Page 93 of The Snowball Effect

Emma had let out a laugh. “I’m living with one of them.”

Regan hadn’t laughed back, as Emma had expected. Instead, she’d hummed before she’d wrapped her fingers around the cloth of the shower curtain. Long, slim fingers, and Emma should have turned around and left the bathroom right then and there. She really should have. Because she was staring far too intently at Regan’s hand, as the laughter in her throat completely died away. Why was Regan holding the shower curtain like that? Like she was about to open it?

And why wasn’t Emma leaving? Or asking Regan what the hell she was doing?

Sheshouldhave been doing either or both of those things. Instead, she’d inhaled sharply and stared, those brief seconds seeming to drag on entirely too long.

That breath had held, stuck in her lungs, as Regan had slowly tugged the shower curtain, and Emma could barely breathe – the air was far too steamy. Too thick. Too much, and Emma’s heartbeat quickened.

Before Regan poked her head out, the curtain stopped moving.

Her dark hair was slicked back, and she stared at Emma, dark eyes wide and curious, as droplets of water slid down the soft skin of her cheeks. One made a home right at the edge of her full lips, and Emma’s eyes zeroed in on it as Regan spoke.

“I’m in the shower,” Regan had said, studying Emma carefully.

“I know that,” she found herself saying, though she couldn’t summon a scoff for the life of her.

Regan rolled her bottom lip between her teeth, that droplet disappearing with it. “I’m – I’m naked in here.”

What Emma hadwantedto do – what she did in the aftermath – was roll her eyes as hard as she could and say something like,“Right, I hadn’t realized that even though you were showering that you were also naked in there, thanks for enlightening me,” or even,“No, really?!”because – obviously!

People showered naked! Obviously!

Regan hadn’t said that the way she’d normally say something like that. She hadn’t laughed and flicked water at Emma or worked in any theatrics.

And Emma… Emma had realized, in that very moment, that amidst the very in-depth pro/con list she’d made before agreeing to move in with Regan, she’d left off one aspect. An aspect that, right at that second, was something crucial. Something that Emma, as a very thorough person, should havethought about – that Regan was one of the most attractive people Emma had ever met in real life.

A few months ago, she’d have called herself ridiculous for factoring that into her Regan Roommate Pro/Con. But, as she breathed in the headily heavy air, staring at Regan, who was naked in the shower only a foot away, she thought –I should have factored that in.

As a pro or a con? A snarky voice – the voice that occasionally liked to pop up and remind Emma that she hadn’t dated in two years – had asked in the back of her mind.

Definitely a con, she’d been able to realize as she finally regained her mental faculties and dragged her gaze away.

She’d cleared her throat and finally opened the medicine cabinet. “I just needed my moisturizer,” she muttered, shaking her head. “I didn’t think you’d mind, given your proclivity for ignoring boundaries and all.”

“So… you weren’t trying to join me in here?” Regan had asked, and Emma didn’t understand her tone.

She didn’t understand it because it didn’t sound like jovial teasing.

But she refused to let herself look at Regan again as she exited the bathroom without an answer to theridiculousquestion.

All right, Emma would admit to being partially responsible for the weirdness of the shower incident last night. But she maintained that Regan was at the root of it.

As they were on the subway heading to Astoria to see her gram, the staring thing was happening again. Emma could see it out of the corner of her eye, the way Regan had turned in her seat to look at her.

Luckily – or not, depending on how she looked at the situation – Emma didn’t have the time or energy to dedicateto Regan’s possibly head-wound-related strangeness of the previous week.

Not with how tightly wound her nerves were about the impending clashing of her worlds.

Regan was going to meet her gram. Gram was going to meet Regan, who she believed was Emma’s girlfriend. Her serious, live-in girlfriend.

A meeting that would happen in less than twenty minutes, as their stop was rapidly approaching, and Primrose Grove was only a five-minute walk from the subway station.

“So, speaking of the episode ofThe Onethat we watched last night,” Regan started in a completely random non sequitur, “I’ve been meaning to ask you about something you said.”

Emma turned to look at her ludicrously. “Whenwere we talking about that?”

Regan grinned, guilelessly. “Guess I was just thinking about it.” She barreled on, “So, anyway, you said something I thought was interesting – you said that you thought Samantha should potentially keep Chelsea around as a contestant even though they haven’t necessarily connected as deeply as Samantha’s connected with several of the other contestants still there.”

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