Page 37 of The Worst Guy Ever
The bathroom door opens behind me.
“Hattie, I’m sorry, are you… oh shit, sorry.” He holds his hands up in front of his face. “What are you doing?”
“Cleaning my dress. What the fuck does it look like I’m doing?”
“Why are you naked?” he shouts.
“I can’t wear underwear with this dress, you dickhead. It will show lines.”
“You look…”
“Yes, I know, I look like a mess.”
“No, you don’t, Hattie,” he says, peeking out from behind his fingers. “You look fucking incredible.”
“Oh, piss off, you pervert. Guard the door so nobody else comes in.” He turns away from me and thankfully lets me work in peace.
“Is it coming off?” he asks after a minute or two. I blot at a couple of sections with a damp paper towel and it does seem to be lifting, but there are a couple of marks that will be unavoidable. There’s no time to fix this properly. Kara said she wasn’t mad at me for jumping off the boat, but I can’t handle another thing I’ve ruined this week.
I want to cry. This is supposed to be Kara’s perfect day and now I’m going to look like I’ve been tangoed in the photographs. I can’t cry. Not because of my makeup, because Rob is still in the room with me and, even if he is being a gentleman and facing the wall, I won’t let him see me this weak.
I lift the dress over to the hand dryer and blast warm air on the damp spots, hoping it won’t make it worse. I side-eye Rob who, to his credit, is standing with his hands in his pockets, eyes glued to the floor.
A twisted part of me is annoyed he’s not looking at me anymore. In this moment, I realise that everything he does pisses me off. If he looks at me, I’m furious. If he doesn’t look at me, I’m furious, but with the added unwelcome feeling of need and desperation. He can’t win with me, and therefore I can’t win either. Every minute in his company makes me feel like I’m going insane.
I kick the bin, and he jerks his head up.
“You’re going to have to help me get back into this, but you are not allowed to be a sex pest about it. If you touch me, if you make even the smallest comment about my body, I will crush your balls. Again. I mean it, keep your mouth shut.” He nods quietly, still looking at the floor.
I bunch the fabric together and pull it over my head, letting it settle around my waist when the skirt falls to the floor. The top part of the dress is made up of two long panels that can be stretched out or twisted and tied in different ways to suit different body shapes. I’m going to have to change my style and turn some sections around to hide the worst stains. After a bit of wrangling, I manage it, two wide straps rising from my waist, then criss-crossing above my boobs. I can spread the material out to keep my dignity, but the straps will have to twist around each other as they fall down my back.
“You need to help me with the knot,” I say, and he steps up close behind me. “Are these two sections both the same width?”
“Yes,” he says, coughing to clear his throat. I pass them around my waist at the front and gather them at the base of my spine.
“Can you please twist them into a rope, then tie them into a neat bow around my waist? You know how to do that, right?”
He pulls the ends of the fabric hard, yanking me closer towards him. I grip onto the edge of the sink and watch him in the mirror as he works, his hands looping the fabric together, his head dipping low now and then as he stands back and smooths out the sections, adjusting the length of the ends of the material.
“How does it look?”
“Perfect,” he whispers. His hands are still holding onto fistfuls of my dress. I glance over my shoulder and shudder a little when he exhales, his breath catching my exposed neck. “I thought you might have a tattoo.”
“Why did you think that?”
“You just seem like the type.”
I turn to face him and slap my hands against his chest. “Well, there you go again, Rob, making more assumptions about me based on absolutely nothing. You really don’t know me at all.”
Silently, he lays his hands on top of mine and we stay like that for a moment. His heart gallops away beneath his shirt, as his eyes roam my face and settle on my mouth.
I wonder if he has any tattoos, but I don’t dare ask. My fingertips shift a fraction, as if I might find the faint ridge of one across his firm chest. I picture him naked, tangled in white sheets, miles of skin for me to explore at my leisure. The thought makes me sway backwards and Rob’s hands dart out, catching my hips and pulling me back to his body.
“What tattoos did you think I would have?” I ask, breaking the deafening silence.
His throat bobs and I hold my breath when he reaches around my waist and strokes his fingertips ever so gently across the exposed skin of my lower back. “Maybe a small thing here.”
“You thought I’d have a tramp stamp?” I frown.
