Page 76 of The Bodyguard

Fourteen

HELL OF Afirst day.

That night, as promised, I slept on the floor.

Jack found a yoga mat in the hall closet, and I folded a couple of blankets on top of it.

It was fine. I was fine. I was comfortable being uncomfortable.

At least I wasn’t sleeping in a closet.

I’d slept in a million crazy places—hallways, rooftops, even a broken elevator once. What I hadn’t done, though, was sleep in a room with Jack Stapleton.

A little off-putting. Not gonna lie.

Would you like to know what Jack Stapleton does with his pillow when he sleeps? He doesn’t rest his head on it like regular people do. He shoves it under his body, vertically, like a surfboard, and then drapes himself over it.

And wanna know what he wears for pj’s?

Loose sweatpants and an aggressively clingy undershirt.

But what does he do with his dirty clothes when he changes into those pj’s?

He leaves them all over the bathroom floor.

I walked in when it was my turn to change and found his muddy boots, his wadded socks, the T-shirt he’d worn all day, and his still-damp jeans—with the belt still in the loops and the underwear still inside—just lying there on the floor, splayed out in an almost-human shape, like a bearskin rug made of Jack Stapleton’s dirty laundry.

I mean, I had to step over them to get to the sink to brush my teeth.

When I came out of the bathroom, Jack was sitting on the edge of his bed. He looked up.

I stared at him, like What the hell?

And he frowned back, like What?

So I pointed back at the bathroom floor and said, “Can you come deal with this?”

But Jack just tilted his head.

“Hey,” I said. “This is a shared space. You can’t leave your crap all over the floor.”

But Jack was looking me up and down.

“Hello?” I said.

“Is that what you’re sleeping in?”

I looked down. “Um. Yes?”

“Is that what you always sleep in?”

I looked up, like What? “Sometimes.”

“I didn’t even know they still made those.”

I looked down again. “Nightgowns?”

“I mean,” Jack said, and now he was looking at me like I was funny. “You look like a Victorian child.”

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