*4* Shower

*Grace*

Every year fewer and fewer children come, I think, staring at the leftover Halloween treats I made—Juliet’s recipes for homemade caramel apples wrapped like Jack-o-lanterns and candy-eyed popcorn balls pressed around plastic vampire teeth to look like little toothy monsters. Barely half is gone, and I certainly don’t need it in the house.

I pack everything in a bag and carry it to the foot of the stairs.

“Rob?” I call and wait. When his normally quick ‘yes, ma’am’ doesn’t follow, I glance out the window to check for his car. Maybe I missed when he left for the evening. Seeing the black Mazda on the drive, my brows draw together. “Rob?” I call again, setting the bag of goodies on the first step and starting up the stairs. “Are you alright?”

His bedroom door is open at the upstairs landing, and I glance in shyly. Finding the room empty, I call again, “Rob?”

To my right, the bathroom door flies open, scaring me half to death. I leap back, flattening myself against the wall, startled even more when Rob’s quick, “Yes, ma’am!” hits me.

That’s when my eyes go wide and it’s all I can do to keep from drooling.

Fragrant steam from his hot shower rolls towards the ceiling as the bathroom clears and cools and I can’t help thinking this is what a man’s meant to smell like. The steam leaves a lingering deliciousness in my nostrils, like minty pine campfire and whiskey, and Rob’s standing like a vision in the middle of it, rubbing his hair with a towel. He’s dressed only in jeans that ride low enough that I can see the distinct V his obliques cut over his narrow hips. Water trickles down his lean, muscular chest and clings in a dark shimmer to the thin line of hair that runs from his navel to disappear at the waist of his button fly Levi’s.

He wipes the towel over his chest to catch the stray drops, then tosses it towards the towel rack behind him. When it catches and haphazardly hangs, he faces me. His hair’s still damp and it sticks up in the shining clumpy black spikes that make his honey-colored eyes seems so striking.

“Sorry. I didn’t hear you over the shower.”

I can’t stop my eyes from wandering the invisible path the towel made over his body seconds before and lingering. My heart feels like it’s leapt into my throat and is now pounding. I can feel my face flush and my mouth is open pulling in shallow breaths because there’s definitely not enough oxygen to my brain. My lips feel too dry to speak, but when I wet them with my tongue, it feels like it’s three feet thick and I know words aren’t going to happen easily.

“Is there something you need?”

Fumbling for words, I can only shake my head. Blinking rapidly and trying to keep my eyes on his face and not scan his body up and down like I really want to, I finally stutter, “I—are—are you—m-meeting—meeting your friends tonight?” and immediately want to die. The words are low and breathy and sound like a B-movie temptress. Lord knows even that skillset is above me and I feel like a fool.

He flashes me that dreamy dimpled smile of his and I think I can actually hear my ovaries sigh. If nothing else, I can definitely tell that they noticed him standing shirtless and damp in a cloud of intoxicating steam like some romantic demigod.

“I was. Unless there’s something you need.”

And since it’s not enough that he looks like an Adonis, his voice is low and smooth and I’m convinced this instant Rob could reawaken the sexual desires of a female corpse with nothing more than those glorious abs and another ‘is there something you need’. Between the words he chooses and the way he makes eye contact with me, I feel like I’m the most important person in the world.

I realize suddenly that I’m staring senseless at him and try to remember why I came up here in the first place. “There’s a bag of the leftover Halloween treats on the stairs for you to take to your friends.” The words roll out of my mouth way too fast and I’m even more embarrassed because it’s obvious he noticed.

Rob’s smile widens. “Okay. Thanks. They’ll appreciate that.”

“Okay.” I smile and nod. And promptly trip over my own feet as I try to move towards the stairs.

Rob catches and steadies me, then lets go abruptly. Even though he’s set me on my feet, between the smell of him and the great eye contact he’s making, I feel a little dizzy. “Have a good time tonight,” is all I can manage because seeing him like that has derailed my brain so badly that it takes all my concentration to get down the stairs without falling.

*Rob*

Grace is sitting in the dining room flipping through farm supply catalogs, dog-earing the corners of a few and jotting notes into a journal when I get downstairs. She’s lost in her own thoughts, which works well for me, since I love looking at her, especially when she doesn’t know anyone’s watching.

As she concentrates, that captivating little space opens between her flawless, plump lips. It’s an unconscious and wholly seductive habit of hers that I very much enjoy, and as I watch, she bites her bottom lip then flips open a different catalog and compares something between the two.

It’s nothing like upstairs though, when I opened the bathroom door and found her standing there. I could tell she liked what she saw, and that was great for my ego. But when she sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, wetting it with her tongue before her sapphire eyes flicked up to mine, she knocked me for a loop. If the words hadn’t already been in my mouth, I’d have stood there staring stupidly, not much different than I am now.

She jots something in her notebook and looks up suddenly, and I realize since it’s dark already, she must’ve seen my reflection in the window behind me. “Now that you’ve fixed the creaky stairs, I can’t tell when you’re coming or going,” she giggles uncomfortably.

I feel bad for startling her again and apologize. “Unless you need me, I’m going to go now,” I tell her, pulling my coat from the entry closet.

“Okay.” It’s all she says and I can’t help but feel a little disappointed—I really wish she needed me around more because she’s a hell of a lot prettier to look at than Dan, Cameron and Tim.

“Thanks for the goodies for my friends.” She nods a little distractedly as I pull on my coat. Though I try to look casual shifting it on my shoulders and tugging the sleeves, I’m stalling.

Grace is watching me and those ocean blue eyes of hers are so dark they look purple from where I’m standing. That space between her lips is open again and it hits me, suddenly and hard, how much I want her. Want to cross this gap between us and take her in my arms. Tease that space between her gorgeous lips wider with my tongue.

And that’s when reality hits and my bubble bursts.

I’ve been here a month. And I’d be homeless and unemployed if not for Grace. The best I am is a broke college student who’s twenty-eight and still doesn’t have his first degree or even his own furniture. No matter how much stuff she asks me to fix around here, I have absolutely nothing to offer her. I zip my coat and grab the bag she left for me and, perturbed at my circumstance, hurry out the door to my car.

There’s a metallic taste to the air and a chill that doesn’t ease even with the car’s heat running until I’ve almost reached the bar. I expect we’ll see snow again before morning and hope with a sigh that it clears over before I have classes on Monday. It’s only early November, but it’s been a wet year already. And there’s nothing I hate worse than clearing the windshield of my car in the snow.

As I walk in, there’s a loud, talentless band playing that everyone is ignoring to take advantage of the two-dollar discount off tap beer.

“What’s this?” Cameron asks when I plop the bag of Grace’s goodies on our usual table between the pool table and the dart board.

“Leftover goodies from Grace,” I tell them, pulling out a chair. Our waitress is the weekend regular and she points a finger at me and raises her brows asking nonverbally if I want a beer, then smiles and nods once when I nod and mouth ‘yes, please’.

Tim chuckles. “These are cute. I love the stuff old ladies fix for holidays.” He unwraps a popcorn ball, pulling the vampire teeth out and positioning them over his teeth in his mouth.

Immediately, Dan snatches up the rest of the abandoned popcorn ball and starts snacking. “These are really good,” he says around a mouthful.

I can’t remember when exactly I gave them the impression that Grace is an old woman. That she’s clearly not makes me feel a little guilty, but not enough to discourage the misconception. These guys are my brothers in arms, my friends, but we’re also merciless about picking at each other and I know my life will be easier if I let them think what they do.

When the waitress arrives with my beer, Tim puts his hand in the small of her back to keep her from leaving. “Let me suck your blood!” he commands, waggling the fingers of his opposite hand in her face with a creepy stare. It’s a bad approximation of Bela Lugosi, but she laughs, then squeals when he bends to her neck and bites her gently with the plastic teeth.

As she scurries off, he spits the teeth onto the table and takes a sip from his beer. “I’m telling you, one of these weekends, she’s going home with me.”

“Sure buddy.” I roll my eyes. Tim’s been working on her for nearly two years, but so far, no dice. I don’t have the heart to tell him it’s because she’s got the hots for me and had her hand on my thigh under the table through his whole Dracula bit.

Early on, she was more aggressive, and sometimes, when she’s having a good night, she still is. The bottom line is that I’m not attracted to the cute, girl-power types, like Tim’s waitress, and never have been, and I’m not any good for her anyway. I just don’t have anything to offer a girl and I’ve told her as much. I can’t decide if she keeps trying because I’m safe, or because rejection is a huge aphrodisiac for her.

Either way, it’s nice to be attractive to someone, even if you’re no good for them. Which is especially true of the woman I am attracted to, and now that I know she’s noticed me, I think I’ll wait and see what happens.