“I promised I wouldn’t touch your Nutter Butters. You don’t touch my alarm.” Freeing my brush from my toiletry bag, I ripped it through my long dark hair before throwing my hair into a ponytail.
“Okay, so you wake up cranky. Noted. I’ll keep my distance from here on out.” As he emerged from the bathroom, he was wearing nothing more than a towel around his waist. A small, thin white towel. He was still wet from the shower.
I froze in the middle of searching for my toothbrush and toothpaste. I had been born and raised in the heartland of America, where corn-fed, All-American boys ran rampant, but dang . . . Nutter Butters did a body good.
When he caught me looking—gawking—at him, I got back to wrangling my toothbrush free. “I’m only cranky in the morning when someone turns off my alarm on one of the biggest days of my life.”
As soon as I had my toothpaste, I went charging into the bathroom. The mirror was still fogged up from his shower, the scent of whatever soap and shampoo he used lingering in the air.
“The biggest day of your life? I think that should be reserved for your wedding day or the birth of your firstborn or something other than posing and walking for a bunch of shallow people who think the label on your shirt is synonymous with a person’s worth in life.”
After wiping off the steam with my forearm, I squeezed a blob of toothpaste onto my brush, glaring at my reflection in the mirror. The one positive to getting into an argument with him was that it warmed me up. “Oh, yeah? Because being drafted by some baseball team to swing a bat and catch a few balls for millions of dollars is so much more enlightened?”
He was quiet. For all of two seconds. “Listen, I’m sorry I turned off your alarm. I really thought I was doing you a favor by letting you rest. It won’t happen again.”
When I popped my head out of the bathroom, brushing my teeth, I saw that flimsy white towel drape across the top of his divider. My toothbrush stopped moving. Giving my head a shake, I finished brushing, took a minute to do what I could to my hair and face, and rushed back to my suitcase. The alarm showed seven fifteen, which gave me forty-five minutes to figure out where I was going, get there, and compose myself before shaking hands with one of New York’s biggest modeling agents.
“I’m never going to make it,” I whined, shoving my feet into the same heels from last night. My feet felt swollen and the blisters on the back of my heels had popped, but beauty was pain. At least some of the time.
“Stop freaking out. Of course you’re going to make it. You’ve got plenty of time.” Soren reemerged from behind his divider, wearing a similar outfit to last night’s: dark jeans, light shirt that hugged his body, low-top Converse, and a backward red baseball cap. He was sliding on a backpack, strapping it around his chest and waist. “If you’re ready to go, I can walk you to the subway and tell you which stop to get off at. The stop for my school’s a few after the Park Avenue one you’ll want.”
As I threw on my jacket, I grabbed my purse and started for the door. “I can’t take the subway.”
“Everyone in New York takes the subway. I know it can seem intimidating to out-of-towners, but I was riding the subway, by myself, from the time I was ten.” Soren caught up to me and made a stop in the kitchen to pull a box from one of the cupboards. It was a pack of Pop-Tarts. Strawberry with sprinkles.
“I’m sure it is easy to figure out, especially if the ten-year-old version of you could do it.”
He shot me a wounded look after pulling open the door.
“But really, I can’t take the subway,” I said.
“Really, you can.” He paused at the door to lock it, pulling an extra key from his pocket and holding it out for me.
“Soren . . .” I grumbled as we started down the stairs. He was able to move down them quicker since he wasn’t balancing on quarter-foot high heels, but he waited at the bottom of each flight. “Any idea when the elevator will be fixed?”
“Yeah.” He motioned at it when we made it to the first floor. “Never.”
“Never?”
“It’s been busted since I moved in last year. It will probably still be busted when the apocalypse moves in.”
I made a mental note to pack a pair of flats for traversing the stairs every day. Heels were one thing on sidewalks, a totally different thing on a steep pair of questionable-looking stairs. When we shoved through the door, the cold New York air blasted over us.
“Holy cold.” My teeth were already chattering as I went to zip up my jacket. It was one of those coats created with fashion in mind, instead of function, so it didn’t provide much warmth.
“Insulation helps.” Soren walked down the stairs with me before pacing down the sidewalk toward the subway tunnel.
“This is the only coat I brought.”
“I was talking about the insulation that goes under the skin.”
I aimed a fake smile at him. “Another model joke. Any chance you’re getting close to running out of them?”
He grinned at the sidewalk, but I didn’t miss the way he angled himself enough he was blocking some of the wind cutting down the street at us. “Just getting warmed up.”
It was only a couple of minutes before the subway entrance came into view.
“See? How handy is that? Public transportation practically right outside your front door.” He indicated back at our apartment building, which was still in sight.
“Okay, good to know where it is. Have a nice day.”
When I kept moving down the sidewalk, he gave me another one of those looks. “If you actually want to be late to your appointment, walking’s the way to do it. Park Avenue is not just a hop, skip, and a jump down the block. Especially in those shoes.” He grabbed my wrist and started guiding me down into the subway.
“Soren, I can’t,” I protested, though my feet kept following behind him.
He didn’t say anything as he kept guiding me through the maze of people, before stopping at a ticket counter. Even though he was holding a monthly pass in his hand, he purchased one ticket from the agent. When he held the ticket out for me and I noticed it was a round-trip, another knife of guilt stabbed right into my stomach.
Whether he was right or not in turning off my alarm, I believed he’d done it because he thought it was what was best for me. Now he’d bought me a subway ticket without me even needing to embarrass myself by admitting I was totally broke. I’d been nothing but a crabby pain in the butt since arriving.
“Soren . . .”
He winked at me as the subway pulled up to the station. “I know.”
“Did you just pull a Han Solo on me?”
He lifted his arm in front of me when I moved toward to the car. “You better believe it, girlie.”