Page 41 of Starrily
“Yeah.” He chuckled.
She clutched her umbrella, looked down the street to her bus stop, then back at him. “You can come to my apartment to dry off and call Stan to come pick you up.”
“No, I’m fine.”
“You’re soaking wet, and it will take you at least one hour to get home if you’re lucky. You’ll catch a cold.”
“Are you worried about me?”
“You catch a cold, you come to my work, you infect the rest of us. No, thank you.”
“Very well.” He pulled his jacket above his head and walked down to her. “Lead the way, Phoenix.”
Chapter 10
Simon wasn’t sure whether his plan had gone exactly as expected or horrendously off the tracks.
When it came to softening up Calliope, there was only so much he could do at work; he could crack jokes and attempt to lighten the mood, but Calliope was always focused on her tasks. The solution seemed simple: get her away from work. He could invite her for a coffee, but why do that when he could do something more fun?
The body art project had gone great. He was sure she had fun, and neither of them had stormed off because of a quarrel. Job accomplished.
There was the small matter of him landing on top of her and contemplating a kiss for a split second, but it was only a knee-jerk reaction. Or some other reaction.
Point was, he was fine. He wasn’t trying to kiss Calliope. Everything was fine.
Except for him being in her apartment now. When she’d invited him, he was ready to say no. He didn’t want to intrude,but a little devil Everett on his shoulder whispered, “Soften her up,” so he said yes.
With a few slams into her apartment door, Calliope got it open and invited him in.
“Is your door okay?”
“No worries. It does that all the time.” She shut it with some force. “At least if someone tried to break in, I’d know.”
“People might thinkyou’re trying to break in.” He looked around. The main space combined a kitchen, a small dining table, and an approximation of a living room—a patchwork sofa, a TV, and shelves filled with books and small decorative pieces. A couple of pet toys were strewn around the floor, clothes hung off the sofa, and a pair of mismatched socks was left in front of another door.
“Uhh …” Callie turned in a circle. “Why don’t you go to the bathroom first? That door. You can dry off, and I’ll find you something to wear.”
The bathroom was slightly less of an organized chaos. Simon took off his jacket and shirt and dried his hair with a towel, nearly overturning a couple of bottles and cream tubes on the overcrowded sink shelf. One toothbrush, and all women’s products. No boyfriend, he guessed.
And why do you care about that, again?
After several more minutes of waiting, he peeked out. Calliope wasn’t around, and he walked to the sofa, his eyes stopping on the closed laptop on the coffee table.
Everett would want him to check it out to see how Calliope was progressing with her software and how much work she’d done from home.
Well, Everett could go stick his espionage plot into a black hole.
“This was the biggest shirt I could find.” Calliope came out of the other door—must be her bedroom—clutching a gray t-shirtwith a NASA logo. She stopped, stared at his bare chest for a moment, and blinked.
He did his best to fight off an amused grin. “Thanks.” He pulled the shirt out of her unmoving hands and dressed. “Usually, this is the other way around, isn’t it?”
“Hmm?”
“Women wearing men’s shirts.”
“Oh. Right.” She blushed. “I … bathroom. Yeah.” And she disappeared inside.
Now that his comfort had been raised above the level of a wet dog, Simon inspected her apartment. There was a picture of Calliope with another woman of the same age, in graduation clothes—probably a friend of hers—but interestingly, no pictures of family members, or even a younger Calliope. As if she sprung into existence after graduation.
