She planted her hands on her hips, finding his position rather amusing. “Are you ever going to learn to check the weather report before you leave for work?”
He shrugged. “Are you ever going to learn how to remove your hairballs from the shower drain?”
She laughed. “I don’t leave hairballs.”
“You do.” He nodded.
She had to acknowledge, it was probably true, but she would be dead before she’d admit it. “Are you going to get out of my way or not?”
“There’s plenty of room for you to squeeze by.”
She rolled her eyes, stepping to the side, but he followed suit.
“What seems to be the problem, Fe?”
She glanced up and down his sweaty form, to his white shirt that was partially translucent from all his sweat. He had a nice body. More than a nice body—it just normally wasn’t visible beyond his baggy clothes. “Move,” she said in her firmest, sternest voice possible, because those darned butterflies were swarming around in her belly again.
This should feel normal. This dance between friends they’d done a thousand times. It wasn’t weird, it wasn’t flirtatious, it was their friendship. Built on playful banter and horsing around. Yet every time she was close to him, ever since that stupid kiss, these kinds of exchanges left her pulse racing.
His smile grew wider, obviously pleased by her reaction. “Are you afraid of sweat, Fe? Are you afraid some of my disgusting sweat will drip on you? Is that it?” He stepped closer, taunting her with his wet body. “It’s just water, Fe. Maybe a little bit of salt, but being a scientist you should know—"
She shoved passed him—hard—and hurried down the hall to her room. Aware she was being completely ridiculous, aware he would have left her alone with thirty more seconds of teasing, but what she wasn’t sure of was what she would have done in those thirty seconds. “Take a shower,” she said on an uneven breath. “You jerk!”
He held his hands up in the air, his face almost white with shock. “I was just messing around, Fe.” But she barely saw it, barely heard him, before she closed the door roughly behind her.
She pulled her cell phone from her pocket and quickly connected to Amazon.
Vibrator.
She put the search into Amazon and waited for the selection. All she needed was a vibrator.
Chapter 3
BOOM BOOM BOOM!
Elliot jumped away from the sink, causing his towel to almost drop from his hips. “What the?” He tucked the edge of the terrycloth more securely at his side and turned toward the door. “What do you want? Don’t tell me you have to pee again?”
“You’ve been in there forever,” Fe responded. “Are we going to do this thing or what?”
His brows pinched together, and he glanced down to cellphone that lay on the bathroom counter. Ten minutes. It had been exactly ten minutes he’d been in the bathroom. He almost told her so, but immediately decided against it. “Do what?” he asked tentatively.
“The plan. Make you alpha. We need to get started.”
He yanked another towel from the wall, threw it over his still dripping head, and opened the door. “Today?” But he barely got the word out before she practically fell through the opening.
She gripped the wood molding on either side of the door catching herself. “I thought we were on a deadline? I thought Mary Poppins was coming back in four weeks?”
His lip curled in an amused grin. “Mary Poppins?”
“Yes.” She huffed out a breath. “Are you getting ready or what?”
“For what exactly?” he asked, trying to remember what they’d discussed the night before.
“Shopping.” She closed her eyes and let out a breath. “Look, Elli, do you want my help or not? Because yesterday, I thought you did, but if that’s not the case, let’s just end it right here.” She turned on her heels and walked away.
What?
His towel dropped to his shoulders and he went after her, grabbing her arm right before she disappeared into her room.
She jumped. A good foot into the air like she’d seen the boogie man.
“Woah, tiger,” he said, throwing his hands in the air and taking a step backward. “I just wanted to say I’ll be ready in five.”
Her expression changed from anger, to embarrassment, to something he couldn’t quite make out. But what baffled him most was that she seemed to be confused by her own actions, maybe even more than he was. She took a deep breath, tucked a long strand of hair behind her ear, and nodded. “That’s fine.” But before she walked into her room, she stopped, as though something important had suddenly struck her mind. She took a deep breath, her shoulders rising and falling before she turned around. “It looks good,” she said softly.
He picked up the corner of his towel, using its edge to scrub his inky locks, but his chest constricted. “What does?” he asked in a low voice. Because something about this moment called for it. Maybe because of how timid she was acting, or the fact he didn’t want to scare her away.
She lifted her chin a fraction of an inch. “Your face.”
His lips lifted in a small smile, and he rubbed over his five o’clock shadow with the backs of his fingers. It had only been a day, but like he said the night before, he was a man. “Ya like it?”
She lifted one shoulder as though indicating inference. “It’s nice. Makes you look older.”
He raised both of his brows but couldn’t quite suppress his grin. “Thanks.”
She laughed, as though the topic made her somewhat uncomfortable. She stepped into her room, then leaned her head against the doorway before slowly pulling the door shut behind her. “Go get dressed, Elliot.”
He bit his lip, still slightly shocked by her compliment. “Okay.”
She closed the door, and he waited until he heard it click before scrubbing over his hair again . Maybe this plan would work after all . Maybe.
An hour later, standing in the dressing room of Nordstrom’s rack, Elliot dodged handfuls of clothes as they came flying over the door. “What the—” he said, ducking down to pick of the clothes as another item narrowly missed his skull.
Fe was on a rampage—more than a rampage—throwing clothes at him left and right for the last twenty minutes. “Try those on,” she yelled at him.
He raised his brows, glancing around the small room to clothes that didn’t impress him. “Jeans?” He laughed. “I have twenty pair of jeans at home.”
“You have shit jeans, Elliot. My dad wears the same jeans as you.”
His lip curled, and he made a face in the mirror. “Well, your dad has awesome taste,” he drawled out. But he yanked the first pair from its hanger, and pushed one leg through the opening anyway. He turned toward the mirror, quickly determined that Fe had horrible taste in denim, and began zipping up the fly. These jeans were way too tight, not to mention they already had worn spots in undesirable areas.
If jeans were on the top of Fe’s list, she had got to do better than this.
“My boys are already screaming in protest,“ he yelled at her. But he buttoned the last button anyway, and turned to the mirror. Spots were worn so thin he could practically see his boxers underneath. The cuffs were tattered, and he was pretty sure someone had dropped a bottle of bleach on them. This couldn’t be the look she was going for. Opening the stall door, he clenched his jaw and waited for her to look at him.
She immediately put one finger to her lip, glanced him up and down, then did a little twirly motion with her finger, indicating he should turn around.
He did.
Before he even made it full circle, her word stopped him in his tracks. “Next!” she called out, and just like last time, she was on her way out of the dressing room and back into the showroom floor for more items.
He wasn’t sure what exactly she was searching for, because they all looked the same to him. Yeah, some were a little darker, or lighter. Some holy, some…tighter. He must have tried on two dozen pair before he finally got it right. H
e knew it as soon as he opened the door. She turned around, her arms crossed tightly at her chest like they’d been since they got there, but when her eyes met his jeans, they softened, almost dilated, and a slow tug forced her lips into an adorable grin. He had to admit, he liked that reaction. It made him feel powerful, sexy. Plus, Fe had a killer smile. She had dimples for days, full lips… He’d do just about anything for one of her smiles.
“That good, aye?” he said, raising his brows and turning to glance at his butt in the mirror. She didn’t even have to ask him to turn around. He did that part all on his own accord. Lifting his shirt a little higher so she could take a good look at his ass. “What do you think?” he asked, looking back over his shoulder to find her eyes were closed. “Fe?”
“They’re perfect.” She swallowed “We’ll get three pairs.” She turned on her heels and was halfway out of the dressing room before she hollered. “Keep those on. I’ll so get you some new shirts.”
He didn’t even try to answer her. She wouldn’t have heard him if he had. She was acting strange, unlike the girl he knew like the back of his own hand. This bizarre behavior seemed to come off and on ever since New Year’s. That stupid night when they’d ditched Ed and April, and decided to stay home and watch a marathon of the Twilight Zone. That was the normal part. They always ditched on things to watch mindless TV together.
But this time, and he wasn’t even sure how it happened, but one moment they were wresting, and the next—
He closed his eyes, remembering how she looked straddled over his lap. How her hair fell around them like a canopy, and how her mouth was a fraction of an inch above his face. Who would blame him for kissing her? Fe was hot—yes, girl next door, geeky hot—and between the two of them, they’d consumed over three bottles of champagne.
But he’d always imagined it would be weird to kiss her—yes, he’d imagined it, a few times actually, because well, Fe was hot—but it wasn’t. It wasn’t weird at all. He imagined it would be much like kissing his sister—if he had a sister, because they’d been best friends for five years—but it wasn’t. She was actually his perfect kissing partner, if such a thing existed. She was sweet, passionate, and responsive…and had the softest lips.
He opened his eyes, shaking his head to clear it, and leaned against the wall. Even though it was one hell of a kiss, he’d give it up in a heartbeat to have his old Fe back. The one who never looked at him the way she did just now. The one who he sometimes still had dreams about.
It only took a few minutes before Fe was back and for Elliot to realize she had absolutely no clue how much he bench-pressed. She brought him the wrong size. In fact, she brought him shirts so small, he was pretty sure it would fit a juvenile boy. Elliot was a man, a six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound man, and there was no way these suckers were going to fit him. “Wrong size,” he said, throwing the shirts back over the door. “I need an extra-large.” He flexed his chest in front of the mirror to prove his point. Did she not see this? Did she not notice these weapons of mass destruction?
The shirt came flying back over the stall, the hanger barely missing his head by a fraction. “You wear a medium. Put it on.”
He opened the stall door, not caring he wore no shirt, and flashed her a free sample of the gun show. “Fe, come on? Are you serious?”
She smirked a little, her dimple taunting him. “Your clothes are too big, Elli. That’s part of the problem.”
He raised a brow. “This,” he argued, grabbing the shirt from its hanger, “won’t fit over my right bicep.”
She laughed, in a way too amused sort of way, then came forward, took hold of the door handle, and closed it. “Put. It. On.”
So, he did. And it wasn’t easy. It was sort of like squeezing a python into a hamster hole. But he put it on to appease her, opened the door, and found Fe, immediately covering her mouth to suppress laughter. She eyed him up and down, did the little twirl thing with her finger again, and he turned happily, because she was smiling again—and he’d do anything to make her smile.
The shirt was white, almost see through because the fabric was pulled so taught, and the sleeves were wrapped around his arms like the casing of a sausage. When he made it full circle, he found her eyes locked on the band of skin right above his waistline. The shirt was a good four inches too short, leaving his belly button, and happy trail completely exposed. He didn’t even know if she was aware what she was looking at, because she seemed as though she was in a trance. But there was no mistaking it—she was staring right there, her hazel-green eyes, like a wheat field hanging on to the barest amount of spring, stuck just a fraction of an inch above his zipper.
His mighty soldier inched toward a salute, and he turned toward the mirror. “I told you it wouldn’t fit,” he said gruffly, then closed his eyes and forcibly cleared his throat.
God damn it! Why did this happening to him? At the worst possible time? He began saying Hail Mary’s in his head and tried to calm himself down.
It wasn’t working.
“I’ll go get you a large,” Fe whispered, closing the door quietly behind her.
Good. He thought. Good.
He continued taking deep breaths, thinking about anything, and everything that wasn’t Fe. The way she looked at him, and the way he instantly reacted to her. By the time she came back, he hoped his python would have been settled down, that he would be ready for the next size shirt, but he couldn’t seem to get the medium bastard back over his shoulder.
“Here you go,” Fe said, throwing the next shirt over the stall door. “I’ll take the other one. Just toss it over.”
He knew she was standing on the other side, waiting, but what the hell was he supposed to do? At this rate, with the minimal progress he’d made in the last five minutes, he’d be stuck in this dressing room forever. Pulling the pansy fabric down over his stomach, he cleared his throat and braced one hand against the wall. “I can’t.”
It was a moment before she answered him, and he was about to respond once more, but then he heard her sigh. Loud, and without apology. Like she was running out of patience. “Look, you were right, and I was wrong. Just throw it over so I can put it back on the rack.
He cleared his throat again. “I—I can’t get it off.”
His shirt. He meant his shirt. He couldn’t get his shirt off. The one-eyed monster was now wedged into his waistband.
Fe laughed. “Ha ha. You proved your point, hand it over.”
He opened the door, gave her a little demo of how stuck it was, then lifted his brows. “You’re going to have to help me.”
She rolled her eyes, in a “Elli, you stupid toddler” sort of way, and pushed him into the stall again. She followed in behind him, closed the door, and grabbed hold of the hem of his shirt and began yanking it up from behind. She inched the fabric a little farther than he could achieve on his own, but the progress was still laughable. He met her stare in the mirror, and now she cleared her throat. As if to say this was a battle, and one she wasn’t willing to concede to.
“I just need some leverage,” she muttered, hiking up her Chuck Taylors to stand on the triangular wedge seat in the corner of the stall. He obliged her by turning to face in her direction, lifting his arms overhead as if she was his mother, and he a three-year-old boy.
She got to work pulling, inching up the fabric one millimeter at a time, her fingers pinching his skin in an effort to bring the shirt forth. Soon, her forehead glistened with perspiration, and she ripped the flannel she wore from her arms and threw it to the floor. He agreed. It was hot in here, fucking hot. All of a sudden, he was feeling quite claustrophobic. He began maneuvering his shoulders right and left trying to hurry the process, but then his eyes settled on her collarbone, where her shirt had been pulled to the side—revealing a light purple mark.
He froze. She did the same. The mark was so faint, faded, but he was pretty sure it was a hickey.
Pretty freaking sure.
All of a sudden, the stall ’s temperature
inflated by a thousand degrees, and his vision became blurry. Her fingers were on his skin, her small, delicate fingers, but all he could think about was who had put that mark on her skin. Who had known her so intimately to leave something like that there?
He also knew he had to end this. To get her away from him so he could breathe. He grabbed the collar of the white vice, dug his fingers into the pansy fabric, and pulled. The shirt split in two, allowing him to pull in a full breath for the first time in a good minute. He met Fe’s shocked stair in the dressing room mirror and frowned.
He knew she had questions, ones that were legitimate given their circumstances, but he had questions too. “What happened?” he asked, flashing his eyes to her collarbone before raising them up again. He should have left it alone, but something inside him wouldn’t let that happen.
She moved the neck of her shirt without looking down, covering the mark once again. But the resulting blush that flushed her cheeks was all the confirmation he needed. It was a hickey. Fe had a hickey.
He didn’t even know Fe was dating anyone. Didn’t know she was even interested in anyone. But what was weirder, was that she hadn’t even told him about the guy. She told him everything. Everything. Even about periods, and mucus, and random girl crap he’d never cared to know existed. Yet she had a hickey, and he didn’t even know who it was from.
“I wear a large,” he said, handing her the now wadded up white fabric when she remained silent. She stepped down from the bench unable to meet his eyes again. “But I guess we’ll take this one anyway.”
Chapter 4
Shopping with Elliot had been one of the most traumatic experiences of her life. Her entire life. Even standing next to him now, walking down the crowded corridor of the mall, she could still feel mortification crawling up her insides and slowly squeezing her windpipes. He’d seen her hickey. The hickey that Todd Peeking had grossly bestowed upon her neck three days prior.
Eight Steps to Alpha: A Nerdy by Nature Novel Page 3