you I wasn’t giving up.” He bent over and pulled his boots off, setting them neatly next to my door.
Apparently he was coming in after all. Ah well. Maybe we could hash this out once and for all. “Whatever. My feet are frozen, so I’m not standing in the door anymore.”
“Good idea,” he said, stepping forward and urging me inside with a gentle nudge on my elbow.
I was way too aware of his touch, and the feeling didn’t go away when he released me.
Damien, though, was looking around, eternally at ease. “After last night, I wondered if that would look better in daylight,” he said, his eyes glued to one of my paintings. “But I guess not.”
It was an abstract painting, like most of what I did, with a skinny female figure shrinking away from pointing fingers. After my dream last night, it felt more revealing than before. Still, it was one of my best, which was why I’d hung it in my living room.
I gasped. “You don’t like it?”
He scratched his stubble-covered jaw. “Do you?”
“Yes!”
“Well, I hope you didn’t pay too much for it.”
I fixed my eyes on his and crossed my arms. “I painted that.”
He turned to study me as curiously as he’d studied my painting. “You did? I wouldn’t have pegged you for an artist.”
“What would you peg me as?”
He thought about it. “A detention officer?”
I narrowed my eyes and pulled my socks off. “Well, no one would mistake you for a comedian.”
His burst of laughter unsettled me. How was it possible to be this annoyed but still feel an urge to laugh?
Before he could make another annoying comment, I said, “I’m going to go put on some dry socks. Don’t make yourself comfortable.”
“What, like this?” he asked, flopping down on my futon and stretching his long legs out on my ottoman.
Hopefully, he was good at interpreting glares because that was all he got from me before I headed upstairs.
In my room, I put on the warmest pair of socks I owned and headed into the bathroom to brush my teeth, because if Damien and I were going to argue—and I was sure we would—I didn’t want to have dragon breath. Although, that might be one way to get him to stay away from me… I could lean in really close and let him have it.
No. Sadly, my pride wouldn’t allow it.
I’d just started brushing when my doorbell rang. I froze.
Was I expecting a package? That was literally the only time someone rang my doorbell because I hadn’t told any of my family where I lived and my only friends were artists I’d met online who didn’t live anywhere close.
But I was not expecting anything.
My stomach clenched. Surely not.
“Want me to get the door for you?” Damien called up to me.
I wanted to scream down to him that no, I did not, but my mouth was full of toothpaste. I spit it out and tried anyway. “No.” But my mouth was still full of foam, and my throat was tight. As I rushed to rinse, the doorbell rang again. Running headlong down the stairs like the place was on fire, I called in a whisper-yell, “No, don’t open it…”
But I was too late. Damien was already in motion, pulling it open. Hearing me, he paused and looked up at me and then back toward whomever stood outside.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have the wrong place,” I heard a woman’s voice say on the other side. My mother’s voice.
“That’s okay. Goodbye,” Damien said, shutting the door again.
I sagged in relief. Heaven must have decided to smile on me for once. If she kept believing she’d gotten the wrong address, maybe she’d give up and go away.
When I got to the bottom step, I crept forward as quietly as possible toward the small window set in the door, not even worrying that I was getting right up in Damien’s personal bubble.
“Who is that?” he asked as I peeked through the window.
“Shhhh!” I slapped my hand over his mouth and whispered, “That’s my mom.”
He pried my fingers away. “Your mom?”
At that moment, my mom turned around, so I ducked down again. “What’s she doing?”
Damien peeked through the window. “She’s looking at her phone and the address on the building.”
“Shoot. How’d she find me?”
“She’s coming back.”
“Don’t answer the door.”
“Well, that’s going to be kind of awkward since she’s staring at me through the window.”
“Excuse me? Can I ask you something?” My mom’s voice came through slightly muffled but totally understandable.
She sounded