We hurriedly soap up and rinse in the now-freezing water before fighting over, you guessed it, the towel.
“It’s my towel, Ben. This is why we have different colors.”
“Yeah, but that’s the one I used this morning,” he says, pointing at it.
“I knew it! I knew you were lying.”
He takes advantage of my outrage to grab it from me. “Don’t think just because we’re fuck buddies means I’m going to start acting differently.”
“What, you mean like human?” I mutter as I reach under the sink to where I keep a spare towel.
He pauses in the process of drying himself. “How did I not know there were clean towels under there?”
“Simple,” I say. “I keep the cleaning supplies under here as well, which means this particular cupboard physically repels you.”
“Huh.” He nudges me aside, opening up the medicine cabinet to get at his deodorant.
I do the same, and it hits me then how truly good our situation is. There’s no embarrassed aftermath, no awkward sneaking out of bed, no regrets.
“Wanna watch a movie?” he asks, tying the towel in a knot at his waist and opening the bathroom door.
“Sure. I get to pick.”
“Nope. Your taste in movies sucks.”
My hand snakes out and undoes the knot he’s just tied so that the towel falls to his feet just as he starts to walk, causing him to stumble a little.
“Oops,” I say sweetly, scooting past him toward my bedroom.
“Just because we’re hooking up doesn’t mean you can demand nonstop naked time—”
I let my own towel drop, giving him an unobstructed view of my butt as I walk away.
“Okay, maybe nonstop naked time is fine!” he calls after me as I shut the door to my bedroom.
I’m still smiling as I put on my PJs, wind my wet hair into a bun, and then head downstairs to where Ben’s already on the couch, remote in hand.
I glance at the open DVD box on the coffee table. “The Proposal?” I ask excitedly. “Really?”
He gives a weary sigh. “Call it gratitude for the blow job.”
I grin as I plop down beside him, feeling ridiculously content. No, more than content. Happy.
We definitely should have started doing this a long time ago.
Chapter 14
Ben
Parker’s right on karaoke schedule. Two glasses of sparkling wine, and bam. She’s up onstage.
It’s not even her turn, but I guess that’s one of the benefits of being a hot girl with a hot friend. It took Lori and Parker all of eight seconds and two pretty smiles (with the help of Lori’s low-cut shirt, I’d guess) to convince the group of guys who were next in the queue to let them cut in line.
“Your girl’s good,” Jason says from where he sits next to me, nursing a whiskey.
I tense for a half second at Jason’s reference to Parker as my girl, but have to remind myself that he said it a million times before Parker and I started hooking up, and he just means it in the way that she’s, well…my girl. But not my girl.
Anyway.