I sighed, luxuriating in the feel of the steady spray and perfect water pressure hot against my back. I let my mind wander as the water sluiced over me, thinking through how I might spend the next day. With all the chaos of my eviction notice and moving, I hadn’t been to the studio where I did most of my work in weeks. After sleeping in as long as I could, maybe I would head out to Pilsen and poke around on something new the rest of the day.
After a while—ten minutes? an hour?—I glanced down at my fingers. They were wrinkled as prunes from the water. How long had I been in there?
I reluctantly turned off the hot water and opened the shower door. The air felt even colder than it had earlier after the hot shower I’d just taken, causing a riot of gooseflesh to erupt on the backs of my arms. I grabbed my towel off the back of the door where it hung from a silver chrome hook and wrapped it tightly around my body, tucking it under my arms.
My shower had steamed up the mirror. I quickly rubbed the back of my hand over it so I could see my reflection.
I frowned at what I saw.
My hair was growing back from the impulsive scissors incident from a few weeks ago, but it was still shorter than I usually kept it. And weirdly uneven. Once it dried, it was going to stick up in the back no matter how much product I put in it.
Once I got my feet under me a little more, the first thing I was going to do was make an honest-to-god visit to an actual salon to fix what I’d done to myself. In the meantime, I should probably do what I could to make myself look presentable.
I thought of the fabric shears in my bedroom. They were probably too dull to do a good job on my hair. But they’d be better than nothing.
Tucking my towel a little more tightly around my body, I opened the bathroom door and prepared to make a beeline straight for my bedroom—
—and barreled directly into Frederick, my face smashing right into his chest.
His bare chest.
I must have been overheated from the shower, or from embarrassment—or both—because his flesh felt almost unnaturally cool. He stood there as unmoving as a statue, a pair of small white linen shorts slung distractingly low on his hips, as I yelped and sprang away from him. His right hand was raised in a fist, as though he’d just been about to knock on the bathroom door when we collided.
His eyes were wide as saucers, his face as pale as moonlight.
We babbled out our apologies at the same time.
“Miss Greenberg! Oh, I beg your pardon, I—”
“Shit! I’m so sorry! I didn’t—！”
In hindsight, it should have occurred to me that living with another person meant walking around in nothing but a towel wasn’t something I could do anymore. But he’d made such a big deal about usually being out all night. How was I supposed to know that at the exact moment I’d decided to leave the bathroom he’d be standing right outside the bathroom door, shirtless?
As I stood only a few inches away from him in nothing but a towel, my wet hair dripped steadily onto my bare shoulders. His chest was at a level with my eyes, and . . .
I tried not to gape. I really did. Gaping at my new, barely dressed roommate when I was mostly naked myself was not only gross but also wildly inappropriate. But I couldn’t help myself. This man had been hiding an actual, honest-to-god six-pack beneath his perfect-fitting clothes. His broad chest tapered down to a narrow waist, the way he wore his shorts making him look like he was a goddamn underwear model instead of a doctor or CEO or whatever the hell he was.
Frederick wasn’t just attractive, I realized.
He was a Greek god.
The seconds ticked by as we stood there—me ogling him, him staring wide-eyed at a spot of nothing just beyond my left shoulder. I tried to think about anything but how close we were standing, how little we were wearing, and the way my heartbeat was suddenly racing. And then, because I’d never had much of a self-preservation instinct, I had a sudden, nearly irresistible urge to trace the solid lines of his chest with my fingertips. To see if those abs of his were as rock hard as they looked.
What would he do if I did?
Would he kick me out and find a roommate who actually knew how to behave appropriately in awkward situations? One who could also maybe pay him rent closer to market rate? Or would he pull my towel away and toss it to the side before he took my body in those giant hands of his, and—
I clenched my hands into tight fists and forced them down by my sides before I had a chance to do anything stupid. The prickling heat of a furious blush rose up through my body, warming my cheeks and making my hands sweat.
Frederick wasn’t blushing, though he still looked at least as embarrassed as I felt. To his credit, he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the wall behind me. He honestly looked like he might die if he let his gaze shift towards me by so much as an inch.