Burning Up (Jacob Black)

11. Hot and Cold

It didn't take long for him to reappear from down the hall. He had a bundle of cloth in his fist as he walked towards me, still shivering by the open front door. His footsteps made a wet tapping sound and he left a trail of dewey footprints leading up to me. He changed into dry clothes, but the moisture of the rain still permeated parts of the fabric and left wet spots on his shirt. He had a beige towel draped over his head and shoulders to soak up the rain in his hair. He looked like Mother Mary, it made me giggle.

"What are you laughing at?" He said through a smile.

"Nothing," I could feel the apples of my cheeks as I kept softly giggling.

He huffed. "Yeah, right. You're in no place to laugh at me when you look like a wet cat that just got out of the bath."

"Okay, okay, fair. Truce?" I offered. My teeth were still chattering as I spoke.

"Truce." He handed me a bundle of clothes. "Here. These are gonna be huge on you but at least they'll be dry."

I grabbed them, my hands trembling from the cold of the open door.

"What, are you just gonna stand in the doorway, shivering forever? Come in! You can change in my room." He called to me as he turned back toward the hall.

I shut the door behind me and took a hesitant step forward, feeling bad for the wet floorboards. He led me to his room with the tan towel still on his head.

"Here, I'll give you some privacy. I'll be in the kitchen." He handed the towel over before he shut the door for me. I heard his retreating footsteps gradually descend into the house.

Jacob's room was tiny, sitting at the very end of the house. The floor was made of black square tile and there was a door to the outside, which led me to believe it used to be a mud room until they converted it into his bedroom. It was just enough to fit a bed and a desk with some drawers, yet Jacob really made it feel homey. He put posters all over the walls—Metallica, Rob Zombie, and multiple Quentin Tarantino movies. And where there was no space for posters, there were random assortments of stickers stuck on the walls. Stacks of magazines and CDs were sprawled across every surface; some were nearly toppling over. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Beastie Boys at the top of one of the piles. The plastic of the case had shallow scratches all over. Guess he's gotten a lot of good use out of it. Wires, pens, and random papers sat haphazardly all across his desk as if he'd thrown them there carelessly. I spotted a sheet of old homework on his desk as I was changing. I examined his doodles, which were all over the margins. Scribbled slogans and icons were in every nook and cranny that wasn't occupied with algebraic equations. He was adorable.

When I was done changing, I folded my wet clothes, wrapped the towel around them, and set it on his bedside table. He was right. The clothes he gave me were ginormous on me. Regardless of how huge his clothes were, they still all smelled like him. It was a combination of his natural scent and the signature cologne he would always wear. His cologne was sharp, manly; it pierced your nostrils in the best way possible. It had just a tinge of vanilla somewhere in there. I think he wore it to make up for his boyishness—he wanted to splash some macho man on. I'm pretty sure he stole it from Billy, who would also adorn himself with very masculine colognes. On anyone else, I would think the scent was completely obnoxious. It fit him, though.

His navy blue basketball shorts almost looked like a kilt on me, the hem at my kneecap. He also gave me a grey shirt with The Shining written in bright red text, accompanied by the iconic axe scene printed on it. The sleeves of the shirt, which should have ended at my underarm, fell almost to my elbow. I looked like a girl cosplaying her older brother as a joke for Halloween. I sighed and opened the door.