Page 3 of Make Me Yours
I nodded and paced his tiny living room. “There’s a bat. Downstairs.” I pointed to the floor.
“In your apartment?”
I nodded again.
“Christ.” He ran his hands over his face. “Okay. Wait here. I’ll take care of it.”
He retreated to what I assumed was his bedroom and returned a minute later dressed in jeans and a fitted gray T-shirt. His hair was rumpled from sleep and he looked adorable.
“What are you going to do?” I asked, hoping he had previous experience in bat removal.
“I don’t know.” He went to the closet near the front door and pulled out a tennis racquet.
“Wait.” I jogged to his kitchen and grabbed a pair of oven mitts from near the stove and a plastic shopping bag from the counter. “Here.”
I handed them to him. He put on the oven mitts and held the tennis racquet defensively in one hand, the plastic bag in the other.
“Okay. You’re ready.”
We both laughed at the ridiculousness of this situation.
“Just sit tight. I’ve got this.”
I grinned at his confidence. “Thank you.”
He nodded and disappeared out the door.
I bit my lip and I hoped he wasn’t mad about me waking him up. But the way he’d laughed about the oven mitts before heading downstairs put me at ease. I sunk down onto his couch and waited.
His apartment was tiny, but it was clean and neat, and furnished simply with comfortable pieces. The living room consisted of a worn leather couch, along with a beat up trunk for a coffee table. His dining nook held a round kitchen table laden with various textbooks stacked in piles and was surrounded by several mismatched chairs. Definitely homey and inviting.
A few minutes later, Cohen was back.
“Well?” I jumped to my feet.
He shook his head. “I couldn’t find the little bastard.”
For just a moment I wondered if I had dreamed the bat, but no, I was certain I hadn’t.
He shucked off the oven mitts and returned the tennis racquet to the closet by the door. “I assume neither of us will be getting back to sleep now,” he mumbled, running a hand along the back of his neck.
“Sorry about that.”
He met my eyes. “Don’t be. I said to let me know if you needed anything, and I meant it.”
Now that the bat episode was behind us, my adrenaline plummeted. I rubbed at my temples, suddenly realizing how crappy I felt.
Cohen stepped in closer toward me. “Are you okay?”
“Too much wine earlier. I’m fine.” I waved him off.
He headed into the kitchen and returned a second later with a glass of water and two white pills. He dropped them in my palm. “Here. Pain reliever for your headache.”
“Thanks.” I took the pills obediently and finished the glass of water before handing it back to him. It was room temperature and tasted like it had come straight from the tap, but I wasn’t about to complain. It was a nice gesture. I’d never talked to my neighbors much, and it was nice to think that someone I could count on lived above me.
I noticed a university sweatshirt hanging from the back of a chair and nodded to it. “You go to school here too?” DePaul was just down the street, so I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but this really wasn’t a student housing area.
“Yeah. I’m a junior. You?”
