The Girl Who Lives In My Garage • Jenlisa

eight

"You want to take a shower?" I ask as I lead Lisa toward the bathroom. As soon as my parents left for work and Jisoo left for her babysitting job, I'd headed out to the garage and invited Lisa inside. The blankets I took out to her last night probably did little more than take the edge off the cold.

"You've got hot water, right?" she asks.

"Lots of it." In the bathroom, I remove a pink towel and washcloth from the cupboard.

"Cute," she says, looking at the too-pink decor.

"Beggars can't be choosers." I pull back the shower curtain. The salmon-colored shower curtain. With ruffles.

She shakes her head. "You need a brother."

"No kidding. Okay, the water goes from zero to scalding in three seconds flat, so don't burn yourself. There's a soap and shampoo. Need anything else?

"Nope." She sets her ever-present backpack on the ground, removes her jacket and reaches past me. When her arm brushes against mine, I get a rush equivalent to riding a roller coaster. She turns on the water. In the shower. Where she will soon be very naked. In my house. In the room right next to mine.

I clear my throat and force myself to take a step back. "Yell if you need anything."Lisa closes the door, and I head to my bedroom, trying very hard not to think about what's happening on the other side of that door. Or kind of trying at least. I make a half-assed attempt at picking up dirty laundry, throwing away old magazines, and stacking school stuff in a corner. When I'm finished, the room is still far from clean, but it's as presentable as it's going to get.

The faucet squeaks as Lisa turns off the water. I flop onto my unmade bed and don't think about Lisa wrapping one of the towels that I've used a hundred times around her body. The thought doesn't even cross my mind. Not once. On TV, the Travel Channel is showcasing some tropical island that looks like paradise compared to the snow-covered ground outside my window.

As the camera pans across a waterfall too perfect to be real, Lisa steps out of the bathroom. She sets her backpack on the ground and enters my room. The big black T-shirt she's wearing is damp in a few places. She looks hundred more attractive with it than her sweatshirt and jacket. It makes it easy to see how she was able to win girls or guys? Nevermind. The jean's she's wearing add to my attraction. They're a little bit loose denim and she inserted the front of her shirt inside her pants that made it more attractive, everything is attractive now. Not that I'm paying attention or anything. Not at all. "How was the shower?"

"Warm." She looks around my bedroom but doesn't make any comments, sarcastic or otherwise. When she sees the bulletin board near my bed, she takes a few steps closer to examine the pictures.

It feels like she's studying me instead of the wall. Like she'll see something in those pictures the same way she saw something in the grade school pictures downstairs. I fidget with a loose thread on my comforter. "How are your hands?"

She pulls her gaze from the bulletin board. "Much better than last night, thanks to you." When she makes and releases fists, the motions aren't smooth, but it seems like she's in less pain than she was in last night. "How's my face look?"

There's some bruising around her eyes, and she's a little swollen, but not bad. It's sexier than I want it to be. "Badass." The word "dangerous" also crosses my mind, along with a thought of the other person in the fight. A potentially innocent person who might be in even worse shape than Lisa this morning.

She laughs. "See? You've got a thing for tough people."

I push the negative thoughts out of my mind. "Yeah, whatever," I say, even though she's right."But I gotta tell you," she says as she holds her arm up to her nose and sniffs," I'm not feeling tough or even like a strong right now. Are you aware that the only soap you have in the shower is some fruity crap?"