“Why are you allowed to put your feet on the coffee table but you yell at me?”
“I’m wearing socks. Nobody wants your crusty man-feet on the table, Jay.”
“I don’t have crusty feet. I shower daily, unlike someone else.” He slid his eyes toward me, and they flashed with amusement.
“I showered this morning after that stupid run, actually.”
“You showered because you went on a run. Not that what you did was running. It was more… lumbering.”
I punched him in the thigh. “I do not lumber.”
“You don’t run, either.” His lips twitched like he was trying to smirk, but the mask stopped him from being able to.
Thank God.
I didn’t need to dry-hump him and see him smirk all in the same evening, thank you very much. God only knew what that would do to my sanity.
“Whatever. Just because we’re not all super-fit freaks like you with a stupidly healthy diet and an actual exercise routine.” I swung my feet from the table. “Come on. We can take these off now.”
He followed me into the bathroom. “You don’t even need a routine. You just need to eat something other than pizza and get off your ass once in a while.”
“My job is dependent on me sitting on my ass.”
“You can get standing desks now.”
I tossed him a wet washcloth. “You know, you’d be a better friend if you sat down and pigged out once in a while. Then I’d look a little hotter standing next to you.”
“If you want to look hotter, just wash your hair more than once a week.”
“I’m thinking of rescinding that roommate agreement and kicking you out.” I rinsed my cloth and continued cleaning the mask off my face. “You’re a lot ruder now that you’re on the lease.”
His laughter bounced off the walls of the small room. “It’s only rude because it’s true.”
“You don’t have long hair. You have no idea how hard it is to be a woman. If you had to wash and dry this hair on a daily basis, you’d stop washing it, too.”
“Right. Yet you willingly put this fucking cement on your face.”
I looked up. He’d barely gotten an inch of it off his face, despite the fact he’d clearly tried hard. I bit the inside of my cheek to stifle my laugh. My face was clear of it apart from a few rogue flecks around my hairline, and I reached up to clean those while Jay frowned at the washcloth.
“This is fucking ridiculous.”
My laughter burst free from me, and I grabbed a towel to dry my face. “Oh, my God. It isn’t hard. You just have to scrub it a little.”
“I did!” He held out the cloth, clearly affronted.
“Not hard enough!” I took it from him and spun him so that he was resting against the sink. “This might be uncomfortable.”
He grunted. “No more uncomfortable than the concrete sidewalk you’ve put on my face.”
I shook my head, got the cloth wet again, and lifted it to his face.
The problem with this was that I was right in front of him, and my eyes had no other option than to examine every inch of his face.
Slowly, I scrubbed at his skin, pulling the mask away. Bits of it flaked off into the short stubble that coated his sharp jaw, and I had to reach up and wipe them away more than once, feeling the roughness of the tiny hairs as they rubbed against my fingertips and my palm.
It sent…things…firing through my body. Things I couldn’t focus on when I was standing here, practically leaning against him, cleaning his face.
As I wiped facemask from his skin, getting stuck in, leaving his normally lightly-tanned skin red and a little raw.
His bright green eyes seemed focused on me, yet he never quite met my gaze. He was always focused on a part of me, but it was my nose, or my hair, or the dimple on my left cheek.
It was awkward. It was almost as if it toed the very edge of our friendship, but I swallowed and carried on cleaning the facemask off him.
My heart jumped inside my chest when he moved, shifting his weight to the other foot. It was so freaking stupid that such a small movement could elicit such a sudden response from my idiotic little heart.
He’s your best friend, Shelby.
Give it up.
“Close your eyes,” I said quietly. “So I can do your nose.”
He shut his eyes, his thick, dark eyelashes casting shadows over his skin. It was horrible to ignore it, taking all the strength I had, but I managed it as I wiped and scrubbed the cloth over every inch of his handsome face.
I wanted to carry on.
I wanted to rinse the cloth, squeeze out the green stuff, bring the clean cloth back to his face and just clean it because I could.