Chapter 7: A Stolen Glance
The fluorescent light buzzed, a steady insect hum that vibrated in Debbie’s teeth. It painted everything in a stark, shadowless white, leaving nowhere to hide. Especially not him. He was so close she could see the individual beads of moisture still clinging to the small of his back, the way his shoulder blades moved like quiet wings as he reached for the detergent pod on the shelf above the machine.
Her gaze, against all her will, drifted down. Past the lean muscles of his lower back, the dimples above his buttocks, to the strong lines of his thighs. And between them, the soft, unguarded weight of him. It was just there. Resting. A part of his body as unremarkable to him as an elbow. The dark hair she’d glimpsed earlier formed a neat line down his abdomen, trailing into a thatch at his groin. The air in the small room thickened, carrying his scent—dry grass, clean sweat, and beneath it, the warmer, muskier scent of his skin.
A wave of heat crashed up her neck, flooding her cheeks. She could feel the blush like a brand. She stared, paralyzed, a cocktail of shame and fierce, hungry curiosity boiling in her gut. She was a forty-five-year-old woman, a mother, standing in a laundry room staring at a naked boy. The thought was a slap. But he wasn’t a boy. In that unforgiving light, he was all unselfconscious man.
He snapped the washer door shut with a clunk and turned the dial. The machine gurgled to life. As he turned, she jerked her eyes up, but not fast enough. Her wide, frantic look met his calm, slightly quizzical one.
“You okay, Deb? You’re all red.” He didn’t move to cover himself. He just leaned a hip against the rumbling machine, folding his arms over his chest. The action pulled the skin taut over his stomach, emphasizing the definition there.