head around the corner again, to make sure Noah wasn’t around, and then scurried back to the room. I climbed into bed and set the alarm on my watch for six. That would give me enough time to wake up before Noah did, I didn’t want him to find my undies hanging in his shower.
In the morning I crept down the hall in my towel. It was still dark and Noah was, thankfully, fast asleep. But when I pulled my clothes out the shower I was dismayed to find them still dripping. I squeezed the pants and shirt as hard as I could. A few drops of water emerged, but not enough to rid them of their dampness. The panties and bra were also moist. I slipped them both on and cringed at the feel of the wet fabric against my skin. It felt disgusting. Like I’d peed myself and my boobs had leaked.
Shit! I had nothing to wear! I mean, I guess I could wear the gym clothes from yesterday, only they were covered in orange-tinged sweat from where Mikey had thrown me over his shoulder.
I grabbed my clothes and waved them around in the air as fast as I could, like a lasso. If only there was something in the world that could spin clothes around like this that wasn’t my arm.
Wait! A semi-thought grabbed hold of me. An image, like the merry-go-round, of something else going around.
“Tumble dryer!” I said out loud, thrilled that the word and the image had come to me. And better than that, I actually knew where one was! With a towel around me, I raced through to the scullery off the kitchen, where I’d seen a tumble dryer. I put my clothes in and then looked at all the buttons.
“Mmmm,” I mumbled, trying to decide what kind of a spin cycle was right for these clothes of mine. “Thirty minutes . . . I think!”
I looked at the clock on the wall. Hopefully Noah would still be asleep then. I pressed the big “On” button and the dryer sprang to life. The clothes started whirling about, round and round. It was quite a silent dryer, which I was deeply grateful for. I climbed onto the kitchen counter, making sure my towel was covering my lower half—a naked bum on a kitchen counter was not a hygienic thing, I imagined—and watched the clothes through the glass door. The dryer was fairly empty, so when the clothes reached the top they tumbled down to the bottom, where they were then swept up again by the drum. I felt I could draw quite a parallel here to the inside of my brain, which was about as empty as the dryer itself. Only a few thoughts and memories filled it, leaving it largely empty. I wondered if it would ever be filled. And with what stuff?
I must have stared and thought for longer than I’d anticipated, because soon there were only three minutes left on the spin cycle. But just as I was on the home stretch, I heard a door open and close in the passage. I froze, towel clutched to my naked body, and peered down the passage. Noah’s bedroom door was open and the bathroom door was closed and the light was on.
“Shhhhiiiit!” I looked at my bedroom door, I could make a run for it, but I might bump into Noah coming out. I rushed to the tumble dryer with the kind of speed I didn’t know I possessed, pulled the dryer open, dropped my towel on the floor and then started scrambling into my clothes. The underwear and the pants went on okay. But not the shirt, which was now a short-sleeved one with buttons that didn’t close. I heard a flush, the taps turned on and off, the door started to open, and still my shirt did not close. I heard footsteps coming towards me and I glanced around frantically.
“Hey,” Noah called, obviously aware that I was up.
“Uhh . . . Uh . . .” I flung myself against the wall. Chest first, arms outstretched, as if I was hugging it. It was all I could think to do. I didn’t want Noah seeing my boobs! No man had ever seen my boobs—well, not that I remembered anyway!
“You’re up early . . . uh, what are you doing?” he asked, coming into the kitchen.
“Nothing,” I said, face and chest pressed into the wall.