Ryder

The apartment's small enough that I know you're home before I've even got the door shut behind me. Your shoes are kicked off near the wall, something's been moved on the kitchen counter since I left, and I can hear the shower running down the hall beneath the ordinary hum of the place. I've spent most of the walk back telling myself I wanted to be left the fuck alone, which made sense outside, when I was still angry enough to enjoy the idea of slamming my bedroom door and ignoring everybody for the rest of the night. Now I'm standing in the entryway listening to water run behind the bathroom door, and apparently knowing you're on the other side of the apartment has already made that plan less appealing.

My phone vibrates while I'm taking my shoes off. I don't need to look at it to know there's a decent chance it's another message explaining a breakup I understood perfectly well the first time, even if understanding it hasn't made me any less pissed off. There are only so many different ways somebody can say they don't want to be with you anymore before the explanation starts feeling insulting, and I've read enough of them tonight that another one isn't going to suddenly turn me into a better-adjusted person. I shove the phone deeper into my pocket instead and head for the kitchen, mostly because going straight to my room would leave me alone with it and partly because I've become aware that the shower is still running.

That's where I notice the towel hanging over the back of one of the kitchen chairs. I recognize it immediately, which shouldn't mean anything considering we live together and there are only so many towels in the apartment, but lately I seem to know an irritating amount of shit that shouldn't matter to me. Which mug you reach for first, what food disappears fastest, the particular cabinet you leave open more often than the others. None of it is useful information, and yet there I am picking up your towel before I've consciously decided what I'm going to do with it.

I could leave it outside the bathroom. That would accomplish everything a reasonable person needs to accomplish in this situation, and on another night I probably would. Tonight I carry it down the hall instead, rubbing the edge of the fabric between my fingers while I listen to the water getting louder with every step. The anger I've been dragging around since earlier hasn't disappeared, but it has shifted somewhere farther back in my head now that I've found something else to occupy it, and I recognize the feeling because you've always been annoyingly good at doing that to me. Get you irritated enough to argue with me and suddenly whatever else was bothering me has competition.

I knock against the bathroom door with the back of my knuckles and wait just long enough to make the gesture technically count before pushing it open.

"Forgot your towel."

Warm air rolls into the hallway as I lean inside, and for a moment I just stand there with the towel hanging from one hand, taking in the fog beginning to gather along the mirror and the steady rush of water behind the shower curtain. There's nothing stopping me from putting the towel on the counter. I don't need to come any farther into the room, and I definitely don't need to remain here once I've told you why I opened the door. Instead I settle my shoulder against the frame, desperately trying to explain the low heat I feel as aftermaths from your shower. I don’t try and hide the fact that I am looking at you around the curtain My eyes lazily tracking the water sluicing down your body.

"Yeah, you're welcome. Don't sound too fucking grateful."

There's something familiar about bothering you that I hadn't realized I wanted until I was already doing it. I know roughly which comments will get an answer, which ones will make you annoyed enough to stop whatever you're doing and deal with me, and lately I've caught myself reaching for those reactions without much thought about why. Tonight the impulse is worse. I don't want to talk about the breakup, don't particularly want you asking whether I'm okay, and would probably get pissed off if you tried to make me feel better. Somehow standing in the bathroom being an asshole while you shower doesn't feel like any of those things, even though I'm still here for reasons that stopped having anything to do with a forgotten towel almost immediately.

My phone buzzes against my thigh again and I leave it there. Normally curiosity would get me eventually, but right now I'm more interested in the fact that you're on the other side of that curtain and I can keep your attention here if I make myself sufficiently irritating. It's not an especially flattering realization, so I don't spend much time examining it. I straighten away from the doorframe and move far enough into the bathroom to set the towel within reach of the shower, but instead of dropping it there, I keep hold of one end.

"You're lucky I found this, by the way. Could've left you in here to figure it out yourself."

I give the towel a small tug back toward me before it can become entirely available, unable to keep the amusement out of my voice now that I've found something stupid to make into a problem. It's immature, and under any other circumstances there wouldn't be much point in it. Tonight, though, every extra second I can stretch out of this keeps my phone irrelevant and my thoughts somewhere other than the conversation waiting on it. More importantly, it keeps you dealing with me, and there's a quiet satisfaction in that which has been getting harder to dismiss lately.

"I don't know. Think you want it badly enough?"

I stay where I am with the towel loose in my hand, still expecting this to feel like every other stupid little argument I've started because getting a rise out of you entertained me. Instead, standing this close in the warmth of the bathroom does something strange to the shape of it. The air is damp against my skin, the shower is loud enough to make the rest of the apartment feel farther away than it is, and there's an intimacy to being here with you that I hadn't considered when I picked up the towel and followed the sound of the water down the hall. I become abruptly aware of how little space there is between where I'm standing and where you are, and my attention catches there hard enough that the joke I was about to make never quite reaches my mouth.

It shouldn't affect me this much. I've been close to you plenty of times, crowded you on the couch, leaned over your shoulder, found a hundred unnecessary reasons to get into your space because irritating you is easy and I like what happens when all that attention turns back on me. This isn't really any closer, but it feels different in a way my body seems to understand before the rest of me does. My grip shifts against the towel, suddenly conscious of the fact that I'm holding something you're waiting for, that I walked into a private moment without thinking twice about it, and that leaving now sounds considerably less appealing than it did when this was still just another excuse to bother you.

For a few seconds, the breakup doesn't even occur to me. That realization should probably bother me more than it does. Mostly I'm standing there trying to recover the easy grin I walked in with while something warmer and considerably more complicated settles beneath it, wondering when exactly fucking with you started feeling like this. I snort, before taking off my shirt.

“Actually, make room. I’m getting in too.”

I say it like it doesn’t mean anything, despite the fact that I am hyper aware of what I am even suggesting as my pants and underwear follow in a heap on the floor.

“Unless that’s a problem for you.” I peel back the curtain. “Come on, it’s not like it’s the first time.”