Wasted Words by Staci Hart

“I think we’re ready to get home and shower the day off,” Tyler said, and I gave him a look that I hoped told him how much I would thank him for that later.

He shrugged and gave us a sour, one-word answer: “Whatever.”

It wasn’t long before we were finally home — I even found it in my heart to thank Kyle for the tickets and the ride, even though I felt like keying his car just for being a douchelord. And the second he drove away, I felt a thousand times better.

We passed Mrs. Frank and Kafka in the entry, checking her mail. She beamed at us when she saw we were holding hands, winking at me after she took a second to note Tyler’s shirtlessness.

I sighed as we walked up the stairs.

“I feel the same way,” Tyler said.

“I just want a shower and pajamas, stat.”

“You take it first,” he offered.

“No, you go. Your showers are quicker, and you got peed on.”

He chuckled. “All right, if you insist.”

We rounded the landing. “Sometimes I wonder why you hang out with Kyle.”

He blew out a breath. “Sometimes I wonder the same thing. I mean, today was especially bad, since his plans to bang a set of blond twins were foiled.”

A laugh burst out of me. “I just pictured Kyle in a top hat and monocle grumbling, Foiled again!”

Tyler unlocked the door, chuckling. “He’s so pissed.”

“And he didn’t even get pissed on.”

He snorted. “If only he had, though. Can you imagine how mad he would have been?”

“Yes, and I would pay good money to witness it.”

We walked inside and I clicked on the lights, moving straight to the bathroom to swap out my sunglasses for my actual glasses. He walked in behind me, smiling at me in the mirror, pee shirt still hanging over his naked shoulder.

“You sure you don’t want to go first?”

I smiled back. “I’m sure.”

“All right,” he said, bending to lay a quick peck on my lips, and I made my way out as he turned on the shower.

Within thirty seconds, my thoughts had run completely away. Everything that had happened between us clattered through my brain like a freight train.

It all started with Kyle.

I replayed our exchange in the car, hearing his words. You’re the last person he’d date. And he was right. Why would Tyler really want anything to do with me? I’d been through this before, but losing Tyler would be a thousand times harder than what happened with Will and I.

We were in a vacuum, an insulated bubble, holding reality at bay. I felt the speed at which we were moving, even though we weren’t moving physically fast. My heart was already his, and I wondered how much of him wanting me was just the newness, the excitement of knowing that I wanted him that fueled his need to be near me.

Maybe when we went back to our lives, it would just disappear. Evaporate. And then where would we be?

I tried to shake off the anxiety, but in the five minutes it took him to shower, I’d wound myself up like a pair of gag teeth. When he walked out of the shower in nothing but a towel and a smile, that puff of steam behind him like I’d seen a million times, I thought my ribcage might explode. When he bent down to kiss me on the way to his room and I felt the steam rolling off of him, what was left of my heart stopped. And when I walked into the bathroom to shower myself, I was certain the whole thing was inches away from imploding.

It couldn’t be real, I told myself as I stepped into the steaming shower. Kyle had said it right — You’re the last person he’d date. We weren’t a good match. We didn’t make any sense. None. It didn’t matter that I wanted to be with him. We were doomed from the start.

He’d regret being with a girl like me. I knew it as deeply as I knew my store, the bar, my comics. I was a Clark Kent with no other stronger self to redeem me. And he was the Lois Lane, the beautiful, unattainable one who needed someone larger than life. Clark didn’t have it in him to be with Lois. Only Superman.

But I was no Superman.

I felt a little shaky as I exited the shower, drying my hair with a towel, drying my body, my heart too soaked to break.

Tyler glanced at me over his shoulder as I walked out. He smiled, and I tried to return it, but it felt wrong, betraying my fears. Before he could notice, I ducked into my room and closed the door to dress mindlessly. Leggings. My Batgirl T-shirt. Taco socks. Then I took a deep breath and stepped out to face the music.

A book lay split open in his lap, and I smiled as I sat next to him, my back against the arm so I could face him.

“You’re reading,” I said, not ready to face the truth.

He nodded and closed the book to look at the cover. He held it up in display, though I’d known what it was the second I saw him holding it.

The Hobbit.

My chest ached at the smile on his face as he looked at the cover. “You said the other day that it was the book that turned you into a reader, so I thought it could do the same for me. I found it on the shelf the other day, and when I started it …” He met my eyes. “Why didn’t you ever give it to me before?”

“Because I was afraid you’d hate it,” I answered honestly.

“I don’t hate it. Cam, I love it. It’s brilliant.”

“Kiss me,” I said, not wanting to think about the reasons we were the same or different, only wanting to feel his lips against mine.

He smiled and leaned in, cupping my neck. “Anything you want.”

I pulled in a breath through my nose as our lips met, the clean smell of him working its way through me as our mouths moved together with ease, like they knew what to do, fitting together effortlessly.