She smacked her hands together and let her head drop back. She stared at the ceiling as if God were sitting right there and she could thank her personally. “Atlas, that means that I can quit my cleaning jobs. May said that she also needs some front desk help if I want to supplement my hours around the classes. Which I have no idea how to do but she said she’d teach me.”
“That is so great,” he said in a gruff voice. “Now you don’t have to schlep your cart all over the city and spend time in stranger’s houses. That’s been making me nervous lately.”
There was something in his tone of voice that had Rebecca studying him. He was lazily skewed across his chair, the way he always was. But he didn’t look relaxed the way he usually did at night. No, he looked tense and uncomfortable. Guilty even.
“Is everything all right?” she asked him.
He shook his head and her stomach dropped. “I need to confess something to you.”
Rebecca’s stomach dropped lower than the basement. It was currently residing somewhere around the core of the earth. Confess? What did that mean? Her mind ran through a million things that he could have to confess.
He was married and his wife was coming home. Meaning Rebecca had to clear out.
He’d stolen something from her.
He was moving away and she needed to find someplace else to live.
He’d brought a woman home, slept with her, and she was currently in his bedroom, naked and stretched across his bed. Completely satisfied by Atlas’s body, his determination, his reverence, his skill.
That last thought had Rebecca’s nails curling into the meat of her hands. But why? she asked herself. It was a free country. And she and Atlas were just roommates. There was no reason on earth why he would have to confess having slept with someone. He was a hot, virile, charming, adorable man. Of course he was sleeping with people.
Rebecca hadn’t thought of it yet, but he’d probably slept with someone since she’d moved in. Not here, or else she would have noticed. But he worked late some nights. There was every chance that he was booty calling some hoochie before he got home. That’s how men worked.
If that was the case it was absolutely none of Rebecca’s business. The only thing she had a right to do was to be happy for him.
“I was there tonight,” he told her, his eyes on hers, his face pained as he confessed.
Rebecca’s first reaction was one of swamping relief. He didn’t have a woman in the other room. He wasn’t confessing to sleeping with someone else.
But then his words really sank in. And so did a desperately cold feeling that started in her fingertips and worked its way up her hands. “You were where?” Though she already knew what he meant.
“At May’s studio.”
She said nothing. Just blinked at him. The night, which had been cast in such a happy pallor, suddenly went black and white in her head as she replayed every second of it.
“I got there about halfway through,” Atlas said. “Changed in the backroom and walked through the observation room to get to the studio. I wanted to dance with you guys. And I thought I was invited. I didn’t realize it was a ladies only thing until…”
Until I saw you grinding on a pole, she finished his sentence in her head.
“You know. You know about me.” Her voice was a harsh whisper, like paper tearing in slow motion.
“I heard you tell them that you’d worked in a strip club.” He gripped at his hair like he wanted to tear it out at the root. “And I watched for just a minute. At first I wanted to run in there because I was afraid they were making you feel bad. But then you seemed comfortable and kind of charmed and they were all so impressed by you.”
“Did you watch me dance?” She wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her eyes were on the floor and she felt so damn stupid. She wished she weren’t sweaty. And she really, really wished that she weren’t wearing the same clothes she’d danced in.
“Only for a minute. When you took your shirt off I turned around and I left. I knew you wouldn’t want me to see that.” He let out a long breath. “I knew you wouldn’t want me to see any of it, Bex. But I was stupid. And hypnotized. And I just stayed for a minute. You’re… really good at it. And I watched. But only for a minute, I swear.”
She stood up, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes on the floor still. “I don’t take my clothes off for men anymore. And that includes you.”
“I understand, Bex. I turned around the second you took your shirt off. I swear. I didn’t want to take what you weren’t giving me.”
That had her eyes snapping up from the floor. I didn’t want to take what you weren’t giving me.
She searched his eyes for lies. She searched his eyes for the rules to whatever game he was playing. She searched his eyes for lust.
But all she saw in that familiar green gaze was honesty and guilt.
She felt tears rising and she sat her ass back down, pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “That’s not how I wanted to tell you.”
“You were going to tell me?” He sounded so hopeful and happy at that news that it made her throat twist with more tears that she didn’t let fall.
“I hadn’t decided yet.” She stared into the darkness made by her hands. “It’s a hell of a thing to tell someone.”
“Because you were a stripper or because you don’t want to tell me anything about your past no matter what it is?”
“Both, I guess.”
He was quiet for a long time and Bex dropped her hands, turned to look at him. “I guess you think of me differently now.”
Confusion crossed his face. “Because of the stripper thing? Nah.”
She pursed her lips, disbelieving.
“Seriously,” he told her. “That doesn’t mean anything, Bex. It’s a living. I’ve had tons of shitty jobs. And I did it all just to get to the next day. That’s all that matters, you know? Surviving. Let’s see. In high school, for a long time I was selling baking soda to rich kids and telling them it was coke. When Sequence and I first moved to the city, we were taking underground fights for money. Letting assholes in basements pay us a couple hundred a night to knock out other assholes. Lost three teeth doing that.” He grinned in a mechanical way and pointed to some teeth in his mouth that Bex presumed were fake. “And before I met Rook, I was taking any bouncer or security job I could find. Each one seedier than the last. I know exactly what it means to get paid for what your body can do, Bex. I’d never judge you for that. Never.”
Rebecca eyed him for a long time. She believed him. In her heart, she believed him. But she had too many built-in protection mechanisms to completely let this go. “You ever been to a strip club, Atlas?”
He sucked his teeth for a second as he stared back at her. “Yeah.”
“And you’re telling me you have no judgments at all?”
“What are you really asking me, Bex? Am I a perfect person? Nah. Do I look down on people for the choices they make? Short of murder, no, I don’t really do that. Do I appreciate a woman shaking her ass in a glittery thong? Yes.” His knee started bouncing up and down but his eyes stayed steady. “The one time I had a lap dance made me feel weird as hell and I never did it again. Did I tip my waitress? Yes. Did I throw money at a naked woman? No. Did I put some in her hand before she left the stage? Yeah. I don’t know, Bex. I’m not perfect. If I were, I would have knocked on the glass tonight to let you know I was there. But I’m damn sure not the worst either.”
His words wheeled slowly in her head and she stared at him for a long time again. “Why did the lap dance make you feel weird?”
He tugged at his hair and really thought, that knee bouncing a mile a minute. His eyes flitted around as he gathered his thoughts and that, more than anything, softened Rebecca. His answers weren’t canned. In a way, he was painting himself into a corner here, but he was doing it with honesty. And she found that she couldn’t fault him for that.
“Because it didn’t seem like she was into it,” he finally
said. “And yeah. That’s shitty. It’s kind of like watching porn that you think is hot and then you look in the girl’s eyes and she’s, like, obviously waiting for it to be over. It feels crappy.”
“You think the dancer should have faked it better?”
“What! No! God, Bex. Sometimes you think the worst of me. I didn’t think the girl should have been faking anything. The fact that she wasn’t having a good time bummed me out. I don’t want to be a part of anyone feeling bad.” He tugged at his hair again. “I mean, correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems like some dancers at those clubs actually enjoy what they’re doing. Stripping and dancing isn’t, by nature, demoralizing. It just is if you don’t want to be doing it. And some of them want to and some of them don’t. The girl who was dancing on me didn’t want to do it. And I found that that was reason enough to call it quits for me.”
She blinked at him. He… really didn’t seem judgmental. And he’d kind of hit the nail on the head. “Some nights are more fun than others. And some clubs are more fun than others. The clubs where the facilities are clean and the bouncers are good… well, that’s not all bad. But just like any job, there are some days that you just don’t want to be at work.”
“Only, when you’re stripping and don’t want to be at work, you have boners to deal with.”
Despite everything, Rebecca laughed. “Boners aren’t so bad,” she told him. “There’s only so much they can do when they’re stuck behind a pair of pants.”
“True dat,” Atlas said, obviously relieved that he’d just made her laugh. He sobered up though and caught her eyes. “I’m sorry, Bex. The last thing I want to do is betray your trust. I’m trying like hell to earn your trust and I know I might have screwed that up tonight.”
“You told the truth, Atlas,” Rebecca said at length. “That means something to me. Just don’t spy on me again.”
He nodded his head. Rebecca rose up and stretched. “I’m starving and I stink. Shower first, dinner second.”
“There’s a pizza in the oven.”
“Yum.” Rebecca left the room to get cleaned up. She was all the way in the shower by the time that she realized she was happy again.
***
Four hours later, Atlas was sitting up in bed. Bex was awake and moving around the house. Which meant that she’d probably had that nightmare again. He pressed blearily at his eyes. Sleep was threatening to smother him. He was so damn tired.
“Bex!” he called. “Hey, Bex!”
He listened to the floor creak as she came down the hall. “Atlas?”
“Open the door.”
His bedroom door swung open and Bex stood there in an oversized shirt and bunchy socks, a glass of water in one hand.
“Bad dream?” he asked her.
“Yeah.”
“No lumpy couch tonight,” he murmured, knowing that he was barely making sense. She seemed to be having a hard time letting her eyes rest on him in bed. “Come on.” He patted the bed next to him and she looked at him like he was insane.
“Don’t make me sleep on the lumpy couch,” he repeated, this time with more clarity. Then he scrabbled around in his nightstand for the remote for his bedroom TV and flicked it on. It only took a second to find the fish tank channel. Then he took a few pillows and lined them up along his body, creating a pillow barrier between him and the other side of the bed. He patted it again to show her where she should go.
And then he rolled onto his side, letting his eyes fall closed. Sleep was still weighing heavily on him and he slipped in and out of consciousness for a minute. He cracked his eyes and saw that the door to his room was closed and she was no longer there. She must have gone back to her room.
But then he felt the other side of the bed dip and he lifted his head to look over his shoulder. Bex was pulling back the covers on the far side of his bed and setting her glass on the nightstand.
He let sleep take him again, this time with a smile on his face.
***
Atlas knew he wasn’t alone even before he cracked his eyes that morning. And he loved it. He was a man of simple pleasures. And the warmth of a woman in the morning was among his favorites. The scent of the sheets was enough to tell him that he was at home. Which was a little odd, considering how very rarely he slept with a woman at his own house.
But then another scent registered. Before that very moment he wouldn’t have claimed that he knew what Bex smelled like. But lying in his bed in the morning with his eyes closed, he scented her. And he recognized it. He knew her without even having to see her. She smelled like men’s body wash and laundry detergent and a unique cotton-like scent that he recognized as something organic and natural, the scent of her skin.
He was in his bed with Bex and he knew exactly how she’d gotten there. A nightmare, his sleepy insistence that she not make him sleep on the couch. He wondered if the pillow barrier was still there. He wondered how long he could lay there with his eyes closed.
But him being Atlas meant that his feet started shifting and his eyes pressed down hard, begging for him to get up, to start his day. He sighed.
It was the second time his stupid antsy body hadn’t let him luxuriate in bed with Bex.
His eyes came open. He froze, no longer antsy. He’d expected to see her curled in on herself, the way she’d slept on the couch. He expected to see her small and turned away from him, sleeping like the dead. He didn’t expect to see big green eyes blinking back at him less than six inches from his face. But there she was, awake and lying directly on top of the pillow barrier he’d constructed.
He’d stayed well on his side of the bed but apparently she’d rolled right into the middle, crowding him. And she’d been… watching him? Her eyes widened and she stiffened when she realized he was awake, but she didn’t roll away, and she didn’t play it off.
The seconds ticked past as they both lay completely still, their eyes locked and the morning dawning around them. No part of them was touching, but Atlas felt that this moment was as intimate as laying completely naked together. There was something vulnerable about the first few moments of one’s day. And he was giving it all to her. She was giving it right back.
“I think we have the exact same color eyes as one another,” he whispered, when he couldn’t stand to be quiet one second longer.
“Yours are just a little bit lighter,” she whispered back.
She reached up and, careful not to touch his skin, shifted his hair into place. She pushed it back from his forehead for a minute, but gave up when it fell back forward.
She slid that hand back under her chin and continued to just look at him.
Another minute passed and she sighed. “I’ll make the pancakes this morning.”
She pushed back the covers and crawled to the end of the bed, padding out of his room. Atlas didn’t watch her go. He continued to stare at the indentation she’d left behind. When he was sure that she was gone, he pressed his face where her head had just been, basking in the warmth she’d left behind.
He rolled out of bed then, happy and confused and dizzy and off-kilter and all the feels all at once. He’d have put a Benjamin Franklin on Bex being up and out of bed in an embarrassed tumble that morning. She had worked so hard to keep him at a distance. To keep him firmly as a roommate and a friend. But friends didn’t usually sleep in the same beds. Friends didn’t stare at one another as they slept. And friends didn’t fix each other’s hair over pillow talk.
That led Atlas to think that maybe they weren’t friends? Maybe they were kinda sorta something else? And maybe that something else was the kind of friends who kissed each other? And eventually got naked and rubbed up on one another? And showered together and kissed each other between their legs?
He let out a long breath and jumped in the shower, making it a cold one to help with the raging boner he was currently battling. When that didn’t work, he turned the shower warm and replayed the image of Bex twirling around the pole. He gripped himself in one firm hand and stroked hi
mself hard. It was the thought of her tattoo that put him over the edge, his hand almost punishing himself for the pleasure.
He got his work clothes on quickly, and checking the time, saw that he had about half an hour before he had to leave for work.
He joined Bex in the kitchen right as she was sliding the first round of pancakes onto what he’d come to think of as their pancake platter.
She was wearing a sweatshirt and big sweatpants. He did a double take, realizing that the sweatpants were actually his. She’d pulled the drawstring to the tightest possible limit to make them fit.
The sight of her in his clothes made his heart bang in his chest. Seeing her in his pants made him feel a kind of ownership over what was inside the pants. Not that he owned her, per se. But that, in a different world, he’d be allowed to slide his hands in those pants and see how fast he could make her wet for him.
This was messing with his head. They were friends, roommates, nothing more. Technically.
But, she’d also technically woken up in his bed and was now wearing an article of his clothing.
“Sorry,” she told him, following his gaze to the pants. “I ran out of pajama pants and didn’t have time to do a load of laundry before you had to leave for work. I’ll change out of them as soon as possible.”
He waved his hand through the air. “I used to fantasize about seeing a girl wear my high school colors. You’re just realizing a dream for me right now.”
She looked down at the purple and white sweats. “You’ve had these since high school?”
He nodded. “I was on the swim team. They were standard issue for between heats.”
“And you used to fantasize about seeing a girl wear your sweatpants? Don’t high school boys usually dream about getting girls out of clothes? Not putting more on them?”
“I did plenty of that too.” He grinned. “But you know how high school is. If you’re going steady, you give a girl your letterman jacket, that kind of thing. I wanted to see a girl in my clothes.”
She was quiet while she flipped the second and last round of pancakes onto the platter and then dragged the whole thing over to the counter with the barstools. “No,” she said eventually. “I don’t actually know how high school is. I dropped out before my sophomore year.”
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