Chapter 38: Phase 4: Walk Around Half Naked
•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•✾•⋅⊰∙∘☾✶☽∘∙⊱⋅•
Realizing that filled me with a kind of reckless confidence. Once I understood that he was secretly enduring all of this with the same enthusiasm as I was, just with better control, I became completely, shamelessly unbearable.
After my shower, I strolled back into the room shirtless, towel wrapped around my waist, casually drying my hair like I had nowhere pressing to be and zero worries about the impression I was making.
This wasn’t about impressing anyone.
This was psychological warfare.
Specifically, psychological warfare conducted under rules of engagement I had set unilaterally and hadn’t shared with the other party.
There was a significant difference.
I moved toward my side of the room, stretching casually. The towel hung lower around my waist than it strictly needed to, you could argue that it was on purpose...but you had no proof.
Therefore it was completely coincidental.
From the corner of my eye, I saw Damien’s fingers freeze against his keyboard for half a second before he resumed typing.
Just half a second
I hid my grin in the towel and rubbed my hair harder.
That’s right, he wasn’t the only with a banging body! Infact I was sure I would have looked a lot better if I wasn’t too poor to afford gym membership, or too lazy to exercise in general.
Then I flopped onto my bed, sprawled on my back, and stared at the ceiling with all the drama of someone delivering a soliloquy in an empty theater.
"Man," I said to no one in particular. "Being naturally handsome is honestly exhausting, don’t you think?"
"You’ve got quite the ego."
I turned my head slowly, as if I hadn’t been waiting for this moment. Damien was still facing his laptop. His expression gave away nothing. But he’d spoken, without any prompting, in response to something I’d said. Progress worth celebrating.
"Oh my God," I said, sitting up with the energy of someone receiving great news. "He speaks! Voluntarily! Of his own free will!"
He brushed me off.
But he’d done it. He’d cracked. A little, incrementally, in a way I’d need a microscope to see, but still genuine.
That evening, I took it up a notch by cooking the most pungent noodles imaginable. Spicy garlic beef, extra seasoning, extra garlic, full commitment, the kind of meal that announced itself three rooms away and stuck around for days.
The aroma wafted into the living room in no time.
I watched Damien lower his book, looking over the pages with the expression of someone processing unexpected information, unsure how to categorize it.
I smiled from the kitchen, radiating warmth like I was offering a gift. "Want some?"
"No."
"Your loss, again. These noodles are doing more for my emotional stability than anything else in this apartment."
He glanced at me briefly before looking back to his book.
I leaned against the counter, ate my noodles, and watched him with the steady gaze of a researcher who’d identified a pattern and was collecting more data.
Goodness, he was exasperating. Not in the usual way people are frustrating, like too much noise or occupying too much space. This was a more refined kind of frustration, built entirely from restraint and poise, the maddening consistency of someone who’d decided on a mood and stuck to it despite everything else.
Joey would explode if pushed, I would too and probably punch them right in the face. Regular folks with regular emotions reach a point and go over it loudly, which is totally normal and healthy.
But Damien?
Nothing, no visible threshold here. No ceiling on his composure.
Except I’d felt what was underneath it in that closet. That kiss had been anything but casual. It was packed with genuine frustration, the kind that builds up in a person who never lets things out in normal ways and finally found a release.
I stabbed a piece of garlic with my chopsticks.
Why was I still thinking about it?
It was one fucking kiss. One party game in a closet at a frat house surrounded by tipsy people who would forget it by Sunday.
Yet my body, annoyingly, continued to disregard this argument.
Now, everything Damien did felt different. Every glance carried more weight than before. Every silence had a distinct quality.
The sound of his voice, which I had previously noted as flat and irritating, now had been silently recategorized by some part of my mind that hadn’t consulted me.
Then Damien stood up.
Not abruptly or agitatedly. He just unfolded from his chair with that same calm movement that he brought to everything, which was somehow more unsettling than if he’d dashed off, because at least a quick movement would’ve indicated he was rattled, and I could have worked with that.
He made his way to the kitchen.
I tracked his movements from my bed, eyes narrowed.
He paused in front of the fridge.
My heartbeat quickened, which I noted with disapproval.
Damien stared at the sticky note. Just stared, with that same unreadable expression he wore for everything from textbooks to protein shakes to my announcements about his personality needing a documentary.
Then he slowly peeled it off the fridge, holding it between two fingers, examining it at arm’s length like it was evidence.
A long moment went by.
Then he turned and walked toward me, like he’d made up his mind and wasn’t having second thoughts.
Every instinct in me screamed at once. Not fear, exactly, but more like the acute awareness of standing on the edge of something with no idea what lay below. I held my ground on the bed, determined not to show how affected I really was, even though I definitely was.
Damien stopped directly in front of me, close enough that I had to tilt my head back to meet his gaze, which didn’t help my composure at all.
He held up the sticky note between two fingers.
Those blue eyes locked onto mine, carrying an expression I still couldn’t decipher, steady and composed, but with underlying tension that had been building
for days without a release.
"What the hell," he said, his voice dangerously calm, "is all this about?"
