NIKKI & JOE, CASUALLY |

36: as platonic coworkers or summat...

            'D'you mind if I take a shower before I leave? Cause I'm pretty sure I smell so much like sex that they'd kick me off the bus.'

Joe mumbles summat from the bed. Her eyes are shut, body melted into the mattress. Really, the whole room smells so heavily of sex, I wouldn't be surprised if folk can smell it from the corridor. 'You can take a bath if you want.'

'What am I supposed to do in there?'

'Relax.'

Relax?

Joe pushes herself onto her elbows to gawk at me. 'Have you never had a bath?' she asks and when I shake my head, says, 'What do you mean, you've never had a bath?' She stretches the word more than her southern accent already draws it out.

'I've never owned one, have I? Not one that holds water, anyway.'

'Okay, you're having a bath right now.'

'What am I supposed to do in there?' I ask again, but Joe has already climbed out of bed and stumbled from the room.

'You can read a book,' she calls from the toilet. Soon, the water runs.

I stay where I am, standing in the middle of the bedroom in my boxer briefs as I squint at The Hermit on the ceiling. I'm not sure having a bath in her apartment is exactly casual... but maybe it's a friendship thing. I'd run a bath for Caleb if either of us had bathtubs (that hold water).

'What if I drop it in there?' I ask when she returns.

'That's how books get character. I don't own a single one that hasn't been dropped in at least one body of water.'

I imagine her lounging by a pool in a Bali resort, her dark skin gladly soaking up the sun. A wide-brim hat provides the shade she needs to read a paperback bent in half. I don't know how the book would end up in the pool in this vision, without it being summat right out of a cheesy porn set-up—"Oh no, I'm so clumsy that I accidentally threw my book six yards away, please would you fetch it for me?"

Then, I decidedly don't imagine it.

Joe grabs my forearm in much the same relaxed manner I imagine her holding her paperbacks. Or other things. And I'm grateful I'm not sixteen anymore and my body isn't quite that enthusiastic or I'd never make it to the bloody bath—to say nowt about home.

No. I mentally spray myself with water. Stop it. One time, I said, and yeah alright, it's already been a few times. But it's enough.

It has to be enough.

Joe's bookshelf is a spectrum of pinks and purples attached to her TV bench. I scan the spines: The Ethical Slut, Sex, Needs And Queer Culture, Sexual Intimacy for Women. I stifle a grin. 'D'you only have sex books?'

'No,' she deadpans. 'I also have Pride and Prejudice.'

She pulls it out. It's curled and rippled, clearly having fallen into a bath more than once. Or a pool. In the porn scenario, a lifeguard dressed in an amorously red and criminally tight bathing suit dives in to collect it from the deep end and valiantly returns it to her.

Joe manoeuvres the novel back into its slot, laughing in that odd hissing way she does when she makes a stupid joke and is aware that it's a stupid joke but finds it dead hilarious.

I want to kiss her.

And not as a precursor to sex, not as a pool-side porn scenario kind of way. I just want to kiss her because she's sweet and funny and my chest flutters every time she smiles and I love that she reads books about sex and I'm sure she reads them out in public and couldn't care less what anyone else might think of her and–