Naked. Megan Hart

“Hey. Some books are bad because they’re bad. Some books are good because they’re bad.”

      He looked over his shoulder at me. “People, too.”

      Before I could answer that he’d stepped back to look up through the spiral stairs, his hands on his hips. “What’s up there?”

      “Just the loft.”

      “Can I see it?”

      “Sure.” I followed him up the winding stairs.

      At the top, Alex let out a low, impressed whistle. “Sweet.”

      Downstairs, the large open space and elevated ceilings dwarfed my few pieces of furniture. But I’d made this space up here comfy and cozy with a jumble of thrift store and salvage pieces—a curving sectional that had come from a hotel lobby, a low coffee table and dozens of cushions. The floor-to-ceiling windows that let in so much light below were bisected a few inches from the ceiling by the loft’s floor, and I’d hung sheer colored scarves and strings of beads in front of them. A cheap paper lantern from IKEA dangled in a corner.

      “I read up here.” It wasn’t really big enough to do much else.

      Alex ducked reflexively as he stepped to the loft’s center. He wasn’t in danger of bumping his head, but the ceiling was so low up here it felt possible. Grinning over his shoulder at me, he sank onto the sectional and bounced a little, then put his hands behind his head and his feet on the table.

      “Awesome.” He looked at the pile of books stacked on the floor next to the sofa. “More Jackie?”

      “Probably.” I tilted my head sideways to check out the titles. Lots of science fiction, some romance, a couple of mysteries. “I think there’s a little bit of everything there.”

      Alex lifted the book from the top of the pile. “Robert R. McCammon?”

      “Swan Song. Have you read it?”

      He shook his head. “No. Should I?”

      “It’s scary,” I told him. “You can borrow it, if you want.”

      Grinning, he tucked the book into his fist and stood. “Thanks.”

      Alex was tall but not big, not broad, more lean than anything. Yet he took up an awful lot of space. He stretched up one arm and placed his hand flat on the ceiling, and the lines of his body shifted. A hip went down, a knee bent. Once again I pictured him in a catalog. He had a face that could convince people they wanted stuff they couldn’t afford and didn’t need.

      “Well, I’d better get back,” he said after a spare few seconds.

      “Lots of unpacking?” I asked over my shoulder as he followed me down the stairs.

      “Umm…no.” He laughed. “I don’t have a lot of stuff.”

      “But you got a new ride. I saw it out back.”

      Alex laughed again. “Yeah. Fucking Bumblebee. What can I say? I got my first hard-on for the Transformers.”

      “Better that than Rainbow Brite, I guess. Or the Smurfs.”

      We laughed together and he looked around my apartment again. The layout of my place was a little different than his, with more open space and higher ceilings, plus the loft. It was brighter, too.

      “Nice place.”

      “Thanks. I can’t take much credit for it. I bought it already made into apartments. Hey, would you like some hot tea? I just got some chai.”

      “That would be great.”

      I left him to make himself at home while I heated the water and put away my groceries. I had no doubt he would, and though I was more one to guard my privacy, that was surprisingly okay with me. By the time I came out of the kitchen with two mugs of steaming chai, he’d made the tour around my apartment.

      “You took all these?” Alex reached for the mug without looking at me, his gaze fixed on the photos I’d hung in stark glass frames without mats.

      “Yes.”

      We studied them together. I warmed my hands on my mug. He sipped. He said nothing for so many minutes I began to feel nervous, as though I wanted to speak. Had to speak. I bit my tongue, determined not to ask him what he thought.

      “This one.” He pointed to a shot of me and Patrick at the far end. “You didn’t take this one.”

      “Oh. No.” I’d hung it there because it was a favorite, a candid shot of us in happy times. Our hands were linked, my head on his shoulder. We looked like a normal couple.

      Alex sipped more chai.

      “I should take it down, I guess.” I made no move to do so.

      He looked at me then. “Why?”

      “Well…because…it’s a lie.” It wasn’t what I’d expected to say, but once the words came out they felt right. “That picture isn’t real. It was never real.”

      Alex handed me his mug and I took it automatically. When he lifted the frame off its hook I made an unexpected noise of protest. He gave me a look and took the single step up onto the level where my dining table was. He put the photo facedown on it.

      “Now, it’s down.” He reached for his mug and I handed it to him. “Feel any better?”

      “No.” But I laughed a little. “Thanks.”

      “Hey, do you have any plans for tonight? I know it’s Friday. You probably have something going on.”

      I had to work the early shift at Foto Folks the next morning. “Actually, I don’t.”

      “I rented some movies. And, like a d-bag, didn’t remember I don’t have a TV yet.”

      “Ah. So you’re going to use me for mine, is that it?”

      “I’d be ashamed to say yes, but it’s the truth.”

      I sipped from my mug as I pretended to think about it. “What did you rent?”

      “The new Transformers movie. And Harold and Maude.”

      “Yeah, wow, because those two are so similar,” I told him with a laugh. “But I haven’t seen the Transformers and it’s been years since I watched Harold and Maude. Sure. I’ll let you use my TV.”

      “I’ll buy the pizza, how’s that?”

      “Sounds like a plan.”

      We made arrangements to meet later, and Alex showed up at six o’clock with a large pizza from the place down the street in one hand, a bunch of DVDs in the other. I hadn’t done more than change my clothes into Friday-night-stay-at-home sweatpants and a T-shirt, but he’d showered and shaved, and wafted through my door on a delicious cloud of garlic and cologne. I wondered if I should’ve made more of an effort.

      “Dinner by candlelight?” he asked as he set the pizza on my dining table.

      “Oh…no. They’re not for ambience.” Lighting candles was something I did on Friday nights when I wasn’t out and about, a habit left over from my childhood, when my mom had made a point of lighting candles even if she’d done very little else to usher in the Sabbath. Big change from now, when her life revolved around it.

      He gave me a quizzical look. “Are you Jewish?”

      I shouldn’t have been surprised he guessed—a world traveler would probably have encountered some Jews somewhere along the way. “Not really. Sort of.”

      “Oookay.”

      I laughed, self-conscious. “It’s complicated.”

      “Fair enough. It’s not any of my business.” He glanced at the candles. “They’re pretty, though.”

      “Thanks.”