The Hardest Fall

At the very least, it always brought out my inner stripper. It was weirdly sexy, or maybe it was only sexy to me because I was weird? Might have been the latter, but I didn’t care one bit either way. Only Jared and Kayla knew about my weird R&B-hip-hop-sex obsession. Still singing, still sitting on the floor, I dropped my head back on the couch cushions, spread my arms out, and closed my eyes.

My hips moving of their own accord, I sang the whole thing, even made the gorilla noises, as if the lyrics weren’t enough. You can guess where I’m going with this, right? Because it’s me we’re talking about here.

When my eyes lazily opened, Dylan Reed was staring at me upside down. I closed my eyes, opened them again…tried it yet again for good measure…but he wasn’t going anywhere. When I’d first seen him looking down at me, I’d thought and hoped I had just conjured him up because I was feeling…a certain way. Watching Dylan Reed do push-ups and sit-ups was not something that was easy to erase from your mind, after all. Watching his muscles ripple under that smooth skin that begged you to touch, lick, and slurp, to…do all the things you couldn’t and shouldn’t and wouldn’t do to a friend…

My eyes fixed on the ceiling, I let out a long breath. He still hadn’t uttered a word. Reaching for my earbuds, I took them out, and the next song that had started playing slowly drifted away, taking Drake’s voice with it. The apartment was completely quiet. You could’ve dropped a pin back in my bedroom and I would’ve heard it from where I was sitting.

The roar in my ears started low until it drowned out pretty much everything. It felt like my heart was pounding in my brain like an intense bass line. Feeling a little lightheaded from the embarrassment, I sat up and the world righted itself. Biting my bottom lip, I gripped the top of my laptop with clammy fingers, clicked it shut, and then gently placed the earbuds on it. My face must’ve turned every color in the rainbow by then.

“You can say it,” I choked out in a low, low voice.

Eventually, he came into view and stood right next to the giant leather couch that was made for snuggling. I kept staring forward, out the window, but I could see his lips twitching in my peripheral vision.

He cleared his throat, and I bit my bottom lip harder.

Could I never win with this guy?

He sat down on the wide arm of the couch, and I shifted and pulled my legs underneath me, feeling vulnerable.

“I heard you when I was coming up the stairs,” he admitted.

I nodded, still keeping my gaze away from his. I tended to forget my volume; the whole building had probably been listening. Dylan kept going.

“I came in and called out your name, but you seemed to be too engaged. I didn’t want to scare you so I…waited.”

“Were you…uh, have you been standing there for long?”

There was a long pause then his voice came out low and deep. “I think I heard…’pussy growl’ at one point? That stuck for some reason. Let’s say it was a little before that.”

Yup. Okay, then. So he saw me squirm in my seat too.

Still avoiding his eyes, I nodded and stood up. I wanted to cry so badly. He stood up with me.

“I’m just gonna go jump off the building now,” I mumbled, ducking my head and trying to shuffle past him.

I knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but I wasn’t expecting an electric current to go through my body when his big hand encircled my wrist in an attempt to stop me. Goose bumps prickled my skin where he was touching me and all the way up my arm. My hand flexed, but he got what he wanted. My body stilled, and I waited for him to start laughing or making fun of me at any second. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew he wasn’t like that, knew he wouldn’t want to embarrass me, but he’d still think it, would still tell his friends about his weird roommate. I wasn’t mortified because he’d caught me singing, but singing that song?

“Can you look at me, Zoe?”

When nothing happened, my eyes flicked up to his forehead, and I watched his brows slowly form into a frown.

I blinked, and the next second he was pulling me toward the kitchen sink. Letting go of my wrist, he tore off a piece of paper towel and held it under water until it was soaked. When he moved toward me, I arched back and made sure my head was out of touching distance. His frown getting even deeper, he reached out and curled his hand around my neck to keep me in place. Apparently, I was still in touching distance.

“Stay still,” he ordered, his tone practically bordering on anger. What had I done except make an ass of myself yet again? As his eyes wandered to mine, for a brief moment, I wished he could’ve been at least a little unattractive; it would’ve helped me act normal around him. Even his slightly crooked nose added to his allure. “Your lip is bleeding,” he muttered, almost to himself.

Ah, so that was the bitter taste I had swallowed—and here I’d thought it was the bitter taste of humiliation.

“My lips get really dry sometimes.”

When the wet cloth touched my bottom lip, I winced and reflexively curled my hand around his wrist to stop him—more like halfway around his wrist, since my hand was tiny next to his. Even though it shouldn’t have worked, it did, and his hand stilled. I was so stupid that even his forearm looked sexy to me, the veins lining his skin. There were also those arm hairs I could still feel on my skin if closed my eyes and thought about the day I’d attacked him in the apartment, and then his big hand with its big, strong fingers gently touched my lip, bringing me out of my daydreams.

My eyes met his. “Sorry,” he murmured, his voice low, so low that my heart went from zero to sixty in two seconds flat.

Don’t look him in the eye, Zoe. Don’t do it.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered sheepishly as I pulled my hand down.

He turned his wrist once as if I had hurt him. I doubted it. He cleared his throat and resumed cleaning my lip. I let him, openly enjoying the attention I was getting. Okay, maybe not so openly, but at least I hadn’t done anything stupid—yet. When he was done, he balled the paper and tossed it into the trash. My eyes followed it, and if they weren’t failing me, there wasn’t much of anything on it, just a hint of pink, so what was with the sudden first aid help?

“Why is it that you always see me at my worst?” I asked, hoping he’d have an answer for me because I was coming up blank. I struggled to find someplace to put my hands—across my chest? On the island? Behind my back? On him? “I mean, getting caught singing is never the best feeling since it’s a private moment, but I was also semi-dancing, as I can imagine you saw, which I guess is weird when you’re doing it while sitting, but it still counts. To top it all off, that song? Why didn’t you walk in when I was singing to Ed Sheeran? I don’t sound so bad when I’m singing one of his songs. Getting caught by you, during that song?” With each sentence, my voice came out like a squeak. “Never mind.” I slowly walked around him and headed toward the hallway. “Any chance you won’t make fun of me for this?”

“Zoe—” he started as I managed to make it almost to the entrance of the hallway, but before he could finish whatever he was about to say, the power went out, shrouding us in darkness.

“What the hell?”

What the hell, indeed. There was a long eight-second pause where we stayed frozen, waiting for the power to come back on. “Uh…” I moaned, already going into panic mode. “I’m gonna say something, but you can’t laugh.”