KDBookOnline
Share Us
“Do not go through my shit again.” Derek pointed overhead. “Can you just please focus on the big hole in the ceiling? Is that possible?”
“Sure. Great idea.” Dylan crossed his arms over his chest. He hadn’t been stupid enough to expect effusive gratitude, but he had spent the last however many hours making sure that Derek’s “shit” wasn’t ruined. He rarely felt time pass while hyperfocused on a task with an audiobook in his ear, and so he was surprised at how many hours had flown by. Hyperfocus was how he had gotten most of the reno work on his uncle’s apartment done already. It was why he could spend twelve hours straight coding and get a week’s worth of work done. It was a perk of his brain. Felicity had told him it was important to recognize the perks.
But Derek certainly wasn’t recognizing any perks of having Dylan around, and all Dylan was getting for those hours was being treated like the scum of the earth. Again. Dylan twitched his head toward a bag in the corner. “That’s trash. The linens are in the dryer. I think they’re salvageable. The comforter…” He pointed to another bag. “Is there. It seemed too big for your washer and dryer. I was going to take it to a laundromat.”
Derek’s expression softened. “So… it was just the stuff under the bed that was ruined?”
“The mattress is probably dead too.”
“It sucked anyway. I’ll get a new one.” Mirroring Dylan’s posture, Derek crossed his arms over his chest, but when Derek did this, it emphasized how broad he was. “Thanks. For cleaning up. I’m going to shower.”
Dylan had never heard the word thanks said in a way that sounded more like GTF away from me.
“I’ll… uh… just go upstairs then.”
“Try not to wake Gus.”
“Kay…”
“Oh, and thanks for putting the water out for him. He appreciated it.”
That thanks was genuine.
As soon as Dylan arrived back at his apartment, exhaustion hit him with the weight of… well, a ceiling collapsing, probably. After a quick cleanup trip to the bathroom, he toppled into bed.
The pillow smelled unfamiliar but not unpleasant. It brought him back to that moment when he’d regained consciousness, held tight to a quite bare, well-muscled chest. A chest that smelled just like his pillow.
Chapter 5
Derek’s eighth cup of coffee was now lukewarm. He wasn’t sure which would be worse—falling asleep and getting fired for it or shitting his scrub pants from guzzling tepid caffeine juice. Stomach ominously thundering, he sat at the charge nurse computer at the center of the nurses’ station and scribbled down the names of the evening shift nurses. When he looked up, the two women listening to his story were gaping at him.
Olive’s swivel chair creaked as she leaned an elbow on the desk next to his. “Are you talking about the guy who moved in above you a few months ago?” Her hair was bushier than usual, rebelling against her scrunchie-twisted bun.
“Yeah.” He nudged her wild strands away from his writing space.
This was the first five minutes any of them had sat down in twelve trainwreck-shift hours.
“He’s the one who looks like Clark Kent but really like if… ooh, if Jonathan Groff had a baby with Matt Bomer, and he became a slightly edgy librarian? That guy? Tattoos?”
“Oooh.” Joni rolled her chair over from where she’d been finishing up orders at the provider workstation. “You had me at slightly edgy librarian.” Derek’s brain was made of overcooked oatmeal, so he couldn’t interpret the wordless female glance she exchanged with Olive.
After Joni had moved to town last fall, she and Olive struck up an immediate friendship. If Olive liked someone, Derek almost always liked them too, and sure enough, now Joni generally came over to Olive’s anytime they all hung out. It was good for Derek to have another single person on hand to balance out the love-drunk mushiness Olive and Stella displayed during their first months of official coupledom after their bizarre “fake dating” beginning.
Derek reflexively swigged his (now cold) coffee. His lower intestine barked louder than Gus ever had. “Uh—white dude, midthirties. Brown floppy hair. Glasses. Freckles. Yeah, I guess he has some tattoos now that you mention it.” He shifted his weight and avoided eye contact.
Olive turned to Joni, mouth pushing into a knowing pout. “Derek thinks he’s hot.”
“I fucking do not.”
“You fucking do too.” Her sparkling eyes narrowed. “Possible emphasis on the fucking. I mean, hopefully. He’s not exactly your usual type but that’s not a bad thing. How many boring but smoking-hot generic jock dudes can there be on Tinder anyway?”
“Mean, Olive.” He took a bite of the protein bar he’d forgotten about an hour ago. “And also, the limit does not exist.”
“Pathetic. That Dylan guy though… I like him.”
“Hmph.”
Never mind about the always liking the people Olive liked thing.