“Okay.” I walked over to the door and threw it open. “I love you. Bye.”
I tossed the phone on top of the desk and squinted as the living room’s natural light assaulted my eyeballs. God, the hangover. I had that equilibrium tilt going on, the one that let your body know you were still too boozed up to drive, and I stumbled in the direction of the Keurig, desperate for coffee.
“Well, good morning, sunshine.”
I froze at the sound and instantly felt like I was going to throw up.
Because Colin Beck, Jack’s best friend, was watching me toddle toward the kitchen. As if the universe hadn’t already beaten the living shit out of me, there he was, standing beside the fancy breakfast bar with his arms crossed, witnessing my walk of shame with an eyebrow raised in amusement. He was wearing his I’m-better-than-you smirk and dickish good looks while I traversed the apartment in underpants and a too-small shirt like some sort of Winnie-the-Pooh variety of dipshit.
I blinked. Had he gotten more attractive?
What a prick.
The last time I’d seen him was my freshman year of college, when I’d gotten kicked out of the dorms and had to spend the final month of the semester living at home with my parents. Jack brought him over for spaghetti on a Sunday, and Colin had found the story of my stray-dog rescue turned mauling of multiple dorm tenants turned subsequent fire-sprinkler deployment turned massive dorm-wide flooding dismissal to be the funniest thing he’d ever heard.
Today he looked like he’d just come back from a run. His damp T-shirt hugged his über-defined everything, and some kind of tattoo snaked down his right arm.
Who did he think he was with that, The Rock?
Colin had one of those movie-star faces, with the perfect bone structure and a killer jawline, but his blue eyes had a mischievous spark that offset the beauty. Rowdy eyes. I’d fallen in love with that face briefly at the age of fourteen, but after eavesdropping on a conversation where he’d referred to me as the “little weirdo” at age fifteen, I’d taken an extreme right turn into loathing and never looked back.
“What are you doing here?” I walked around him to where the Keurig sat on the smooth counter, and I pressed the power button. The cool air reminded me that my backside was totally exposed in my idiotic vanity plate underpants, but I’d be damned if I let him think that he had the ability to faze me. I forced myself not to tug on the Cookie Monster pajama top as I searched the cabinets for coffee, telling myself that it was only a butt as I said, “I thought you moved to Kansas or Montana.”
He cleared his throat. “In the cupboard next to the fridge.”
I glanced over at him. “What?”
“The coffee.”
He was such a know-it-all. He’d always reminded me of an East Coast mobster, the way he knew everything and was always right. So I lied and said, “Well, I wasn’t looking for coffee.”
He quirked an eyebrow and leaned against the breakfast bar. “You weren’t.”
“Nope.” I bit down on my bottom lip and said, “I was actually looking for, um, for tea.”
“Oh. Of course.” He gave me a look that told me he somehow knew that I hated tea. “Well, it’s in the same cupboard. Next to the fridge.”
Holy God, how could this be happening? Am I seriously talking to Colin Beck in my underwear?
“Thank you.” I fought the urge to roll my eyes as I walked over to that cupboard, wanting coffee so bad I could cry. There was one kind of tea in there, Earl Grey, and all I knew was that I’d hate it as I pulled out a K-Cup and took it back over to the machine. “Where’s Jack?”
“Um.” I felt his eyes on me as he said, “He’s at work.”
“Oh.” So why are you here?
“He said you’re staying for a month.” He leaned his tanned forearms on the counter—how the hell did he have sexy forearms, for God’s sake—and started messing with his running watch. “Right?”
“Yep.” I grabbed a mug from the counter, filled it with water from the sink, and removed the lid of the near-empty reservoir on the Keurig. “Does my brother know you’re here, by the way?”
That made him look up from his wrist. “What?”
I leaned closer to the coffee machine and started pouring. “Is he expecting you?”
He made a sound in his throat that was a mixture between a cough and a laugh before saying, “Holy shit—you don’t know that I’m his roommate, do you?”