go up there for this wedding, and I’m scared I’m gonna get stuck up there too.”
“You don’t want to?”
She shook her head. “No. What the hell is there for me in fucking Alaska? My friends are here. My job, such as it is, is here.”
“Why do you say ‘such as it is’?” I asked.
I was struggling to get a bolt started in a small space; she moved in beside me, and slid her small hand in the engine bay, threaded the bolt, fitted a ratcheting wrench to the bolt, and tightened it. She smelled like wet hair, wet clothes, and something else indefinable but feminine and intoxicating.
Another shrug, laconic. “Waiting tables is not the best job. I barely make ends meet, and it’s a dead end. But th-that’s a different conversation.” She shivered, teeth chattering.
I huffed. “Shit, I’m an asshole, keeping you out here talking while you’re dripping wet. God, I’m sorry. Let’s go upstairs. You can take a shower and borrow some sweats from me while your stuff dries out.”
A look of longing crossed her face when I mentioned a shower. “God, a hot shower would be amazing.”
I led her to the stairs in the back that led up to a small loft apartment occupying a few hundred square feet over the back end of the warehouse; it had originally been an office, but some enterprising soul in years past had added a small shower, a sliver of a closet, and a separate entrance and exit at the side, as well as a kitchenette. It was all open, even the bathroom was not completely closed off. It was a space clearly meant for one person only, which worked for me.
I’d left a hunk of meat roasting in a Crock-Pot this morning, and so the whole loft smelled wonderfully of a hot dinner.
“Holy shit,” Torie moaned, “that smells amazing.”
“We pretty much lived on Crock-Pot roasts. She got a Crock-Pot at a thrift store for, like, ten bucks, buy an about-to-expire shoulder roast from the grocery story, she’d put it in there in the morning before she left for work and by the time Dad was done working and I was home from school, it’d be done. I can’t cook for shit, but I know how to crockpot the hell out of a roast.”
She inhaled deeply, eyes closed. “My mom used to do roasts every Sunday, but she did them in the oven in some sort of special pan. I always looked forward to Sunday roasts.”
“Well, there’s six pounds of roast beef shoulder in there, so I hope you’re hungry.” I brought her to the bathroom, which, as I’ve said, was only nominally partitioned off from the rest of the loft—the toilet was in its own little closet, but the shower was glassed in, and the sink, mirror, and cabinets were all open to the loft. “I’ll, um…I’ll grab you some of my clothes and then head downstairs so you can shower. As you can see, there ain’t a lot of privacy.”
She just nodded, setting her bag down on the bathroom floor. I grabbed a pair of sweatpants I’d had since high school which were the smallest I owned, and a T-shirt I’d had since middle school, which I kept for sentimental reasons since it didn’t fit me.
“These ought to do the job,” I said, setting the clothes on the closed toilet lid. “The hot water tank is industrial size from downstairs, so you can stay in there as long as you want, you won’t run out of hot water. But watch out, that shit gets scalding hot in a hurry. I only have guy shit in there, three-in-one body wash and shampoo and all that.”
“No girlfriend keeping her shampoo here?”
Fishing, I see. “Nah, no girlfriend or nothin’.”
She shrugged, smiled. “Well, clean is clean, and beggars can’t be choosers.”
“Right.” I shuffled away, trying like hell to not wish I could see what she looked like out of those baggy wet clothes. “Well, I, um…I can hear the water from downstairs, so I’ll wait till I hear it shut off, give you a few more minutes, and then come up. And I’ll knock before walking in. So you’re comfortable.”
Her smile of appreciation and gratitude was a sight to behold—it took her from drowned rat but sexy to just plain stunning. “You’re awful polite, Rhys. I can’t thank you enough.”
“Well. You’re in the home of a dude you just met. Don’t want you to think I’m…creepy or nothin’.”