Page 21 of Withholding Nothing

“Not bad,” I mused to myself, placing my single suitcase on the bed. Unzipping it, I pulled out a change of clothes and walked back into the living room to find Ashton sitting on the couch.

“Where can I find the towels? Need to take a shower,” I said.

“In the cabinet over the toilet,” she replied without looking up from her magazine. I made my way to the bathroom and found what I needed, stepping into the shower and turning the water on.

Just as I was finishing up, I spotted her body wash in a metal rack mounted to the wall. A devilish grin formed on my lips as I picked up the bottle. I doubt she’d notice, I thought, as I put a tiny dab of it in the palm of my hand. It wasn’t even enough to lather up my hands, but it definitely smelled a bit stronger than I’d expected. I rinsed the body wash off and then rubbed some of my own in my hands, hoping to mask some of the smell. I’d better chill out; I didn’t want to be kicked out before even being here for an hour.

After throwing on a tank top and sweatpants, I finally flopped down beside her on the couch with a sigh. “Man, I’m tired,” I mentioned out loud.

“How terrible for you,” she drawled sarcastically, pausing in her page flipping. She sniffed the air a bit and glared at me. “Did you use my body wash?”

“Who, me?”

No, fucking Megatron. Of course you!” She sniffed again, moving closer to me and smelling my arm. “It’s somewhere on you.”

“Whoa, back up, Snoopy,” I said with a chuckle. She grabbed my hand and sniffed the back of it before pushing it away.

“You did use it!” She threw her hands in the air. “You haven’t even been here that long and you’re already breaking house rules!”

“Just wanted to smell it to see why it was so important,” I said with a shrug.

“And you couldn’t smell it from the bottle?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest.

“Not really. All I could smell was my own body wash. You can use mine if it makes you feel any better,” I offered with a grin.

“As if,” she mumbled and turned back to her magazine.

After a few moments of awkward silence, I let out a loud sigh and looked to her. She ignored me and kept her eyes on the magazine.

I sighed again, a bit louder this time. Though she looked up, she still didn’t look at me. I grinned.

“Man, I sure am bored,” I said out loud. She didn’t say anything, going back to her magazine without a word. When I sighed again, she slapped the magazine closed and narrowed her eyes at me.

“You’re annoying, you know that?”

“Hey, I’m bored. What’s there to do around here?”

“You haven’t found anything to do in town by now?”

“I’ve literally only been to work, the hotel, and a couple of places to get food. It’s not like you guys have a bunch of options here,” I noted.

“Aren’t you friends with Chris? Ask him to take you somewhere,” she mumbled.

I scoffed. “If you want to call someone a creep, it would be that guy. I don’t want any parts in his nonsense,” I said. She giggled but quickly cleared her throat.

“Yeah, well, whatever. I don’t know what to tell you. I have to work in a little bit.”

“What do you do?” I asked.

“Customer service.”

“Like a call center or something?”

“Something like that,” she mumbled.

I raised an eyebrow. “So what kind of calls do you take?”

“Just customer service calls.”

“Uh huh,” I said and stood up. “Well, since you want me to be bored to tears, I guess I’ll take a nap and then figure out something to do later.”

“That’s the best thing you’ve said since you’ve been here,” she replied, picking the magazine back up.

“Try not to miss me too much,” I said as I walked down the hallway.

“Don’t flatter yourself,” she responded. I smiled to myself. This woman was probably doing everything she thought would push me away, but she was doing nothing but making me more interested with each response that came from her mouth.

This was going to be fun.

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