Page 44 of Love at First Sighting
Carter
It’s so…beige.
Everything in the Nest is.
The walls are varying tones of off-white, probably in hyperspecific shades like Royal Eggshell or Colgate Optic White.
El’s room isalsovery beige.
It’s more like a staging ground for a photo shoot than a home. A bed here, a throw pillow there, plenty of blank wall space for backdrops. El’s room is used, but not lived in.
That, at least, we have in common.
“I’ve only been here for a couple months,” she explains. I take a seat on her bed, which is ungodly fluffy and soft. The room smells like her cucumber shampoo, with bites of sharp perfume, the heat from her curling iron, and heat-damaged hair. “And don’t know how long I plan to stay, so I don’t want to gettoocomfortable.”
“Why would you leave? You’ve got a sick view.” I rise and look out her wide window at the city. The sun is going down—one of the best times of day in LA, when the sky turns vibrant with oranges and pinks—and it sure beats the view of a parking garage I have from my place.
El leans on one of her bedposts behind me. “Because my roommates are…”
“Horrible?” I turn around. El’s still in a pair of yoga pants and a sports bra, focusing on her makeup and hair before she slides into her dress (which I have not seen, but my cardiovascular system is worried).
El gives a tight-lipped smile. “That’s one way to put it!”
“Are they going to eat me alive?”
She presses her palms to the planes of my chest. Uh-oh. “They might try, but I think you can handle yourself.”
It’ll be my first time at Houdini House, which I’m not sure I could afford on my own, but at least I didn’t have to buy a new outfit. The swanky, knockoff Haunted Mansion has a strict dress code: evening wear. As someone who wears a full suit, suspenders, and trilby hat on a daily basis, I am better equipped than anybody. I just had to swap out my usual Converse for a pair of dress shoes.
Regardless, there’s something so intimate about being in El’s room, with her touching me like this. There’s a look of flirtation in her eyes and it reminds me of the longing gaze she gave me at the beach a few days ago. I haven’t seen her since then, but we keep in contact with texts throughout the week. Notallof it is business-related.
I send her good memes I find while perusing the web at work. She takes pictures of random men in suits and sends me messages likegod, you guys are everywhere. The other day, she sent me a photo of a golden retriever in sunglasses and said it reminded her of me. Ithinkbeing called a golden retriever is a compliment. If my life were one of Leonard’s animes, I’d have a permanent set of those little blushing cheek spots lately.
My eyes track down her arms to where she’s touching me. It’s hard tonotimagine holding on to her wrists, pulling her onto her fluffy bed with me. How am I supposed to not picture her leaning her head back into her pillows, suggesting she hold on to the headboard as I spend a generous amount of time between her legs? It feels like sooner or later we’re going to explode and we won’t be able to look back.
“I’ve gotta finish my hair,” she says, dragging her fingers over my shoulder and heading back into the bathroom. El pulls the door shut behind her and I return to sitting on the edge of her bed. Sad and horny. Admittedly, I feel a little awkward as she hums under her breath inside the bathroom and I’m not there to respectfully swoon.
After a few minutes, she pokes her head out of the bathroom.
“Um…Can I borrow you?” she asks.
Her curls fall to the side and I catch a sliver of red sparkle on the other side of the door. I don’t know what she’s wearing yet, but I feel fairly confident it’ll kill me on the spot. I suppose it’s a good way to go.
As I reach the bathroom door, she pushes it the rest of the way open, allowing me to step inside with her. El’s bathroom is a little smaller than my own bedroom, with an elegant Jacuzzi in the back corner and a glass shower filled with high-end beauty products.
These are still dangerously close quarters to be in with the woman I want to touch so badly it physically hurts.
El’s holding her dress closed in the back, revealing a canvas of exposed tan skin on her back and a slight hint of the black lace trim on her underwear. The dress is floor length, covered in red sequins, with a slit up her leg that’s giving me heart palpitations.
“Could you zip me up?”
Our eyes meet in the mirror. Her lips are a supple, red-glossed pout and I wonder if she’s asking the same questions I am. What would be the worst that could happen if we acted on this? After our close encounter on the beach, I doubt it’s a stretch to say she’s as attracted to me as I am to her.
She knows what lives in my darkest days and so far she hasn’t run. But that doesn’t mean she has to love it. It doesn’t mean shecanlove me.
“Sure,” I mutter, finding the tiny zipper at the base of her spine and beginning to work it up her body. The bodice tightens around her midsection, forming to her curves. My thumb brushes the center of her back and she shudders, biting back a sigh. The zipper reaches the top, shaping the dress into an off-the-shoulder number. It hugs her in all the right places. I yank my eyes away before I get lost in the sharp lines of her collarbones and trace them down to her cleavage. This dress is doing the lord’s work.
By the lord’s work, I meantesting my ability to resist committing sins.
