Page 22 of Homebody
Red
This early?! Where is he going?
Susan
He said errands around town.
Ruby
Tessa! Get gussied up and get out there around the town! And for all that is holy put on some makeup!
These women!
Tessa let out a breath of frustration loud enough to have the only other patron nearby glancing up from the shelf she had been perusing. The older woman shot Tessa a raised-brow glare.
Cringing, she mouthedsorry, then went back to staring at her computer.
Or at least pretending to as, behind the cover of the laptop’s screen, she silently typed in a response to the three women destined to drive her loony.
Tessa
On it! I’ll get gussied up, made up and out around town!
Yes, she was lying. But it was only half a lie. She’d left her apartment and was at the library. That counted asout and about. But the part that was a lie, her appearance, was a pretty bad one.
Tessa glanced down at her oversizedState University of New York at Binghamtonlogo sweatshirt pulled low over yoga pants and ratty old sneakers.
Her hair, which she hadn’t taken the time to wash this morning, was pulled up on top of her head in the messiest of buns. She wasn’t wearing a speck of make-up. Not even moisturizer since she’d run out of that a while ago and had been too cheap to replace it.
Though she’d never actually used the old-timey termgussied upherself until today, she was pretty sure how she looked right now didn’t qualify.
No doubt it would totally send Ruby and Red off the deep end if they saw her. Luckily she didn’t think either of them frequented the library. And if she had to guess, this wouldn’t be a stop on Dean’s list of errands either.
She was safe.
The chime on the front door sounded, heralding another patron taking advantage of the library this morning.
When Tessa was deep into her work, the steady stream of patrons popping in to pick up or return a book or strike up a conversation with the librarian didn’t bother her. Then, she didn’t even hear the door chime or the chatter.
But today her concentration had already been broken, so she definitely heard Dean’s voice when he said to the librarian, “I’m returning this book for my mom.”
Tessa froze like a deer in headlights. Eyes wide. Afraid to move or even breathe or he might notice her.
There were shelves between them, mostly blocking his view of her and hers of him as he stood at the circulation desk. But as he turned and moved toward the door to leave, she got a full body view. Including that of the tightUS NavyT-shirt, the fabric of which strained to contain his bulging chest muscles.
He looked as casual and as tempting as he had last night. Unfortunately, she looked nothing like she had the night before. And of course, just as she could see him, he could see her.
She saw the moment he noticed her, and the second or two it took for him to recognize her in her current state of disarray.
He smiled and changed direction, no longer heading out the exit but instead aiming toward the worktable where she sat hoping to shrink down and hide behind her laptop’s screen.
Uh, oh…
“Hey, there,” Dean said when he arrived at the table where she sat.
The table laden with handwritten notes filling not one but three different notebooks. Then there were the scribbled-on scraps of paper—she probably should be more organized—as well as her laptop and cell phone and a metal water bottle emblazoned with her college’s logo to match her sweatshirt.
All that was in addition to the fact she looked like exactly what she was. A grad student who hadn’t taken the time to shower or do laundry lately. And none of it supported her fake bad girl persona.
