that, so here’s a shrug, you pick what it means, I don’t care; she had a shrug that was meant as yeah, sure, why not; and then there was a shrug along the lines of it would be rude to agree with you verbally, so I’m not agreeing with you but nor am I disagreeing. There were others with more nuanced meanings which I had yet to sort out, but those were the basic essentials as I had translated them thus far. The one she’d just given me meant something like, I have absolutely no fucking clue how to respond to that.
Her eyes lifted, and our gazes met for a split second of sexual tension and molasses-thick awkwardness. “I don’t feel disrespected.” A brief but powerful pause, her eyes meeting mine. “Flattered, if anything. I…I would never have imagined a guy as…as hot and successful as you would want to…to jerk off to me.”
“I’d like to do a hell of a lot more than jerk off,” I heard myself say, and not exactly under my breath.
Her blush turned from pink to red, and she shifted, her eyes dropping. “Rhys, I—I can’t. I can’t start anything. I have to get to my sister’s wedding.” Her eyes widened. “Shit! What time is it?”
I turned to glance at the clock on my range. “Six forty-five.” Understanding dawned. “Fuck. Your bus left fifteen minutes ago.”
She slumped backward against the counter beside me, her face in her hands. “God…dammit. Again. Why am I such a fuckup?”
“I’m sorry, Torie. It’s my fault. I’m normally up way earlier than this even without an alarm, but I just…I had trouble falling asleep last night, and I…” I let out sound that was more growl than sigh. “Fuck that—I’m not going to make excuses. I told you I’d get you on that bus, and I didn’t.”
“It’s Saturday. There are no more busses till Monday now, probably.” She groaned. “It’s not your fault. You’re not responsible for me. I should be responsible for myself.” She looked at me, and it was clear she was battling tears of frustration. “I’m sorry you had trouble sleeping. It’s probably weird having someone else in the loft.”
“It wasn’t that.”
She frowned. “But you said you had trouble falling asleep.”
“Yeah, just not because of the bed.” I chewed on my upper lip, considering what to say. “I had…things on my mind.”
Her eyes flicked to me—to my hands, as if remembering what she’d seen. “Things on your mind, huh?”
“Yeah. I’ve got an overactive mind. It’s always going, you know?”
She wanted to say something, I could tell, but she made a face like nope, not going there, and looked away. “So I have to figure out what to do now. I can’t just stay with you all weekend.”
“Sure you can,” I said, before I could stop myself. “We could work on the Nova together. I could use the help getting it done. Plus, later, I have to get to the build site and finish up some stuff.”
She gave me a quizzical look. “Build site?”
“Oh, yeah, I work for a home builder on the weekends. I do finishing stuff, small jobs. Put in electrical outlet plates and light switch covers, install cabinet and drawer pulls, basically just button things up so it can be turned over to the owners or the listing agents.” A thought occurred to me, then, and I snapped my fingers. “Actually, Jeremy, my boss who owns the company, he’s always looking for people to help clean up once the bulk of the build is done, and we’re at that stage now. I have about six or so hours of work to do, and there’s about that much to do in cleaning. Vacuum rugs, sweep up sawdust and shit, mop, wipe down walls and counters, all that shit. He’d pay you fifteen an hour cash to get it sparkly for the new owners. You interested?”
She blinked. “Wait, what? Like, a job?”
I tipped my head to one side. “Not really a job, just an afternoon or so of work for cash under the table. Whatever we don’t finish today, we go back and finish tomorrow. He just wants to turn over keys Monday. You need the money, and he needs someone reliable and hardworking to get it done.”
She eyed me, smirking. “How do you know I’m hardworking and reliable? I smoke pot and I missed my bus not once, but twice.”
I laughed. “I’m pretty good at getting a sense for people. And I overslept too, so it’s