Page 24 of Poetry On Ice

Unbearable.

It’s my worst nightmare.

I’m trapped in an enclosed space with a man I don’t like but have kissed. A man who’s punched me and groped my dick. A man who hates me and makes me hard at the same time.

If someone could let me know how you’re supposed to act in this type of situation, that’d be great. Thanks. Seriously, contact my agent, drop me an email, DM me, I don’t care. Just tell me what I’m supposed to do, okay?

The longer the silence drags out, the more discomfort washes over me in thick, putrid waves.

To make matters worse, I’m in what one would call a quandary.

I sleep naked three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. Always have, always will. Pants twisting around your ankles and creeping up your legs, cutting off your circulation all night? No, thank you. Who needs that in their lives? Not me.

As a result, I don’t pack pajamas when I travel.

I had no fucking clue I’d be sharing a room with anyone, much less Ant Decker, so of course, I didn’t think to bring something to sleep in. The only pants I packed that I haven’t worn yet are jeans with big cargo-style pockets down the legs and a button-down shirt. There’s no way I can sleep in that. A straitjacket would be more comfortable.

Not to mention, they’re all I have to wear tomorrow.

So here I am, showered and ready for bed, skittering around a perfectly nice, if non-descript, hotel room in nothing but a pair of boxer briefs. I’ve tried my best to get as much of my ass under wraps as possible, but my options were super limited. I felt naked as fuck when I put my underwear on in the bathroom. So naked, I started to think maybe sleeping in a straitjacket ofuncomfortable clothes would be preferable, so to minimize the feeling, I put on a pair of socks and pulled them up as high as I could. They’re at mid-calf, which isn’t much, but I think it helps a bit.

I go over to the luggage rack to toss the clothes I’ve just taken off into my duffel. The rack is right next to the chair Decker is sitting on—the cuck chair, as they call it—which makes it about one hundred yards closer to him than I want to be. Getting there feels more like an arduous cross-continental voyage than a short walk across a hotel room.

“Put some pants on,” Decker says with a dismissive flick of his head. His voice startles and angers me in equal measure. It worms its way under my skin and makes me feel hot.

“Can’t.”

He looks at me like I’m the dumbest fuck he’s ever met. “How come? Seems a simple enough request. You just hold them by the waistband and put your right foot in and the—”

“Um, ’cause,Decker, I only brought jeans. Didn’t bring anything to sleep in because, oh, I don’t know…I guess I wasn’t expecting to be sharing my space with someone else.”

“I guess not.” His eyes travel down my body. Down my chest, thighs, and knees, settling somewhere near my calves. It takes the awkwardness in the room and cranks it up by a thousand percent. It changes the mood, tweaking it and altering it from awkward to something even more worrying: hyperawareness.

I feel the space between Decker and me like a physical thing. A yardstick that stretches and shrinks when I breathe in and out.

“Stop looking at me like that,” I say firmly, neatly ignoring the fact I can’t tear my eyes off him either. I know from experience what this type of situation can devolve into with this guy, and that’s the last thing I need in my life. Someone has to take the high road here, and it’s going to be me.

“Stop prancing around like that then.”

Prancing? I’m not fucking prancing. I’ve never pranced once in my entire goddamn life.

I don’t reply, though I admit the high road seems a fairly lofty concept right now. Far away and well out of reach.

Decker is such an asshole. He seems to get off on talking down to me. It pisses me off to such an extent that I decide to make no effort whatsoever to move outof his line of sight. If I block his view of the TV, great. So be it.

In fact, I lean forward at my leisure, unzip my bag, and riffle through it to find the clothes I packed for tomorrow. I’m not going through this shit again. I don’t want to have to be anywhere near him in this state of undress for the rest of my life. I’m going to lay everything out on the bedside table so I can roll out of bed tomorrow, get dressed, and get the hell out of this room as fast as humanly possible.

He’s still looking at me. I can feel it, a hot slither of warm fluid running down the back of my legs. Beads of sweat on a hot day. A subtle trickle that feels like breath on my skin. It distracts me so much I can’t remember what the hell I’m trying to achieve here.

I unzip my duffel and rezip it.

Then I remember that I’m here to get my clothes out for tomorrow and unzip again.

A slow exhale from behind me travels toward me and sends a tiny tremor up my spine.

“I bet you think those socks are a real power move, don’t you, McGuire?” His voice is gravel with disapproval ground into it.

I spin around, intending to launch myself into a sound defense that wearing socks in Detroit at the end ofOctober is an entirely normal thing. He’s watching me with an intensity that makes my mind glitch. His eyes are dark, brimming with menace, and his chin is drawn down in an open threat. He tracks me lazily, the muscles bunching in his jaw when I move closer.

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