Dreams of 18(36)

“Are you trying to murder the ground?”

His groggy voice pierces through my anger and I whirl around.

I shouldn’t have.

Or maybe I should’ve taken a little time to control my raging emotions and then turned around and looked at him.

Because he’s not wearing a shirt.

Oh my God, he’s not wearing a shirt.

The only thing he has on is a pair of plaid pajama bottoms that look old and worn and so comfy. The hem of them is grazing his bare feet.

Such a non-threatening picture. Old pajamas, bare feet, sleepy voice.

Such a freaking lie.

“Only because I can’t get to my actual target right now,” I reply.

“And who’s your actual target?”

I flex my grip on the shovel. “People call him The Beast.”

“Yeah? Sounds dangerous.”

“He used to make students cry back at my school. Everyone hated him.”

“Everyone’s smart.”

“Oh, and he eats girls like me for breakfast.”

“You should probably stay away, then.”

“I should.” I raise the shovel and kind of wave it. “But I have this, remember? And I know how to use it.”

“Clearly.”

When all the words run out between us and silence descends, I can’t ignore the elephant in the space.

Or The Beast.

The Beast who’s not wearing a shirt.

I can see every ridge and groove of his upper body. The tight slabs of his pecs and rigid slopes of his sides.

Not to mention, I can see the hair on his chest, a light smattering at first, but then thickening and darkening as it goes down and becomes a furry trail around his belly button, that disappears under the waistband of his pajamas.

It kills me. It literally kills me how sexy it is, his chest hair. How appealing.

More appealing than the veins going up and down on his arms and that bulge in his bicep when he raises that arm and glugs something down from a bottle.

He does it all with his eyes on me and…

Hold on a second.

He’s drinking from a bottle? Again?

“Is that…” I squint. “Is that whiskey?”

“Scotch,” he corrects me, taking another sip of it, like that’s what’s important.

“But it’s like, first thing in the morning.”

“So?”

I stick the shovel into the ground and rest my elbow on it. “So, people drink coffee in the morning. Or juice.”

“I don’t like juice.”

“Well, there’s always coffee.”

“Don’t like coffee either.”

“That’s such a lie. You like coffee.”

“Really?”

“Uh-huh. You like it black.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You also wake up really early in the morning.”

“Do I?”

“Yes. I used to live next door to you, remember? So I know. You used to wake up at four or something. It’s not four now.”

Nope, it’s not.

It’s like, after eleven, and I’ve never seen him sleep this late.

“So you do know how to tell the time. Your babysitter will be pleased.”

I scoff. “Of course. How did we go so long without you making a crack about my age? But I guess it helps you sleep at night. So sure, let’s call my imaginary babysitter and tell her the good news. But only after you tell me why you’re drinking when you’ve just woken up? Late, no less.”

Leaving the shovel in the ground, I fold my arms across my chest and wait for his answer.

“I like this now,” he says after a few seconds, and as if to emphasize it, he wraps his lips around the rim and chugs down another shot of it.

It’s fast and so sudden that even I feel the burn of whiskey going down. I can feel it settling in my stomach like it does in his and I don’t like it one bit.

I don’t like that he’s drinking like this.

“You want some?” he dares, tipping the bottle toward me.

“Absolutely not.”

“Afraid you might do something stupid?”

I grit my teeth. “No.”

“Come on. We both know how much you like it.”

I think I broke my jaw just a little, with how hard I’m grinding it. I might have even pierced the skin of my palms with my nails if I wasn’t wearing my newly-acquired work gloves.

“I don’t drink anymore,” I tell him.

At this, he laughs.

It’s a rusty sound. Gravelly and loud, coming from a place deep inside of him, it feels like.

“You don’t drink anymore,” he says in a voice laced with amusement.

“Nope.”

“Since when?”

“Since I kissed an asshole.”

It’s true.

I don’t touch liquor or any of the addictive substances. Well, except for this one time when I baked funny brownies for the girls just after we got out of Heartstone. But I only ate one and decided to never touch them again.

And Mr. Edwards believes that, I think.

He sees the truth of it on my face.

The face that’s exposed and unhindered by the cap and my Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. For some reason, I don’t need them when it’s just me and him.