Page 67 of Collin: Episodes 7-9
Alice smirked and mimed locking her lips.
Collin groaned. “I’m not asking how you know so much. I am not asking!”
Alice giggled. “All right. All right. I think we have like an hour before Mom gets here. What’s left for me to do? Is the kitchen safe?”
“It’s getting there. Can you change out the sheets and remake your bed? Maybe check to see if Mom’s need washing?”
“It probably does.” Alice sighed. “Someday I’m going to buy her a new mattress. That thing is so old it makes clean sheets dirty.”
“Save time to shower and change, both of you.” Mr. Reevesworth consulted his watch. “We’re eating out.”
“Your hair takes longer to dry.” Collin nodded toward Alice. “You go first after you change the sheets.”
“Collin, you and I can share,” Mr. Reevesworth informed him.
Alice snickered. “Oh, I like this one. Bro, you are not allowed to break up.”
Collin rolled his eyes. “Just you wait until you start dating.”
“Who says I’m not?” Alice fled up the stairs.
Mr. Reevesworth delicately hung a clean towel over the shower rod after checking the rod for filth. “Why does your mother live this way?” The edges of the towel were frayed and dangling half a dozen inches of loose thread. The color was seventies green.
“I don’t think she really sees it.” Collin stripped off his dirty pants and put them directly in a trash sack he had designated for very dirty clothes. He leaned into the shower and turned on the water. “This is probably the worst place you’ve showered in a long time.”
Mr. Reevesworth pressed his lips together. “I don’t think I’ll be doing anything adventurous, let’s say that.”
Collin grinned, not quite happily. Mr. Reevesworth made the bathroom look small. His head was too high for where the mirror was hung. The Pepto Bismol–pink toilet looked miniature, as if the large man had tried to fit himself into a half-abandoned doll house. “I tried to clean it but, yeah…I don’t really feel it, sir.”
“Tonight. At the hotel,” Mr. Reevesworth promised. “I know money is an issue, but surely, on her salary, she could sell the house and get something small now that you two are in college and not here all the time.”
Collin tested the water. The hot water heater was sure taking its time. “It’s the house she bought with dad. I don’t think she’ll ever let go of it. And she drowns herself at work, so…it’s not like she’s here all the time. Alice and I do bring it up, but she always tells us that we’ll understand when we have families of our own, that the grandkids will love it here.”
“She thinks you two are coming back.”
Collin grimaced. “She does. She has this idea that both Alice and I will move back in. That we’ll all live here together.”
“What does Alice think about this?”
“Alice doesn’t say much.” Collin shrugged. “Mom wanted her to study at the same university where she teaches, but Alice picked a major that wasn’t provided there. Mostly just to escape. She didn’t want to live here and go to school. She wanted to see more of the world. I’m really not sure she thinks she went far enough.”
“Why didn’t you stay here for school if money was an issue?”
“Mom was sleeping with the dean of the engineering department. That just felt…weird. He was trying to act like my dad, and he wasn’t.”
“I thought your mom swore off men.”
“She did. After him. I think the water is warm. We better hurry.”
Mr. Reevesworth stepped into the shower and promptly hit his head. He was taller than the shower spout. “We’re bathing again when we get to the hotel.”
“Gods, yes. Please. I think you’ve spoiled me.”
There was nothing sexy about soaping up in his childhood bathroom with his dom. The water was tepid, the drain was slow, and the walls seemed to be everywhere, hitting his elbows and bruising his knees.
After he hit his elbow for the fifth time, Collin snarled, “I don’t remember growing since the last time I was here.”
“You haven’t. You’ve just changed your motor movements.”
