“I tidied up this morning for you, but if Snake’s home then I can’t make any promises that it’ll look the way it did when I left,” Tyler admits as he reaches into the back pocket of his jeans and pulls out a set of keys. He looks a little nervous.
“I don’t mind,” I say. Now I’m smiling again. The thought of Tyler trying to clean up his apartment for my sake makes me feel like perhaps he’s hoping to impress me. But the more I think about it, the more I doubt it.
There’s a click and Tyler pushes open the door, stepping back to allow me to enter first. The first thing I think is: Yep, Ella.
I’m standing before an open-plan layout. Beige carpet, red plush couches, glossy black furniture, unbelievably large flat-screen TV mounted onto the wall between two huge windows that look out over the city. To my right there are two doors, which I assume lead to bedrooms, and on my left there’s a kitchen. Everything follows a black, red and white color scheme. With the open-plan layout, the kitchen and living room are simply divided by one of the kitchen counters, enabling you to stand in the kitchen while staring into the living room. The cupboard doors and worktops are a glossy white. On one side of the kitchen, there’s an open door leading to what seems to be the laundry room. On the opposite end, there’s another door, but it’s closed.
“Man, is that you?” a voice yells from the other side of it. “ ’Cause something’s wrong with the shower again. Water’s mad cold. Won’t heat up.”
I arch my eyebrows at the sound of the thick Boston accent. It makes Tyler’s odd mix sound totally normal again in comparison. The bathroom door is pulled open and a tall, blond-haired guy wanders out. He’s pale-skinned and is evidently not paying too much attention, because as he makes his way across the kitchen his hand is inside his sweatpants, fumbling around, adjusting himself. “Do these assholes really think I wanna freeze my balls off—” He cuts off when he notices me. Stops walking. Slowly takes his hand out from his sweats. “Oh, shit.” He fires his eyes at Tyler. “You could’ve warned me or something.”
Tyler lets out a laugh and glances sideways down at me with a small shrug, almost apologetically. “Eden . . . this is Snake.”
“Hey,” I say, but I feel slightly awkward, like I’ve just walked into a total man cave. In a way, I feel like I’m kind of intruding. “Nice to, um, meet you.” I can think of nicer ways to meet someone than with their hand on their crotch.
“Yeah, you too,” he says as he joins us by the door. The first thing I notice is that his eyes are really, really dull. Blue, but so faded that they seem almost gray. He extends his arm and offers his hand, but I shake my head no. He smirks. “Don’t you wanna shake my hand?”
“Not particularly,” I say.
Tyler clears his throat and folds his arms across his chest, glancing between Stephen and I as he talks. “Right, first things first: ground rules.”
“Ground rules?” Stephen—or Snake, whatever—echoes, almost like he’s never heard the phrase before.
“We’ve got a girl living with us now, so shut the bathroom door when you’re in there,” Tyler explains. “Eden gets the bathroom last in the mornings since she’ll take longer.” I’m about to object to this, but then I see his point: If I’m last, neither of them will be banging on the door telling me to hurry up.
“Aren’t you just the luckiest girl in the world? Getting to share an apartment with me. How much better can your life get?” Snake looks at me and cocks his head, an eyebrow raised. Tyler just rolls his eyes. “I mean, you’re living with the coolest guy you’ll ever meet.”
I pull a face. “Are you always so . . . ?”
“Charming? Yes.” He grins and reaches over to pat my head in a condescending manner—thankfully, not with the earlier, offending hand—and then turns for the couch. “TV’s mine.”
“Don’t worry,” Tyler murmurs quietly by my ear, “it’s just his humor.”
I’m not really paying attention to his words, though. I’m paying attention to the fact that I can feel his breath on my skin and I’m trying my best not to react to it. I bite my lip to stop myself from shivering and numbly reach over to touch my suitcase. “Um, where will I, uh, put my stuff?”
“My room,” he says. He grabs my suitcase out from beneath my grip and drags it across the carpet to the first of the doors on the right of the apartment. Kneeing the door open, he lets me in first again and then places my suitcase down by the king-sized bed. It isn’t as cluttered as his room back home used to be. The beige carpet continues into the room and his comforter is red, bedside drawers black. The walls are covered in NFL and MLB posters.
“Since when were you all that interested in baseball?” I ask.
“Since I moved to New York,” he says with a slight grin. He nods to the bed. “You can have my room. I’ll take the couch.”