Page 37 of No More Love Songs

“You know you caused severe burns on a man’s thighs, and possibly more delicate parts,” I inform Kit before he has a chance to try and dig deeper into what he overheard when I didn’t know he was behind the desk doing God knows what down there.

Bewildered, he shifts back a bit, wrists still resting on the counter. “How did I do this exactly?”

“That’s not important,” I mumble, realizing too late the direction this would take. “Do you have any extra towels?”

“Maybe.” He leans forward, resting on his elbows and peeking over the edge of the desk to get a full look at me. “What happened here?”

“I fell in the water.” I narrow my eyes at him, trying to ignore how his own are laughing at me again. “You ever notice you ask me a lot of self-explanatory questions?” I peel the shirt sticking to my skin away from my body and hold it out on display. “What else might have caused this?”

He shrugs, clearly not willing to concede yet. “Unexpected, isolated downpour? A surprise encounter with the sprinkler system? A sudden urge to play with the water hose? Shall I go on?”

“No.” I start marching for the stairs. I can just make do with the towel in my room. Hell, I’ll stand on the balcony and air dry if I have to.

“Where are you going?” he calls after me, the rumble of a chuckle echoing in his voice.

“To check the capabilities of the hair dryer I saw in one of the drawers in my bathroom,” I call back, having thought of option number three. “It’s small, but I think it might still do the trick.”

Then I hear him moving behind me. “Come on, drama queen. I’ve got towels over at my place you can use.” He passes me by without even checking to see if I follow. Part of me is tempted to respond to his arrogance with stubbornness and simply proceed up to my room. I like stubbornness, it usually serves me well. Not today though, because I notice I’m already walking behind him before I can fully decide to do so.

“So, what were you doing when you fell in the water?” he asks, holding the door open for me to go in first. As soon as I do, all three dogs come over to greet me, tails wagging.

“Laughing.” No point in holding back the point we’ll only end up getting around to eventually anyway. “Jada and I were going back and forth making up jokes about Cody’s attempt to grow a goatee and I guess I doubled over laughing so hard, I threw off my own balance and flipped the kayak.” I’d be embarrassed if it hadn’t been so totally worth it.

Kit stops at the stairs and gives me a disapproving look. “Making fun of a man’s facial hair.” He shakes his head, scolding me. “That’s not right, Sky.”

“Have you seen it?”

As soon as I ask, his bottom lip jerks, but he steadies it before he speaks. “He’s trying something new. You have to give him time. Everyone grows hair at a different rate. He’ll get there.”

That’s what I thought too. “He’s been growing it for nine months.”

This time he doesn’t fight the humor. “In that case, he totally deserves it.” He shakes his head, starting up the steps. “If after nine months all you got is patches of fuzz, it’s time to give it up or take the jokes.” He turns back over his shoulder to find me still at the bottom of the stairs. “Are you coming?”

My face does a round of awkward twitches. “I’m not great with boundaries. Now might be a good opportunity to set some. You miss this and I’ll never hesitate to come busting into your bedroom again,” I warn him. “Ask Gray. Sometimes I forget to knock.” I suffer more for that than anyone though. The things I’ve accidentally seen I can never unsee should be reason enough to drive the lesson home, and yet, all too often I’m caught in some train of thought and don’t even realize what I’m doing until it’s too late.

Kit doesn’t seem bothered. “I have a kid and three dogs. I gave up on boundaries a long time ago. Right along with privacy.” He waves for me to get moving and keeps going up. “You can’t be any worse than Jack. She figured out how to open doors ages ago, and she doesn’t knock either.”

I give in and take the steps two at a time to catch up. “Yeah, kinda already knew that about her.” Ever since Jack and I started having lunch together, she’s made a habit of coming by my room to check for spills. Though sometimes I pretend she’s there to see me.

“Right, I heard she’s been hanging around you a lot lately.” He slows at the end of the hall just long enough for me to join him before he goes inside the door to his right.

His room isn’t at all what I would have imagined. Not that I’ve spent much time thinking about what his most personal space might look like, but in general, it’s been my experience that exclusively masculine space tends to have certain commonalities. Cool colors. Dark woods. Usually cherry or walnut. Limited décor, blinds and always, always, an obscenely large flat screen tv mounted to the wall across from the bed.

“What?” Kit pauses halfway through his room when he notices I’ve stopped, and can confirm now that I’m conscious of it, started gaping at my surroundings.

“Where’s your television?” I ask, sure it must be hidden somewhere. One guy had a screen that came out of a fake fireplace via remote control. Kit doesn’t have a fake fireplace in here, he has a real one, but still.

“I don’t have one in here.” He crinkles his brow. “Are you trying to slap a stereotype on me again?”

“No.” That would be dumb. We’ve already established as much. “I was just curious. I thought everyone had a tv in their bedroom.”

“Do you?”

“No.” But I don’t have one in any other obvious place in my house either.

“Then why would you think everyone has one?”

Busted. “Fine, I thought every man had one. Big, expensive. Flashy. On some over the top convenient-but-not wall mount.”

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