Page 93 of The Moon Also Rises
And then he goes through the door to his ensuite bathroom. I spend far too long waiting to hear the click of a lock, and then even longer wondering why it doesn’t come. Eventually, I hear the running water of his shower and I shake away all the possible reasons he leaves the door unlocked as I take my clothes and his ridiculously fluffy towel and walk out of the room.
There are three other doors in the short hallway and they’re all closed. With no real sense of my bearings, I open the one nearest me on the opposite side, and I know immediately it’s not the bathroom. I know this because when I walk in, I see a bed without sheets, and surrounding it, are stacks of boxes. No furniture, no soft furnishings, just rows and rows, and columns and columns of moving boxes, and they all look like they’re packed full.
On the side of the boxes are handwritten letters and this tells me that whatever is inside is organised alphabetically. Curiosity gets the better of me and I go to the nearest box and try to look through the hole that provides a handle. Unable to see the contents clearly, I open the top flap and peer in. Records. The box is full of vinyl records. If every single box is full, this is quite an impressive collection and I wonder why Rami doesn’t have it all on display. It also suggests maybe his love of music and those amateur DJ skills have more roots than he claims.
Closing the box, I leave the room and find the bathroom in the room next door. I spend more than a few seconds admiring the finishings – black marble floor and walls, gold taps and details, and fuck me, a heated towel rail three times bigger than the radiator in my pokey bathroom – and then I switch the shower on. I groan when the pressure is instantly perfect and the water becomes warm before I’ve even dropped my boxers.
“Fuck him and his perfect apartment.”
It is the best shower of my life. Of course, it’s a waterfall shower with gravity-defying water pressure and I stay under the spray for far too long, using copious amounts of Rami’s designer lemongrass shower gel.
After I dry off and dress, I steal a bit of toothpaste from a tube I find in the sink drawer and run it around my mouth on my finger.
Leaving the bathroom, I feel sheepish and a little out of place, and I hate it. This is exactly the feeling I’ve deliberately tried to avoid by purposely not partaking in any one-night stands or dating app action for the last six months. I feel ashamed and embarrassed and awkward, and I hate that I feel all those things in relation to Rami.
It's not because it’s him. I don’t feel judged or disliked by him, and it’s not even because we work together, although I know this is only going to make the awkwardness bleed into my working week. It’s the worst possible reason; it’s because I know I like him. I like him in a way that always gets me hurt.
I have to leave. Now.
Hearing movement in the large living area, I stand in the doorway of Rami’s kitchen to tell him goodbye. “Thanks for the shower. I left the towel hanging up.”
“You want another coffee?”
If this man gives me one more perfectly prepared coffee, I’m going to implode.
“I have to…” I start.Go feel sorry for myself until my alarm goes off for work tomorrow. “I have things to do.”
“Like what?”
“Like…. Okay, I have no plans. But I just don’t think being here is a good idea.”
“Because it didn’t work,” Rami says putting down the spoon and coffee he was putting into a press.
“What didn’t work?”
“Us scratching the itch? Getting this out of our systems,” Rami says and his eyes are determined in holding mine.
“I guess not,” I admit and saying it out loud helps relieve a little of the weight on my shoulders.
“So, what next?”
I pull in a breath. “I guess we go back to being weird with each other and ignoring the elephant in the room.”
“Now, Jake, that’s a terrible way to describe Sharon,” Rami says and the curl in his lips lets me know he was trying to make a joke. It’s more his attempt than the actual words that have my insides melting a little and a dry chuckle leaving my lips.
“Your sense of humour is getting worse again,” I say. “And to think we’d made such good progress at the wedding.”
“I think I need to spend more time with you then.”
“Oh, that will create more problems than it solves. And will make my life a living hell.”
Rami looks taken aback. “Because you don’t enjoy my company?”
“No, because I will want last night to happen again,” I say and while being honest again relieves more weight, it also makes me feel like I’m free-falling a bit, especially when Rami drops his eyes from mine.
I watch as he pulls his lips into his mouth and sets about finishing making his coffee. When the water is in the pot and the coffee is swirling around, he finally speaks.
“Maybe we need to spend time together without having sex?” Rami offers. “And not at work.”
