“Have you ever looked in the mirror when you’re frowning this deeply?”
Of course, he had to lift his brows at this question, totally losing the eyebrow crack he had going on. “I can’t say I have. Why?”
“You almost had an ass crack on your forehead, and I was going to get you to see if you could frown a bit harder to complete it.”
“Considering no one’s ever made me frown as hard as you do, I doubt I’d be able to.”
Did one take that as a compliment or an insult?
“Really? No one?”
Wrapping his arms around me and pulling me into him as he stuck his nose in the top of my hair, he mumbled, “Nope. And before your brain starts fucking with that tidbit, I’ll clarify why I frown. You confuse me, you make me think about things I’ve never thought about before, you make me want things I’ve never wanted, you frustrate me because I don’t know enough about you, and I don’t know what to do about any of that, so I frown.”
I kind of wish he hadn’t clarified it because none of those reasons sounded positive.
“That all sounds… negative. If you didn’t want my brain to eff with me, maybe you should’ve left it alone?”
The puff of hair that moved the strands where his mouth was said he’d either laughed or sighed.
It was the tone of his voice that confirmed it was the former. “Ari, it might sound that way, but it isn’t. It’s so far from it. All of those reasons were what made me accept to get help finally and to stick it out. They also make me want to fix what’s broken, so I can be someone who deserves you—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” I interrupted, trying to pull away from him and failing when he tightened the muscles in his arms. “You don’t go through life fixing yourself because you think someone deserves that version of who you are. You do it for yourself.”
“Wasn’t that what you did with your gaming, though?” he asked, his smile only just this side of not being smug—the big, fat butt plug.
Deciding now would be an excellent time for him to have his shower—with a bottle of shampoo shoved in his mouth—I smiled brightly up at him. Not expecting it, his expression changed from almost smug to dazed and then suspicious.
“When I’m stressed, I find a shower or bath helps me. It washes away all the stuff that’s making me feel bajiggidy and replaces it with a fresh feeling. I figured if you experienced the showerheads in my shower, they’d do that for you and get rid of some of the tension in your muscles,” I pointed at the range of showerheads that were currently waiting for someone to enjoy their hard work. “Because I run a lot, I went for one that was recommended for professional athletes—”
“You bought a shower for professional athletes?” he asked, his lips twitching.
“Well, it was a smidge presumptuous, but I run almost every day.” There’d also been an Olympian that I thought was one of the hottest men on earth in the commercial, but okay. Sex sells, that’s all I’m saying.
“Bajiggidy?” he asked next, confusing me.
“Huh?”
“You used the word bajiggidy. What does it mean?”
“Well, stressed or glucky.”
Moving his hands up to where the first fastened button on his shirt was, he undid it and then moved onto the next one, chuckling at this new word. “Glucky? Now you’re just making words up.”
Unable to lift my eyes from where he was still undoing buttons—and I’m not going to lie, I was also wondering why he hadn’t started with the buttons on his cuffs—I mumbled, “Is that a crime? People make up words and expressions all the time. The meaning of words changes all the time, too.”
I was relieved when he moved onto his cuffs. Unfortunately, I couldn’t appreciate the move with my eyes because they refused to separate themselves from the flesh and muscles now showing through his undone shirt.
“Name three.”
Three what? Dwarfs? Reindeer? Rivers? Lakes? Continents? Types of flour?
“Three words whose meanings have changed.”
I had zero doubt in my mind that I’d blame his abdomen for what came out of my mouth next. “Fat, come and moist.”
He’d just begun to shrug his shirt off when I said them but froze when the words registered before throwing his head back and laughing so loudly I snapped out of my contemplative state. Well, to be precise—the contemplative state of his chest, because my eyes moved up to look at his face, wanting to see him look carefree, and got stuck on how beautiful he looked when he was.
When he lowered his head back down, his eyes were dancing, and—dare I say it—moist. “The first one I’ll give you, but the second two…” he started laughing again, the noise bouncing off the tiled walls. “Okay, baby, you win.”