He crosses his fingers cheekily, and I tug the door shut behind us.
* * *
—
I lie on the wood floor of my temporary bedroom, staring at the new walls. I’ve gone with a pale blue, the sunny sky to the living room’s shaded trees. It’s beautiful in a way that my professionally painted walls never managed to be. My back is tight from using the roller brush, and my arms ache. I tilt my head toward Deiss and find him staring past me toward the window. It’s open to release the paint fumes, the night stretching blackly beyond it.
I use his distraction to study his profile. He has a smudge of paint on his cheek and flecks of it are mixed into the darkness of his stubble. The effect is strangely appealing. He said he was just going to help me put up tape, but then he started playing records, and the next thing I knew, he had a brush in his hand and was helping me do the trim.
Between the two of us, we got both coats done in a couple of hours. And he was right. Since that call in Africa with the bank, tonight has been the first time I’ve gone more than a few minutes without my mind being flooded with money worries. Deiss and I didn’t even talk much. We just listened to music, the brushstrokes adapting to its rhythm. His gaze turns toward me, and I let my eyes drift, like I haven’t been staring at him.
“I need Chinese food,” he says, fumbling at his pocket for his phone but giving up before he pulls it out. “Moo goo gai pan and shrimp fried rice.”
My stomach growls audibly.
“Does Chinese work for you?” he asks.
I hesitate before nodding. If we split the delivery charge, it shouldn’t be too expensive.
He mounts another search and rescue mission for the phone and finds success this time.
“Do you have a go-to order?” he asks. “Or do you want me to pull up the menu?”
“Egg drop soup,” I say, averting my eyes. Perfect body aspirations aside, it is a Tuesday night and vacation is over. At some point, I have to begin atoning for my sins. Especially now that I’ve fired my personal trainer. Even my flowy vacation skirts are starting to fit a little too tightly.
To my relief, Deiss says nothing, merely placing the order online. I realize he’s likely paid for it with a credit card number saved in his phone, which causes me to panic. I’ll have to pay him back with what’s left from Mac’s hundred-dollar bill. The good news is that I still have most of it. The bad news is that Mac’s not likely to get repaid for a while.
I assume Deiss is going to leave the floor once the food is on its way, but instead he stays where he is. He lifts his hand and tucks it beneath his head, exposing a line of taut tanned skin above the waist of his jeans. I only peek at it for long enough to mentally measure the indention of the grooves that point an arrow southward.
“Are you staying in tonight?” I don’t plan to ask the question, and I regret it the moment it comes out of my mouth. It probably sounds needy. Or, worse, like I don’t want him here. Really, I just want to know if I’ll spend the night listening for the sound of his return.
“At least until the food arrives.” His head falls toward me, his cheek hovering above the wooden slats of the floor. “Do you have more laundry, or are you going out?”
“I wouldn’t even know what to do for entertainment on a Tuesday night,” I admit, distracted by the closeness of our positions on the floor. With his full attention on me, it suddenly feels like we’re cuddled up together instead of lying three feet apart.
His eyes sharpen with interest at my confession. “What do you normally do?”
“Work. Then gym. By the time I get home, it’s usually close to nine, so I just shower and read in bed for a while until I’m ready to go to sleep.” I say it like I’m proud of my discipline, rather than embarrassed by this evidence of the treadmill life he commented on that night in the bar. Still, I brace myself for his judgment, or at least a grin. Deiss probably considers schedules beneath him. He doesn’t even seem to eat at normal mealtimes. He just floats through the day, doing whatever he feels like.
“Does your gym have a branch around here?” he asks, surprising me.
“It’s not a chain. But it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve already canceled my membership. I did it the day I went on ‘personal leave without pay.’？” I smile wryly. “Because I was worried about money. I had no idea then how much more worried I would get.”
He grimaces sympathetically, then his brow lifts. “I thought gyms were like a gang. Don’t they own you for life?”