coming home or staying over?
Home
He’s in the bathroom. I’ll leave soon
Do you want pizza?
YES
He’s been so long
Is he waiting for you to leave?
Maybe
Okay I can hear him talking to someone
He’s gotta be waiting for me to go, right?
I’m getting dressed now. Be home soon
Weird
Pizza is ordered
I’m not taking it personally that Russ went into the bathroom to wait me out. The prolonged trip to the bathroom so the other person gets the hint to leave is something I’ve done many times. I once had to spend so long in my bathroom before the guy understood that I rearranged my entire skin-care collection into alphabetical order.
I don’t need to be forced out the door, I’m more than happy to sleep in my own bed tonight. Normally I wouldn’t wait so long, butI just assumed he wasn’t a hide-in-the-bathroom-post-hookup kind of person.
My legs tremble as I stand from the bed, a sign I put in a lot of effort and, more important, that I need to start working on my legs or something because I feel like a newborn deer learning to walk. Switching on the lamp on the table beside the bed, I’m immediately drawn to the small stack of books now visible in the light:Engineering Thermodynamics, Addicted to the Game: A Story of Recovery, Roll of the Dice… I reach for the book on the top of the stack, picking it up to inspect it. He’s readingThe Beautiful and the Damned. What the hell?
The English major in me cringes at the cracked spine and folded page corners, but the soft girl in me is squealing at the idea of him lying in bed at night reading. The superhot, kind of awkward, great at sex, full-set-of-bedding-using, Division One hockey player reading in bed after getting laid. It kind of makes me wish I wasn’t about to go, but the idea of his face dropping when he eventually leaves the bathroom and sees I’m still here is not one I can stomach.
I mean, worst-case scenario, he comes out of the bathroom when I’m half dressed and we have a really great conversation about how my deep-rooted abandonment issues mean I’ll never expect more than the bare minimum from a man, and how my father’s blatant disinterest in my existence has given me a stifling fear of rejection, which has shaped every romantic interaction I have, so I’m not judging him for wanting me to leave.
Or, alternatively, I can bottle that up and make a therapist really rich one day.
I put the book back where I found it and scan the floor, which is suspiciously free of clothes. I look around the room and my gaze lands on his desk, and the shuffling around when he got out of bed suddenly makes sense.
He was folding my clothes.
I don’t take long to dwell on the unfamiliar, fuzzy feeling thatfloods my stomach at the realization before quickly pulling my clothes back on and heading toward the door. At this point, I’m ready to be in my own space again. I back out of the room slowly, holding down the handle to close the door as quietly as I can so he doesn’t think I’m storming out of here.
I’m satisfied with my efforts to leave, maybe feeling a little smug, since Emilia and her ballerina friends tell me I’m about as quiet and graceful as a drunk hippo. Well, feeling smug until I turn around to leave and two pairs of inquisitive brown eyes are staring right at me.
“Why do you look like you’re fleeing from the scene of a crime?” Russ’s friend Henry asks at a volume I’d prefer him to lower.
“I don’t.” The girl he’s with gives me a sympathetic look that says you do, without her saying it out loud. “I gotta go, sorry.”
They both step out of the way as I rush past, hoping with everything I’ve got that it’s not going to be difficult to get a ride and I’m not going to be forced to do the walk of shame.
“He’s a good guy,” Henry says. “A really good guy.”
“I can tell,” I mumble. “I really do have to go.”
The party is in its final stages. The only people around to potentially witness my disappearing act are too wasted to care, and by the time I reach the front door my shoes are back on my feet. I can’t get an Uber to accept my request, so I set off on foot in the direction of home.
EMILIA BENNETT
