Page 55 of Falling into Place
Carly laughed. “I was so prudish back then I couldn’t say her name without blushing.”
“I had no such qualms,” Brooks said, grinning. He stretched his arms high above his head. “Mind if I use your bathroom?”
“Sure, it’s that hallway right there, the door on the left.”
He got up and paused as soon as he hit the middle of the hallway, the bathroom to his left and her bedroom to the right. He glanced over his shoulder at her, one brow raised. “Nowthatis an immaculately made bed.”
She laughed. “I told you, I have a thing.” Her room had been the one place in her control as a kid, and she’d taken meticulous care of everything inside those four walls. She kept her bargain clothes clean and perfectly folded, her bookcase full of used books dust-free and organized, and found some measure of stress relief in the process of making her bed every morning.
He turned in place. “Actually, your entire place is spotless. Organized, clutter-free, nothing out of place, and not a single dustbunny. I seem to remember the first time you saw the disarray of my room you said I should see your place, as if yours was just as messy. You’re a dirty little liar, aren’t you?”
The way her stomach dropped at the way he casually called her “dirty” wasn’t normal at all. “I believe it’s called being polite.”
“Lying is polite?”
“I was trying to make you feel better!”
“Is that what you told yourself when you stole my jeans?”
She couldn’t help it, she laughed. With a snort and everything.
He just nodded and continued into the bathroom, calling out one last thing before he shut the door. “I knew it.”
She leaned back on the couch and picked up the remote and was still flipping through movies when he plopped back down beside her.
“What’s next?” he asked.
“Next?”
“You’re not gonna give up that easy, are you? Surely there’s another movie you think might make me cry.”
“I do, but I’m not sure I want to put myself through another tearjerker. Unlike you, I did cry tonight. Both times. I need something uplifting now.”
“Probably for the best. I have a process, and I don’t think you could break me anyway.”
“You have a process?”
He nodded. “If I’m in a situation where I don’t want to cry, especially if I’m in public somewhere, I start singing ‘Baby Got Back’ in my head.”
“I’m not sure that counts as singing.”
“Whatever it is, it works every time.”
“What’s so wrong with crying in public?”
“Nothing. I actually admire people who are comfortable showing emotion like that, but after I cried in the locker room junior year the week after my mom died, I sort of got turned off on the whole idea. For myself, anyway. High school guys can be a bunch of assholes.”
“That’s horrible, and they were assholes.” Sometimes the girls hadn’t been any better.
“Why weren’t we friends back then?” he asked. “I knew several of Sasha’s friends, but you were always sort of a mystery.”
“Eh, I liked it that way. I didn’t want many people close enough to see what my life was really like, so I tried to fly under the radar. Keep my distance.”
Brooks smiled ruefully. “Sounds familiar.”
“It’s like we’ve sort of switched places, isn’t it?”
“A little, yeah. I have no intention of going back to the Extreme Brooks that I was in high school, but I see now I went a little too far in the other direction. I’m on my way to something in the middle, thanks to you.”
