Bad Boy Roomie (The Bad Boy Roomie Romance Series Box Set)

by Claire Adams

  Still, he’s on the cusp of going pro. This is something he should really have in his toolbox if he expects to do well as a pro skater.

  “Do you want me to climb up there and observe or do it down here?” I ask.

  “It really doesn’t matter, does it?” he asks, and walks past me. For an instant, I think he’s upset with me, but as he gets to the top and looks down, it’s clear what emotion he’s feeling right now. It’s fear.

  “All right,” I tell him. “Let’s see what you’re doing and let’s see if we can’t figure out a way to do it better.”

  “Helpful,” he says. “Ready?”

  “I’m ready when you are,” I tell him.

  He takes one more look at the slope and gets his board ready, the tail on the lip, and I’m hoping that my years of watching skate competitions live and on television have prepared me to be able to dissect what he’s doing and tell him how to fix it.

  “All right,” he says, and he puts his other foot on the board.

  What happens next doesn’t really compute in my head. I see him leaning forward, I see him crouching like I’ve seen other skaters, and then, about halfway down, something I can’t even see goes wrong and he comes off his board, managing to stay on his feet and running out of it.

  His face is already red and I can feel his frustration from over here, but I honestly don’t even know what happened.

  “Any thoughts?” he asks.

  “Do it again,” I tell him. “I need to figure out what went wrong and it happened too fast the first time.”

  “What makes you think it’s going to happen slower the second time?” he asks. “Camera phone and a slow motion replay?”

  “Now I know what to look for,” I tell him. “We can start taking videos and breaking them down, but don’t you think we’d just end up spending all our time on the film and none of it on the actual work that’s going to change things? Don’t you want to get this right for the competition?”

  “Of course I do,” he says. “I was just hoping to be able to do this on my own time and without anyone to see just how bad I am at it.”

  “Give it another run,” I tell him. “I bet I’ll have a better idea after this next one.”

  He’s shaking his head, but he climbs back up to the top anyway.

  This is one of the things that really drew me to skating in the first place: the determination. I’m convinced that it’s impossible to be a successful skater without that particular personality trait.

  “Ready?” he asks.

  “Yeah,” I call back.

  I’m watching more closely this time. Whatever happened, it happened when he was about halfway down the ramp.

  His board’s in position and he’s leaning forward, only this time, he loses his nerve just as the wheels are coming down on the ramp, and he free falls the 14 or 15 feet to the ground.

  Oddly enough, his second attempt does seem to take longer than his first, but I think that’s only because he’s on his way toward a tremendously hard fall, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

  It looks like he tries to tuck and roll as he comes down on the hard ground, and he surprisingly is on his feet less than a second later, but it looks like he’s gone straight from frustrated to pissed as he tracks down his board, slams his foot on the tail, catches it, and starts stomping back toward the ramp.

  “Hold on,” I tell him.

  “What?” he asks.

  “You’re hurt,” I answer.

  He looks down. His pants are torn just above the knee, and there’s a pretty decent cut from which he’s bleeding pretty steady.

  “Fuck,” he says. “Well, that sucks.”

  “Are you all right?” I ask.

  “I’m fine,” he says. “I don’t even know what happened that time.”

  He starts walking again like he’s going to go for another run, but he’s leaving a trail of blood and I can only see the situation growing worse if we don’t take care of it.

  “No,” I tell him. “We need to get that wound cleaned up and make sure you’re not going to need stitches. You don’t want it to get infected, do you?”

  He groans.

  “This was such a bad idea,” he says. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this.”

  “Hey, just be glad I’m here to talk you out of going back up there, or who knows what kind of gash you’d end up with,” I tell him.

  It takes a minute, but I finally convince him to postpone the drop-in practice or whatever we’re calling it and get where we can get a better look at the laceration. The only caveat is that he insists we go to his house, as he says it’s closer.

  We start walking, and I don’t know if the wound really isn’t hurting him or if he’s trying to put on a brave face, because he’s not limping or favoring the leg in any way, though I can see the two sections of skin puckering and parting like lips when I catch a good angle through the new tear in his pants.

  We’re walking a few blocks, and the lower-middle class surroundings start turning into upper-middle class surroundings as the houses grow larger, the cars grow nicer, and the number of people outside doing their own yardwork plummets.

  “I didn’t know you were a rich kid,” I tell him.

  “I’m not,” he says. “My dad’s a lawyer. Me, I don’t have shit for money, at least not yet.”

  We take a right and walk a little longer before we come up to what must be Ian’s house. Even for a lawyer, it looks like his dad is doing particularly well for himself.

  “Nice house,” I tell him.

  “Yeah, it’s all right,” he says. “We’re going to have to go in through the back if we don’t want to track blood over all the carpet. There’s a bathroom just off the sliding back door, and it’s all tile through there.”

  “Okay,” I answer, and follow him around the house. There are a couple of lights on, but there doesn’t seem to be any signs of noise or movement.

  We go in through the back door and I follow Ian to the bathroom he was talking about.

  “Come in,” he says, one hand on the door, the other motioning for me to enter.

  I walk in and he closes the door behind us.

  “What first aid stuff do you have around…” I start, but am unable to finish.

  Rather than simply lifting the pant leg or opening it where it’s already torn, Ian went for the much less expected option of simply dropping his pants altogether.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks and tries to angle his upper leg under the sink faucet, but it doesn’t quite bend that way.

  “Do you have rubbing alcohol or hydrogen peroxide?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says. “It’s just up in that cabinet. There should be bandages and antibiotic cream in there, too. Would you mind grabbing it while I try to get myself cleaned off here?”

  Most of his bleeding stopped a while ago, but he is a hell of a mess.

  I nod and try not to gaze too long at the bulge of his anatomy pressing against the fabric of his boxers.

  After rummaging through the cabinet for a minute, I manage to get everything I need: hydrogen peroxide, bandages, antibiotic cream, cotton balls, cotton swabs, and a pair of latex gloves. When I turn back around, Ian’s managed, somehow, to get his upper leg under the sink faucet and is carefully rinsing off the area around the wound.

  I set everything on what’s left of the open counter space.

  “You know,” he says, “I think I can probably get this on my own.”

  As unappealing as tending a wound generally is, I protest, “Oh, quit being such a baby.”

  “I’m not,” he says. “I’m telling you that I can take care of it. That’s kind of the opposite thing…”

  He trails off, because not only am I ignoring him, I’m also holding a cotton ball over the mouth of the hydrogen peroxide bottle and tipping it just enough to get the cotton wet.

  I hand him the cotton ball and tell him, “If you think you got this by yourself, go for it.”

  As soon
as the cool wetness of the hydrogen peroxide touches his fingers, Ian shudders.

  “All right,” he says. “Thanks. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  I walk out of the bathroom and take a seat on the nearest piece of furniture, what looks like an antique chair or a reproduction of an antique chair. Either way, I’m really uncomfortable even touching the thing, much less sitting in it, so I quickly get back up and knock on the door.

  “You about done in there?” I ask.

  “Would you mind coming back in here for a minute?” he asks.

  I open the door and find him sitting on the counter, the cotton ball about six inches above the wound and just far enough off to the side that, when it drips, it doesn’t drip onto his wound.

  I sigh. “You’re such a baby,” I tell him, and before he even asks, I put on the gloves, take the cotton ball from his hand and start cleaning the area around the wound.

  “I hate to be a bother,” he says, “but would you mind getting the cut itself? I hate that peroxide stuff.”

  “You’d think, being a skater, you’d be used to it,” I tell him, drying my hands and grabbing the bottle.

  “I think I had to have it so many times that it built into a phobia,” he says. “I can get through it and everything, but if I’m going to do it myself, we’re probably going to be here for a while.”

  I take a look at the cut. Now that the area around it is clean, the thing doesn’t look so bad.

  Ian’s eyes are on the lid of the bottle as I’m unscrewing it, and then on the space where the lid was once I’ve removed it.

  “Don’t you need one of those cotton balls?” he asks.

  I give him a sideward glance. “You know, for someone who’s sat through what I can only imagine must have been a few days’ worth of tattoos, I’d really think you’d have developed a pair of balls somewhere along the way,” and I dump a little hydrogen peroxide straight into the wound, and I laugh a little as Ian’s mouth gapes and his hands are just above his leg as he wants to try something to take the sting away, but doesn’t want to contaminate the wound and end up having me do that again.

  “Totally different thing,” he says. “Tats can hurt and everything, but they’re not dripping poison into open wounds.”

  “It’s not poison,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t drink it, but…” I pour a little more over the wound, and Ian has his eyes closed and he’s banging the back of his head against the wall.

  I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t enjoying this maybe just a bit too much.

  “You know,” I tell him, “with as much blood as you left on the ground, I was expecting something a lot deeper.”

  “Yeah,” he says, “I bleed a lot when my heart is racing.”

  I look up at him with a smirk. “You’re really hung up on dropping in, aren’t you?” I ask.

  “It’s kind of the only thing standing between me and that fat sponsorship they’re offering the winner of the Midwest Comp.,” he says. “As much as I know my dad would love for me to just quit boarding and be a lawyer like I’m supposed to, I’d really hate to actually end up working a regular job.”

  “Is that all it is?” I ask. “You don’t want to end up in a 9-to-5?”

  “I wouldn’t say that’s all it is,” he answers, “but you’ve got to admit that’s some pretty strong motivation right there.”

  “I guess,” I tell him. “I always thought it was more important to actively do something you love rather than just trying to avoid the stuff you think might bore you.”

  “I love to skate,” he says. “That’s kind of the point. I’m always going to love to skate, but the question is, how far can I take it? I’ve spent a lot of time getting good, trying things I haven’t seen other guys try and all that. I’d still skate if there was never any money on the line, but I would like to be able to move out of here and not end up on the street as a result.”

  “I know you’re not going to like this, but there’s some dirt and what looks like a couple small bits of gravel in your cut, and I’m going to have to get those out of there before we can bandage it,” I say.

  “Maybe we should go to a hospital,” he says.

  I look at his face and then back down at his leg. The cut really isn’t all that bad. He’s not going to need any stitches. There’s no real reason to go to a hospital, unless he thinks they’re going to shoot him up with something to take his mind off of the pain.

  “If you think you need to go to the hospital, we can get you to the hospital,” I tell him. “Really, though, it’s just a matter of cleaning it out and dressing it. There’s not a whole lot more anyone’s going to be able to do about it. It’s a fairly long cut, but it’s not deep at all.”

  “Okay,” he says, clenching his fists, teeth, and I assume just about everything else on his body that can be clenched. “Just do it.”

  I savor the sight of him preparing for some terrible affliction to land a few seconds, and then I bend down to get a better look at what I’m dealing with.

  “I’m going to try to get the gravel with a cotton swab,” I tell him. “This is going to take just a second. I’ll try to be quick.”

  He doesn’t answer in the normal sense; he just grunts and nods his head.

  I dip a clean cotton swab into the hydrogen peroxide and set about cleaning the wound. It takes a minute to get every little piece of gravel out, but before long, the wound is cleaned of foreign matter.

  “Thank you,” he says when I remove the cotton swab and don’t put it back in his cut.

  “Oh, we’re not quite done yet,” I tell him, and before he has another chance to clench, I irrigate the wound with a generous amount of hydrogen peroxide.

  “Ah, fuck!” he grunts and his hands grip the side of the counter.

  From there, I dry the wound with a cotton ball, apply the antibiotic ointment, and place a large bandage over the cut.

  He’s still waiting for the final shoe to drop out of the sky and land hard on his leg, but I’m all done.

  I pat the wound lightly with my hand just to be a jerk and Ian grabs my wrist. He grabs my wrist, but he doesn’t remove my hand from his leg, he just moves it away from the bandage.

  There’s a rush of something I hardly have time to process through my body and his dark eyes are intent on mine, his eyes dilated.

  “You know,” he says, “I really appreciate you trying to help at the park and getting me cleaned up here.”

  “It’s not a problem,” I stammer.

  He’s leaning forward a little as he sits there, his head cocked a little to one side, and we just stare at each other for a little while.

  Finally, I pull away from him, shaking my head and chuckling. “Well, if you wanted to pick a way to get me to stop messing with your cut, you did a pretty good job,” I tell him.

  “What cut?” he asks and pulls me back toward him.

  “The cut on your leg,” I tell him, knowing full well he hasn’t actually forgotten about it.

  “Yeah,” he says.

  This came on rather unexpectedly, and I haven’t even had time to really sift through everything and decide how I feel about Ian. I know exactly how I’m feeling now—the weakness in my knees is making it particularly difficult to forget—but do I really want to do this?

  He brushes a strand of hair out of my face, his fingers lingering as he secures the strand behind my ear.

  The things I was really worried about with Ian, they’ve turned out not to be actual problems. He’s cocky and a bit brash for my taste, but as his hand comes to rest on my shoulder, I feel myself naturally leaning in toward him.

  We’re both watching one another for signs of retreat, but the space between us continues to narrow. My eyes begin to close, and I can almost feel Ian’s lips on mine when there’s a loud crash from somewhere outside the room and a man is yelling, “Ian! Get your skateboard and the rest of your peasant shit out of my living room!”

  My eyes are open now. Ian’s leaning his head back against the w
all.

  “Sorry,” he says. “Mind if I…?”

  I move out of his way and he hops down from the counter. He quickly puts his pants back on, though they’re wet with his blood, and he walks to the bathroom door.

  “Wait in here for a minute,” he says. “I really don’t want to have a conversation explaining what we’re doing in here with my dad right now. If I play this right, I think I can get us both out of here in five minutes or less. You up for it?”

  “Sure,” I answer, having no idea what he’s planning.

  He walks out of the room and closes the door behind him. Just to be on the safe side, I lock the door.

  While I’m waiting for a reasonable amount of time before I emerge from the bathroom, I take a minute to clean everything up, taking off my gloves and disposing of them very last. By the time I’m done, the bathroom doesn’t show any signs of what happened, other than a few drying blood drops on the floor that I’m not going to clean without gloves.

  Blood freaks me right out.

  When a minute or so has passed, I come out of the bathroom to find Ian and his father, a tall, tan man with intense features and what looks like a permanent scowl, coming into the living room just off the bathroom.

  “You’re going to clean all this up, right?” Ian’s dad asks.

  “Yeah,” Ian says. “I was just about to when you came in yelling.”

  “Well, worry about that in a minute,” Ian’s dad says. “There’s some stuff in the car I’d like you to bring in for me.”

  Until now, Ian and his father have been looking at each other, either unaware or unaffected by my presence, but as I go to sit down on the same antique chair I sat in earlier, as if by instinct, Ian and his father both turn toward me.

  “Don’t sit in that,” Ian’s father says. “That chair is over two hundred years old.”

  My legs straighten and lock, saving the chair from my apparently destructive touch.