Page 74 of Middle Ground
“Lead the way,” I say when we pull apart.
I close and lock the front door behind us, and then Meyer retakes my hand and guides me down the short hallway to her bedroom. If I wasn’t so exhausted, I would take stock of the pictures lining the walls. Maybe I would get to see another gem from Meyer’s childhood, like that photo hanging in Papa’s Pizza Emporium.
Meyer’s bedroom is just like her—a comforting kind of chaos. There’s a basket overflowing with folded laundry that crowds the doorway. Meyer has to nudge it aside before we enter. The walls are painted white, but they can hardly be seen for all the photos tacked up in some nonsensical pattern. Her sheets, soft lilac in colour, are rumpled, the bed unmade. Her dresser is littered in perfumes and hair accessories. A second and third laundry basket sit at the end of the bed.
When I look at her, her cheeks are tinged in that embarrassed blush I love so much. It doesn’t come out often, butfuck, it makes her look a million times more beautiful—a feat I hadn’t thought possible.
“Ignore the mess,” she says. “Turns out, having your place of work catch fire leaves little time for tidying your bedroom.” Then she shakes her head. “That’s a lie. It’s always like this.”
She tries to pull her hand out of mine, but I don’t let her. I tug her closer as I tilt her chin upwards. I want her eyes on me—always, but especially right now.
“Hey. A little disarray never hurt anyone.”
Her eyes narrow. “Says the man who rearranged my office because its former condition reportedly made his eye twitch.”
I can’t help the grin that stretches my lips. “What can I say? You’re a bad influence, Ellison.”
I bring the back of her hand to my lips and place a gentle kiss there. She softens.
“Can I have my hand back? I need to change.”
I reluctantly let her go. As I watch her bustle around her room, collecting pieces of clothing, I sit on the edge of her bed and begin to loosen the knot of my tie.
“I think I have some extra hangers,” Meyer says, gesturing toward a closet that is bursting at the seams, “if you need to hang your suit.”
I shed my jacket. I’m not even sure why I put it back on when the firefighter handed it to me. It still smells heavily of smoke.
“It’s fine. This suit will just be heading straight to the garbage.” Maybe it could be salvaged, I don’t know, but I don’t want any reminders of this day. “Doesn’t look like there’d be much room for it anyway.”
Meyer rolls her eyes at my teasing. “Haha,Meyer has a lot of clothes,” she says dryly. “I hate laundry, so the more clothes I have, the less often I have to put a load in.”
“That logic is inherently flawed,” I argue as I slip my arms out of my shirt. “More clothing leads tomorelaundry. Sure, you can get by longer, but then you have a mountain to contend with.”
Meyer places her hands on her hips. “Tell me you did not just use the wordsinherently flawedin reference to my laundry philosophy.”
I nod. “I believe I did.”
Meyer grabs a pillow from beside her on the bed and chucks it at me. I catch it easily.
She huffs. “Suddenly, I don’t need a bed buddy anymore.”
I grin wolfishly. “Is that what the kids call it these days?”
She rolls her eyes. Then she holds up the clothes in her hands. “I’ll be back.”
I arch a brow. “You do remember that I’ve already seen all of you, right?”
“And we already established that was a one-time thing. You don’t get a repeat performance just because we’re having a sleepover.”
She says it was a one-time thing, but the way she kissed me earlier begs to differ.
As if to prove my point, I stand from the bed and unzip my pants. Shucking them, I stand before Meyer wearing nothing but boxers. When I chance a look at her, her heated gaze has dropped to my crotch. In response to the attention, my cock twitches.
“You were saying?” I ask.
Her head snaps upwards. Then she turns on her heel and heads out into the hall, toward the bathroom.
With a grin, I make myself useful. I return the pillow that Meyer used as a weapon to its rightful place. Then I flip her bedside lamp on and shut the overhead light off, leaving the room bathed in a soft, warm glow.
