Would You Rather

47 - WYR: argue or Admit Something?

FINLEY

I'm in bed when Fidan comes home. I managed to get his couch to pop open like I knew it was designed to and rooted around his house for his linen closet. He doesn't seem to have that many heavy blankets so I went for the flannel sheets and, somehow, for a 21-year-old man, he had two throw blankets for his couches so I have both of those on as well. They smell like him. The whole fucking house does, but when I'm tucked under blankets that have been on his couch for months, face pressed against a pillow that was in his linen closet, and three inches away from the arm rest of his couch, all I can smell is him. Like birch and a bit like fresh rain, like mud season and spring and cold dirt and whatever the fuck laundry detergent he has. Like whatever cologne he uses occasionally. Like his deodorant. Like his shampoo or body wash or, God, I don't know. It smells like him, a horrible, intoxicating, scarily comforting amount.

I pick up my head at the sound of the door opening and the cats do too, lifting their heads from where they're cuddling at the foot of the pull out couch. He faces away, pulling his hat off, locking the door behind him, jacket next, down and off his willowy shoulders to be hung up on a hook. He's wearing an old crew neck, hair curling at the base of his neck, black in that light. He looks good in red. Harmfully good. Maroon on naturally golden bronzed skin, maroon on deep brown hair, maroon on sloped shoulders and long arms.

He spins toward the living room, toeing off his shoes to put on the rack, reading something off his phone. One look to me and I must appear asleep because he doesn't say anything, just slips into the kitchen. I watch, tucked up to my nose in bedding, hair braided back away from my face, as he pulls open a top cabinet to get a glass, filling it, showing off his stupid side profile with his mysteriously good-looking nose and the ever-so-faint scar in his eyebrow from earlier this season. He should, frankly, be ugly. Right? He's a bit mismatched, Turkish and Finnish aren't notably compatible, but there's just something about the weirdo combination of features that makes him just so aggravatingly hot. Broken nose, scarred lip, broken tooth, scarred eyebrow, consistently furrowed expression but, damn. Damn.

Dino decides to leave me, no longer curled up in the crook between my calf and the back of my leg with Brisket, and hops off the bed, catching Fidan's attention.

He says something, deep and soft, bending in the kitchen to where I can't see him anymore, beckoning the kitty. When he stands again, still talking in a lowered voice in some language I don't know, whether it be Finnish or Turkish, I'm not sure, scratching under the kitten's chin. He deposits the tabby on his shoulder and takes a drink of water, looking back over to me. I know I'm completely in the dark and that most of my face is probably covered but it makes me nervous anyway, knowing that he could notice that my eyes are open, could say something, could... I dunno.

Fidan lets out a sigh, setting down the glass before looking back over at me with a frown. Maybe he's looking at Brisket, who is very carefully rearranging herself with her chin on my arm, or he's realizing that I'm way less asleep than I look.

"You gonna keep staring at me over there or what?" He asks, my face going red hot the second he even starts talking. Not a good look for me to be yelling at him all the time, and him yelling back, to then start admiring his ass from across the room.

"Gonna keep staring at you." I manage, watching him walk from the kitchen area to the bridge between the living room and the hall to get to his bedroom. I decide that him looking good in a hoodie and jeans, that good in a hoodie and jeans, is pissing me off. I'm mad about it.

"Do you know a girl named Riley Lee?"

That catches me off guard. Riley and I don't talk much, if at all anymore, but we were close when I was a freshman and she's pretty close with Kit because I think Kit is dating her twin. She sometimes shows up at college parties we go to. She's nuts. Completely. Dresses in all black, real grunge type style, always making out with someone random, unplugging shit at party houses. She redid some of the wiring in my apartment last year. And, well, what the fuck is he doing asking me about girls? The audacity.