Page 91 of Level Up
“Yeah?” He raises an eyebrow curiously, like he doesn’t know where I’m going with this, although I’m sure he must.
“Yeah.” I stop picking and hold my head higher. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
Damien invitedhimselfto my family dinner tonight. I simply suggested that he come over afterwards, but he specifically asked if he could come to dinner. Is this a masochism thing I have to be worried about? Does he have a death wish?
Well, no, probably not. Since he doesn’t seem tomindhaving dinner with my family. We ordered Italian food, and he even decided to eat his linguine with chopsticks, like Gram.He said it was like eating ramen without the broth—which is a fair point.
I seem to have found someone strange enough to fit into my life, and I don’t know what to do with that knowledge. It’s kind of overwhelming. But in a good way. I think.
Either way, I don’t even bother keeping up any sort of pretense when I drag him up to my apartment after dinner—declining my mom’s invitation to watchEnola Holmes 2—right from my grandmother’s house. We’re all adults here; we know the deal.
Except I don’t really know the deal at all.
I brought him here with the intention that we might trydoingsome of the things we’ve been talking about for the past week, but once he’s actually standing in my apartment, I feel like that was a different person talking on the phone with him. A different me, who learned to say what she was thinking, without fear of judgment.
Now the fear has returned, and I don’t know where to go from here.
He’s watching me curiously as we stand inside my front door, like he’s studying me. “You’re freaking out,” he states.
“I’m not!” I definitely sound freaked out when I say it.
“Look, nothing has to happen,” he says, putting his hands on my shoulders. “But I can still stay, if you want. We can watch something, or play a video game, or we can just cuddle in your bed. I’m cool with whatever.”
I frown at him. “I thought guys didn’t really like cuddling.”
He scoffs. “I don’t know what’s not to like about it,” he says, shaking his head. “I mean, do you like it?”
“Uh, I guess it depends on who it’s with…” I think back to cuddling with Shawn…Blech. Thankfully he didn’t want to very often. “You don’t have bad B.O. so it’s probably fine.”
This elicits a laugh. “Thankyou?”
“I just mean… My ex always smelled really bad,” I tell him, though I feel weird admitting that. Like I shouldn’t freely admit that I was too pathetic to get a boyfriend who smelled nice. Until now, anyway.
“Did you actually…likehim?” he asks skeptically. He doesn’t sound jealous, he sounds…confused.
I look away nervously. “What do you mean?” I ask, since I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that. It’d probably look bad if I tell him that I didn’t really—what if Damien thinks that means I don’t actually like him, either?
“Just—Most people don’t date someone who smells bad to them,” he says, like that should be obvious. “It’s, like…chemistry. Or biology? I don’t know, I was terrible at science, but you know what I mean, right?”
“But—Everyone smells bad when they’re, like, sweaty and stuff.” I lift my arm to sniff, since I’m sure I’m pretty gross by now, after all the nervous sweating I’ve done today. “Yeah, I’m disgusting.” I lower my arm, grimacing. “You probably don’t want to cuddle now.”
“I can assure you that I do,” he says with a mocking smile.
“But, I mean, you probably only smell good because of your soap or deodorant?—”
“I have to use unscented everything or I get itchy.” He shrugs. “I even have to use this natural deodorant that doesn’t do that great a job.” He lifts his own arm a little to sniff himself as well. “Yikes.”
“Well, you smelled fine sitting next to me at dinner,” I assure him. Maybe more than fine.
He pinches his mouth like he’s trying not to laugh, his eyes practically twinkling with mirth behind his glasses.
I feel ridiculous and I don’t even know why. “What?”
Without a word, he unzips his hoodie and slips it off, tossing it on the chair with our jackets, and already I can feel my face heating up.
“See for yourself,” he says, holding his arm up again.
“You’re trying to prove that you stink?” I ask, and he shrugs. “Okay, fine.”
