Roomies

Bolting upright, I lean forward, listening for any sound of activity outside the door. There’s a quiet rustle, a squeak of the sofa bed springs. According to my clock, it’s 1:48 a.m. Is Calvin awake? Oh my God, did I wake him up by moaning? Was I loudly . . . masturbating?

I want to throw myself off the fire escape outside my window. This is only the first night having Calvin outside my room, and already I’m having sex dreams about him.

I am so fucking doomed.

Nobody thinks they’re a morning person—I’m no exception. I’m not mean or one of those people who requires a sonic boom to get me out of bed, I just tend to stumble around, blurry, for a few minutes before the hamster wheel upstairs starts rolling smoothly.

Wednesday morning, I wake, push myself up, scrub my face, and stand. Like I do every morning, I walk to the kitchen to get the coffee started. No doubt my straight hair has been teased into a campfire. My pajamas are twisted around my torso. I have dragon breath.

A deep, gravelly voice mumbles, “Hey.”

I jump back, pressing my palm to my chest. “Ohshitthat’sright—”

Apparently I’d completely forgotten that I have a husband. A husband with a penchant for showing skin.

And as soon as I see him, I remember my dream—the You didn’t want to fuck in the bed?—the endless length of him sliding inside, the sting of his hand across my ass—and a blistering flush spreads across the entire surface of my body.

Calvin is folding up the sofa bed, his hair standing up as if he’s been electrocuted by my couch. His pajama bottoms hang low on his hips . . . very low. I get an eyeful of navel hair before my eyes dart away.

I’m impressed with how accurately my dream hands predicted how he’d look naked.

I affix my attention to the tip of his nose. “Morning.”

He reaches up, wipes his nose self-consciously. “Mornin’, Holland.”

“You sleep okay?”

He nods. “Like a rock.”

I struggle not to look when he reaches down, absently scratching his stomach.

“You going in to work today?” he asks.

“Ah.” I’m overheated. “No. We’ll need to talk to Robert at some point, but I took the rest of the week off to, um . . .”

I have to turn away to reach for the coffee filters. His body is insane. His body hair is the best balance of there-but-not-furry.

Calvin is half naked in my apartment and I am completely losing my shit right now. I need to get some distance and some caffeine.

I gesture vaguely to him across the room. “To study.”

“To study me?” he asks playfully. I’m not looking at him, but I hear the grin in his voice.

“Yeah. Your life, and things.”

“ ‘Things’?” he repeats, and laughs. My brain fills with the memory of his happy trail and our dream sex.

“Are you headed to the station later?” I blurt, desperate to change the subject.

If he notices how I’ve just demonstrated my knowledge of his schedule, he doesn’t show it. “No, think I’ll stop doing that.”

My heart is a wilting flower in my chest. I mean, of course, it makes sense that he’d stop performing at the station now that he’s about to have a full-time job, but it also means the end to this little tiny joy I have.

I pour another out for Busker Jack.

I hear an odd dissonant scratch behind me, and turn. Calvin has pulled his guitar out of its case and now sits shirtless

on

my

couch.

He plucks at the strings and grins boyishly at me. “You put the pot on, I’ll provide the soundtrack?”

My controlled exhale comes out of me in tiny, sharp splinters. “Sure. Yeah.”

One of the few things Calvin has put in the kitchen so far is a box of tea labeled BARRY’S, so I assume that’s what he wants, putting the teapot on the stove and dropping a teabag in a mug. Round, warm music begins to fill the apartment, sending a wave of goose bumps down my arm. I intently study the thin stream of coffee filling the pot to keep from turning and gawking while he plays his guitar half-naked.

“Holland,” he says, slowing the meandering tune, “can I ask you something?”

“Sure.” I risk a look over my shoulder at him. Big mistake. “I figure that’s what we’re doing today.”

“This question is different.”

I smile in encouragement. “Go for it.”

“Are all female sex toys bright pink?”

Gah.

Gahhhhhhhh.

“Or is it just you? Like the scissors and your coat and—”

“I . . . Are you fucking with me?”

He holds up one hand, with a guitar pick wedged between two fingers. “I swear I’m not trying to embarrass you.”

“Embarrass me?” I look back to the coffee and grab a mug to pour it into. “Man, I’m totally used to having guys come over and find my vibrators in the couch. That’s why I keep them there.”

“Really?”

I turn and look at him flatly.

“Right,” he says through another delighted laugh as he returns to his strumming. “The colors of these things strike me as odd.”

“How do you take it?”

His eyes go wide. “Pardon?”

I hold up his mug and bite back a laugh. “Your tea.”

“Black.” An adorable giggle bursts out of him. “Oh my God, this conversation. I’m so sorry. I’m not fully awake yet. I don’t know what I’m saying.”

Returning to the living room, I hand him the mug. “Have you been thinking about this since last night?”

Last night: when I pulled my enormous, pulsating pink vibrator out of the couch, sprinted to the bathroom to wash the couch lint off it, and then shoved it under the sink, in the very, very back. Last night, when I went to sleep and very nearly got myself off dreaming that he was having sex with me.

“No, just since I woke up.” He thanks me, and takes a sip before leaning over his guitar to place the mug on the coffee table. “You’d think the colors would be more masculine if you’re getting a fake cock—”

My brain goes all wavy when he throws that word into my living room like it’s not a live bomb.

“—but—and my sampling isn’t huge here—the majority seem to be pink.”

With his easy chatter and judgment-free tone, my embarrassment slowly, slowly drains away.

“I think the flesh-colored ones have a weird sense of sadness to them.” I sit down beside him. “Like a penis separated from its host.”

“That is a very sad prospect, indeed.”

“They also grow discolored?” I say, remembering. “I had a flesh-toned one I kept in my underwear drawer and it sort of took on the colors of the fabrics around it until it eventually looked tie-dyed.”

He laughs, nodding as he works his fingers up and down the neck of his guitar.

I want to understand why I feel so easy around him. Calvin is the human equivalent of a joint. It must be the soothing sound of the guitar. “Maybe it’s because women want pleasure for themselves,” I say, “and not to feel like they’re owing it to a dude, even when it’s a toy.”

He stops playing at this, turning to look at me. “That’s astute.”

I purse my lips at him, playfully. “You’re pointing out how astute I am for understanding my own sexuality?”