Call Out by L.B. Clark Page A

eyes were
sparkling. He grinned at me, and I suddenly got the joke.
    “Not a word,” I hissed, blushing.
    London reached out to touch my hand,
hesitated, and then laid his hand on top of mine on the arm of the
chair. “We’ll talk about it later,” he said, “but you really
shouldn’t feel bad about it.”
    I didn’t know what to say. Especially since
‘feeling bad about’ finding Brian attractive was a new thing and
one I didn’t understand myself.
    London drew his hand away, pushed himself up,
and crawled off the bed, headed for the shower. Shaking my head, I
gathered up the pages of Ashe’s notes, tucking them back into the
file folder. Boys. I put the laptop to sleep, closed the lid, and
dropped the folder on top.
    I took a few seconds to untuck the sheet and
duvet from the foot of the bed and then turned the covers back on
my side. As I climbed onto the bed, I noticed that Brian had the
letter from Dylan out, his fingers tracing over the words as if he
could reach through the paper and ink to stroke her cheek. I
crawled across the bed, settling in beside Brian and resting my
head on his shoulder. He slid his arm around me and laid the letter
down.
    “I’ve had this for months now, and I still
don’t know what it says here,” he said, tapping a spot on the
page.
    I picked up the letter. No, the note; it was
too short to be a letter.
    “You don’t mind?”
    Brian shook his head, and I began to read. As
I read, I began to grin. The note was typical Dylan, straight to
the point, no pretense.
    “I’m not really sure,” I said, “but I think
the part you can’t read right here says that Dylan’s boss is a
douchebag.”
    Brian laughed as he took the letter from me.
“Sounds about right.”
    “Yeah. Especially since it’s true. I really
kind of hate that man.”
    “That makes two of us.”
    He reclaimed his arm so he could tuck the
note back into his wallet, and I moved back to my side of the bed.
I curled up under the duvet with my back to him. The mattress
shifted and bumped as he settled in, and then we both lay in the
quiet room, listening to the hum of the air conditioner and the
seashell roar of water running through pipes.
    Exhaustion made itself felt in every inch of
my body, but unlike the night before, sleep didn’t sneak up to
claim me. Instead, I lay there, a prisoner to my own tangled
thoughts and feelings.
    Sometime later, I heard the bathroom door
open. I listened as London moved around the room, turning over to
look at him only when I heard him sigh. He stood at the foot of the
bed, looking down at it.
    “You okay?” I asked, keeping my voice low in
case Brian had managed to sleep.
    “Yup. Just thinking.”
    I felt the bed shift as Brian turned over.
“You going to be able to handle the close quarters?” he asked.
    London took a moment to answer. “I think so,”
he said at last. “As long as no one has nightmares, I think we’ll
all be okay.”
    Of course. Touching made London’s empathy
stronger, and with him trapped in between us in the bed touching
would be damned near inevitable. I sighed and scooted to the
middle.
    London’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
“Um...claustrophobia?”
    “Just get in the damned bed before I change
my mind.” I thumped my pillow a few times and settled in again.
    The lights went off, one by one, and then the
mattress dipped as London climbed into bed. This whole thing had
been much less awkward the night before, when I’d been on the
periphery. I curled up more tightly, trying to take up less space,
but I ending up kneeing Brian in the butt instead.
    Brian rolled over on his back and raised his
arm over his head. “Come here,” he said. “Let’s give London some
room.”
    I didn’t even hesitate. With the lights out,
I didn’t think of Brian as some tan, toned, sex-god. He was just
Brian, the nice bloke I’d met on a boat. I curled up against his
side, and he draped his arm around me.
    “Brian,” London said from somewhere