Page 22 of Make Room for Love

The coffee maker beeped, shaking Isabel from her thoughts. She’d gotten carried away. In the in-between hours of the morning, anything seemed possible, like Mira trusting her, like the two of them getting close. She needed to get a grip.

She got up and returned with a steaming mug of black coffee. Mira groaned. At that, heat rushed through Isabel’s entire body, followed by a wave of guilt. “It smells so good,” Mira said. “You’re tempting me.”

Isabel took a panicked, hasty sip, scalding the inside of her mouth. The pain made her wince. If that was what she needed to control herself, so be it. “Do you really want it? I can make you some decaf.”

Mira gave her a stern look, her elegant eyebrows arching. “That defeats the purpose.” She looked down at the paper in front of her, unenthusiastic about continuing. Then she stretched, letting out a soft, breathy moan as she winced. Isabel wasnotgoing to think about giving her a back rub, easing theknots in her back and making her moan like that again. Mira continued, “I’ll just finish this one and go to sleep.”

“I’ll stop distracting you.” Isabel uncrossed her arms and sat up, but she didn’t stand. She was getting deeper into trouble.

“No, it’s okay.” Mira’s gaze darted down. Isabel was suddenly very aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra under her thin white T-shirt. And Mira was staring at her breasts.

Isabel went hot all over. She was really in trouble. Women had eye-fucked her at bars with more subtlety than this. The difference was that Mira seemed to be doing it unintentionally, her big, dark, curious eyes roaming slowly over Isabel’s body, her soft mouth falling open.

It could mean something or nothing at all. But Isabel had to put a stop to it, or else she’d combust. Her nipples were painfully sensitive against her T-shirt, and her pulse pounded between her legs. It had been so long since her body wantedanything, and this was far too much, far too soon.

She could carry Mira to bed and get in with her. She couldn’t—but her craving was a physical ache, sharp and unbearable. She could free Mira from that constricting blouse. She could strip off her own T-shirt and let Mira do more than just look?—

Her alarm in her bedroom rang, and they both jolted in their chairs, Isabel bumping the table so hard that her coffee sloshed over the rim of her mug. It spilled onto the paper Mira was grading. “Shit,” Isabel said. She scrambled to stand. “Sorry.”

Mira looked at Isabel’s face, then at the paper and the rapidly spreading coffee stain. Like she was only now remembering where she was. “Oh.”

Isabel grabbed the paper towels from the kitchen and started blotting the stain. The alarm was still beeping, and it sounded ten times louder than usual. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, feeling like she was apologizing for more than just spilling her coffee.

“It’s okay.” Mira was still dazed. “It wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened.”

Isabel cleaned up as much as she could and threw the used paper towels in the trash. She rushed to her bedroom and shut the alarm off, ran a hand through her hair, and took a deep breath. What the hell was happening to her?

Mira could look if she wanted. Straight girls had a right to be curious, or however they felt. Isabel was a big butch lesbian who stuck out like a five-foot-eleven sore thumb wherever she went. Women, including straight ones, had all kinds of reactions to her: disdain, admiration, revulsion, desire. It wasn’t her problem what other people thought of her.

Whatwasher problem was that she was uncontrollably attracted to her roommate, who was straight, and skittish, and sleeping in the room that Isabel’s ex used to paint in. And absolutely, unquestionably off-limits.

Isabel would just have to control herself. She had less than zero patience for any man who felt attracted to a woman and blamed her for it, and she wasn’t a hypocrite. She was an adult with self-control and not a fucking creep.

It was almost November. She could endure living with Mira for two more months. Now that her alarm had gone off, she needed to hurry. She headed out of her room again to brush her teeth.

“I’m done with this one,” Mira said, still sitting at the table. Isabel stopped in her tracks despite herself. Mira set her student’s paper aside, and her gaze roamed downward again.

Right. Isabel was wearing the boxer shorts she slept in. They weren’t revealing enough that she’d thought twice about walking around in them. But they still showed plenty of thigh, and Mira was thoroughly looking her over. It was even clearer that Mira was doing this with no self-awareness. No one in their rightmind would try to flirt right now, when they were both frazzled and Isabel was rushing to work.

“You should go to sleep,” Isabel said. She hurried to the bathroom.

When she returned, Mira was thankfully gone. Isabel finished off her mug of coffee in a few gulps, poured the rest of the coffee into her thermos, and got dressed.

She was rushing more than she had to. There was time to grind more coffee and make a new pot for when Mira woke up. She was pressing buttons on the coffee maker when Mira’s door opened.

Mira stood in the doorway in a lacy pink camisole and a tiny pair of matching shorts. The fabric skimmed the soft swells of her breasts and let just a hint of her nipples show through. And those long legs, those lush thighs, all that bare skin… Isabel flushed, her heart pounding, desire piercing her like a red-hot poker.

“Oh!” Mira said. “You’re still here.”

Isabel tried to look nonchalant as she stared at a spot above Mira’s head. She wasn’t going to make Mira uncomfortable in her own home. She wasn’t going to think about how Mira had been sleeping in that frilly pajama set all this time, right on the other side of the wall.

“I’m heading out,” Isabel said, her voice strained. She turned back to the coffee maker and fumbled with the buttons. “I’m just, uh, I’m making coffee for when you wake up.”

“Oh, you’re so sweet,” Mira said. “You didn’t have to. Thank you.”

Isabel shrugged. She didn’t turn around. Mira walked behind her to head to the bathroom. “Have a nice day at work.”

“You too,” Isabel said, a second too late because she’d forgotten how to speak.

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