Chapter 2: First Shared Shower
The bathroom air was cold and carried the faint, damp scent of mildewing grout. The single bulb flickered, casting jumpy shadows across the water-stained ceiling. Mindy tightened the towel around her chest, the terrycloth rough against her skin. She watched Marcus, a taller silhouette in the doorway, clutching his own towel at his waist. His knuckles were white.
“Okay,” she said, her voice too loud in the tiny space. It bounced off the chipped porcelain. “Procedure. You face that wall. I’ll get the water right. We get in. We do the necessary. We get out. Four minutes. I’ve set a timer on my phone.” She placed the phone on the closed toilet lid, the screen glowing with a large digital countdown.
“Procedure,” Marcus repeated, the word flat. He didn’t move.
“Marcus. Wall. Now.”
He moved like a automaton, turning to face the expanse of tile beside the shower. He stared at a particular water stain shaped vaguely like a cartoon dog. He focused on it with intense, academic interest.
Mindy let her towel drop and quickly slid the yellowed plastic curtain aside. The metallic shriek of the rings made them both flinch. She stepped into the tub, the cold enamel shocking her feet. “Don’t look,” she said, though he was already cemented in place.
The pipes groaned and hammered before a sputter of lukewarm water shot from the showerhead. She adjusted the knobs, her hands steady. Steam began to rise, curling into the cool air. “Alright. Temperature’s okay. Come on in. Step right in, keep facing away.”
This was the moment. The real moment. The logic of the kitchen, the practicality of the plan, dissolved in the humid air. Marcus’s shoulders tensed. He took a deep, audible breath, dropped his towel on the hamper, and stepped backwards into the tub, one long leg at a time, his body turned rigidly away from her.
The tub was desperately small. His back, lean and tapered with the new muscle from the warehouse, was suddenly right there, just inches from her. She saw the light dusting of hair on his shoulders, the knobs of his spine. The water hit him and he jerked, then settled.
“See? Not so bad,” Mindy said, but her own voice sounded thin. She reached for her shampoo, her arm brushing against his shoulder blade. He froze.
“Sorry,” they both said at once.
The water sluiced over them. Mindy worked her shampoo into a lather, the generic coconut scent filling the stall. She was hyper-aware of every movement, every shift of her weight. Her firm shoulder bumped his arm as she rinsed.
“Your turn,” she said, handing the bottle blindly over her shoulder.
His fingers fumbled against hers. He took it. She listened to the sounds: the squeeze of the bottle, the scratch of his nails on his scalp. She stared at the opposite wall, at a chip in the tile. The steam was making the air thick, hot. A trickle of water ran down the precise line of her spine. It felt amplified.
“This is the most surreal thing of my life,” Marcus muttered, his voice muffled by the water and the shower spray. “I’m contemplating the existential dread of my community college tuition while naked with my mom.”
A startled laugh burst out of her. It broke the tension like a dropped plate. “Okay, when you put it like that. Just wash your hair, philosopher.”
He rinsed. The water darkened his curls, plastering them to his neck. A silence fell, but it was different now—not purely tense, but shared. A shared, absurd predicament. She handed the bar of soap back without looking. “Back to back. For real this time.”
They shifted. His back met hers. The contact was solid, warm, startlingly intimate. The physical reality of it—the heat of his skin against hers, the ripple of muscle, the water streaming between them—short-circuited her clinical detachment. This wasn’t a patient. This was her child. But he wasn’t a child. The thought was fleeting, strange, and she pushed it away.
He scrubbed quickly, efficiently. She did the same. The slipperiness of the soap, the confined space, meant their backs slid against each other with small, unavoidable motions. It was impersonal. It was profoundly personal.
“Timer’s probably gonna go off soon,” he said.
“Yeah.”
They stood for a moment, just letting the water run over them. The initial horror had mellowed into a gritty, mutual endurance. It was just a body. It was just his body. It was just her body. The water bill was real. This was the solution.
“I’m done,” he said.
“Me too.”
She reached out and twisted the knobs. The water cut off, leaving a ringing silence punctuated by drips. The sudden absence of sound and spray left them standing there, back to back, in the dripping quiet.
“You get out first,” she said. “I’ll hand you your towel.”
He nodded, a movement she felt rather than saw. He stepped out, keeping his back to her. She grabbed his towel from the hamper and held it out blindly past the curtain. He took it. She heard the rustle of fabric.
Only then did she step out, reaching for her own towel, wrapping it tightly around herself. The bathroom was a sauna, the mirror fogged over completely. Marcus stood by the door, dressed in his boxers and a t-shirt, his hair dripping onto his shoulders. He wouldn’t quite meet her eyes.
“See?” she said, wiping water from her face. “Four minutes. We survived.”
He finally looked at her. His expression was complex—embarrassment, yes, but also a kind of weary amusement. “We did. It was… efficient.”
“Told you.” She picked up her phone. The timer showed they’d taken four minutes and twelve seconds. Close enough.
He opened the bathroom door, letting in a stream of cooler hall air that made the steam swirl. “So,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “Same time tomorrow?”
The question hung there. The acknowledgment that this wasn't a one-time ripping off of a Band-Aid. It was a new, strange fact of their lives.
“Yeah,” Mindy said, squeezing water from her ponytail. “Same time tomorrow.”
He gave a slow nod and disappeared down the hall. She stood alone in the steamy, flickering light, listening to the last drops of water fall from the showerhead into the tub. Plink. Plink. Plink. It was the same sound from the kitchen faucet. But everything else felt different.