Cruel Summer | ✓

chapter six

I decide that six thirty is a reasonable enough time to get up. There's a towel hanging on the back of the door so I strip off and wrap it around myself and sneak into the bathroom. It's bright, the window facing the sun, and clean. There's evidence of life in here. Shampoo and conditioner and body wash on the shelf in the shower; a razor and a bar of soap and an exfoliating sponge hanging from the temperature control. There's a separate full-sized bath, too, with a wooden tray holding a paperback with wrinkled pages and a half burned candle.

Compared to the shower in the apartment I shared with Gaby and Tay, this is luxury. Five stars. The pressure is incredible, the water pummeling my body like a massage. I work Lou's shampoo into my hair and the bathroom fills with the summery scent of coconut. After fifteen minutes, I am thoroughly refreshed and I smell like a tropical beach, and my skin is pink from the heat and the mango shower gel I scrubbed into every inch of my body.

It seems a waste to change back into the clothes I wore all day yesterday, sandy and sweaty, so I look through the dresser and find a casual playsuit in my size, the palm leaf pattern bold and summery. Even I, with my questionable boundaries, find it a bit strange to borrow Lou's underwear too but it feels even weirder to wear her clothes without underwear and there's an open pack of colorful cotton boxer briefs right there, so I slip on a green pair and button up the playsuit. It's cute. I spend my life in shorts and jeans, leggings and yoga pants. Perhaps I should switch it up a bit. I twirl in front of the full length mirror; I like how the fabric feels against my thighs. Time to enter my feminine era.

At seven o'clock, I try to be as quiet as possible when I head downstairs in case Lou is still sleeping and I jump when I find her sitting in the window seat with her feet up, a mug balanced on her knee and a book in her hand.

"Morning, Charlotte," she says, resting the book upside down on her other knee. "Did you sleep all right?"

"Uh, yeah, not bad, thanks," I say. "How long have you been up?"

"Only a half hour or so. You were in the shower." She folds the book over her thumb and sips her drink, and whatever's in it is still hot enough to fog up her glasses as she stands. "I like that on you — you should keep it."

I look down at my outfit like I didn't just spend five minutes looking at myself in the mirror. "Oh no, I can't. It's cute. I'm not gonna take your clothes."

"You should. It suits you. I can't wear it anyway — too short in the crotch. Those one piece things are not made for anyone taller than, like, five foot six."

"I'm five eight," I can't help adding. "But I do have an unusually short torso." I don't remind her that I know she's a whizz with a sewing machine, that she could alter it with ease. She knows that already. Which means she really does think it looks good on me.

That gets a smile out of her. "Then it's yours." Her eyes drop to my feet and back up again. "You do have long legs."

I do. I stick one out like I'm doing the hokey cokey and internally curse my idiocy. Lou doesn't seem to notice, or care.

"I'm afraid there isn't much I can offer in the way of breakfast. I keep meaning to get groceries and now I'm down to plain bran and skim milk." She drains the last of her drink and joins me in the kitchen. "I do have tea and coffee, though, and I was thinking of heading into town — I have a lesson back here at nine so we could go to the cafe if you'd like a bite to eat?"

"I don't want to impose." All I want to do is impose. I want to study her, to watch her hands as she teaches piano. I watch her hands now, as she washes up her mug. Her fingers are mesmerizing. Too mesmerizing. I am at high risk of giving away every thought in my head. Tay has told me before that I am easier to read than a picture book; I wear my feelings written into my forehead and if Lou is remotely literate, she can probably tell that I am currently imagining myself as that mug. In her hands. At her mercy.