Chapter 1: A Door Left Ajar
The door was never locked. Jessica knew that, had relied on it a hundred times before, balancing cardboard carriers of coffee or bags of bagels against the frame while she hip-checked her way into Cane’s apartment. Today it was Thai takeout, the paper bag already leaking a smell of lemongrass and peanut sauce into the crook of her elbow.
“Hey, dumbass, I got the drunken noodles you like—” she called out, kicking the door shut behind her.
The living room was washed in thick, golden afternoon light, the sheer curtains glowing as they bellied in and out with a soft breeze. It smelled like citrus cleaner and the old paper of the books crammed into the floor-to-ceiling shelf.
And there, beside that shelf, standing in a slat of direct sun at the window, was Cane.
He was naked.
Water droplets caught the sun like scattered diamonds across the hard planes of his shoulders and down the deep groove of his spine. He was half-turned, one arm raised as he stretched, the movement pulling every muscle in his back into sharp, defined relief. The light traced the curve of his ass, the powerful line of his thigh. He was completely, utterly unselfconscious, a statue of warm, living skin and shifting tendon.
Jessica stopped dead. The bag slipped in her grip.
He heard the crinkle. He turned.
For one endless, crystalline second, she saw everything. The dark trail of hair below his navel. The heavy, relaxed fullness between his legs. The water clinging to his chest.
His face shifted from surprise to confusion to a slow-dawning, mortified understanding.
Jessica’s brain short-circuited. All higher cognitive function was gone. All that was left was a primal, shrieking alarm and the visceral, imprinted image now branded onto the back of her eyelids.
“Oh my god.” The words left her in a choked whisper.
She spun around so fast she stumbled, the bag of Thai food hitting the floor with a wet, dull thump. She stared at the closed door, her own rapid, shallow breaths loud in her ears. Her cheeks were on nuclear fire.
“Jess—” His voice was behind her, closer now.
“Don’t talk!” she squeaked, squeezing her eyes shut. “Just… put on pants. Or a blanket. A very large towel. A suit of armor.”
She heard his retreating footsteps, the familiar creak of the floorboard leading to his bedroom. The second she heard the door click shut, she allowed herself to deflate, slumping against the wall. She pressed her icy hands to her flaming face.
Idiot. Moron. Friend-of-the-year. You just saw Cane. All of him. Every single part.
The heat in her face was a live wire, her thoughts a scrambled loop of muscle and water and that shocking, heavy glimpse of him. From behind his closed bedroom door, a heavier door clicked open—the bathroom—and then, clear as anything through the thin wall, she could hear the distinct, shameless cascade of him peeing.
The sound was shocking in its intimacy, a steady, powerful stream hitting the water, and a bolt of pure, unwelcome heat shot straight to her core, making her thighs clench.
She bit her lip hard, horrified at her own body’s betrayal, just as his bedroom door opened again.
He emerged in a pair of grey sweatpants and nothing else, a towel slung over one shoulder. His hair was damp, darker, pushed back from his forehead. He looked entirely comfortable, an easy smile playing on his lips, as if the last two minutes hadn’t permanently seared her retinas.
“Floor noodles,” he said, his voice a rumble of amusement.
“What?” Her own voice was a strangled thing.
He nodded toward the disaster at her feet. The bag had split, spreading a glossy, aromatic pool of noodles and broccoli across his hardwood floor. “You assassinated my lunch.”
“I—you—” She gestured wildly, her eyes everywhere but on him. On the bookshelf. The ceiling. A particularly interesting dust mote floating in a sunbeam. “You were… at the window.”
“Yeah. Back was tight after my workout. Sun feels good.” He walked past her, his bare arm brushing her shoulder, and she flinched like she’d been touched with a live wire. He didn’t seem to notice, grabbing a roll of paper towels from the kitchen counter. “Relax, Jess. It’s just skin. You’ve seen me in shorts.”
It is not just skin. It is a meticulously sculpted anatomy lesson I was not prepared for. The words screamed in her head. She watched the muscles in his back flex as he tore off sheets of towel, the same back she had just seen glistening and bare, and a fresh wave of heat climbed her neck.
“Shorts cover… things,” she managed, finally bending down to help, her movements stiff. She concentrated fiercely on scooping slippery noodles.
“Things,” he repeated, a low chuckle in his voice. He knelt beside her, their shoulders close. The clean, soapy smell of him—warm skin and something woodsy—cut through the scent of spilled sauce. It was devastating. “Come on. We’ve known each other since you had braces and a Tragically Hip obsession. It’s no big deal.”
But it was. It was a seismic, continental shift. Her best friend, the guy who’d seen her through two breakups and her ill-advised goth phase, had just been transformed into a physical entity of daunting, distracting proportions. Every casual movement he made now seemed loaded. The way his sweatpants sat low on his hips. The definition of his abdomen when he leaned forward.
“I should have knocked,” she muttered, her face aimed at the floor.
“You never knock.” He nudged her with his elbow. “And I’m glad you don’t. Sorry if I scarred you. I thought I had more time before you barged in.”
“I didn’t barge.” She risked a glance at him. He was smiling, his brown eyes warm and crinkled at the corners, completely at ease. He was so normal. She was the one unspooling.
She grabbed more paper towel, her fingers clumsy. The silence stretched, filled only with the soft, sticky sound of cleaning. Her mind was a blank, static-filled screen. All the easy rhythms of their friendship—the teasing, the comfortable silences—were gone, replaced by a shrieking internal monologue about the width of his shoulders.
He balled up the last of the soaked towels. “Pizza?”
“Huh?”
“Lunch. It’s now on the floor. I’m ordering pizza. You’re staying. You look like you need cheese.”
She opened her mouth to protest, to make an excuse about a looming deadline, but the words died. The thought of leaving, of going back to her quiet apartment to just think about this, was somehow worse. Here, at least, she could maybe pretend to be normal. If she could remember how.
She stood up, wiping her hands on her jeans. “Yeah. Okay. Pepperoni.”
“My hero.” He grinned, pulling his phone from his pocket. He scrolled, thumb tapping, completely at home in his skin, in this moment.
Jessica stood in the middle of his living room, the sun still pouring in, and felt utterly displaced. She was hyper-aware of every breath, every blink. Should she sit? Where? The couch suddenly seemed like a stage. If she moved, would she move weirdly? What did her arms normally do?
Cane finished ordering and tossed his phone onto the couch. “Twenty minutes.” He stretched his arms over his head again, a long, languid movement that pulled the sweatpants taut across his hips and made the cords in his neck stand out.
Jessica’s gaze snapped to the window, to the bookshelf, to her own hands. A nervous laugh bubbled up in her throat and she clamped it down, turning it into a shaky cough.
She didn’t know how to act.