Less Than Nothing by R.E. Blake Page A

I’d be waking up next to the hot guy who’d stopped traffic on Haight, I’d have asked you what you were smoking.
    Now his arm’s around me.
    I lie like that for a while, not moving, wondering at how fast life can change, and then my butt cheek vibrates. Not from Derek. My phone. I debate ignoring it, but he’s stirring, and then the arm disappears, and he shifts away from me.
    I roll over onto my back and glance at him. He looks like ten million bucks, even with his hair flattened on one side of his head. He blinks, checks his watch, and looks at me. His eyes are sleepy, but there’s something else in them. Worry. I can see him trying to decide whether to say something, maybe apologize for the arm, but in the end he doesn’t say anything, so I do.
    “Morning.”
    His emerald green eyes warm, and the worry fades from them, replaced by…something else I really like.
    “Morning.”
    He moves his hand to my face and pushes my bangs aside so he can see my eyes, and then smiles. The worry’s back, and he clears his throat.
    “About last night. Nothing happened.”
    I realize I haven’t been breathing since he touched my hair, and if that keeps up, I’ll pass out. I sit up and draw a long, slow breath and then look at the sunlight again so I don’t seem like I’m fixated on him.
    “I figured that out when I woke up with my pants on.”
    He laughs. “I guess that sounded pretty dumb.”
    I don’t say anything. He tries again. “It’s just you were so concerned about it…”
    I close my eyes and think about possible responses. “Don’t sweat it.” What I really want is for him to put his arm back around me so we can stay like that all day. But I’m not going to say that. In fact, I don’t even know that I want that at all.
    Lie.
    I totally do. But I know I shouldn’t.
    My conflicted thinking’s becoming a crowd in my head. I remember a cartoon where there’s an angel and a devil on the character’s shoulder as he tries to figure out what to do, and I smile at the memory.
    Derek looks at me, trying to read me. I almost tell him not to waste his time trying to figure me out when I’m having a total Sybil moment, and then I feel my phone buzz again. I slip it out of my pocket and look at the screen – it’s Melody, of course.
    Can you still walk? Can he?
    One thing I can rely on is that Melody will go straight to the gutter and gladly roll around in it. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t be Mel. It’s one of the things I love about her – she’s so cheerfully slutty sometimes.
    I text back: How can you be sure I was even with him last night?
    Her response is like lightning: The way you two were looking at each other? Gimme a break. If you weren’t, I’m going to kick your skinny ass.
    It’s pointless to try to explain, but of course I try, my color rising as I do. It’s not like that. We had dinner. It was his birthday. Nothing happened.
    She fires back: I think we need to have that talk about where babies come from.
    I giggle, and Derek looks at me with a puzzled frown. I text her, finishing the exchange. I’m serious. It was just dinner.
    Melody’s not happy. You let that hunk of yum get away without road rash, I’m pimp slapping you, girl.
    I turn the phone off and return my attention to Derek, who’s watching me with that edgy intensity I find so…Derek. I wonder when he became a verb in my head. He Dereked me. He’s all Derek on his bad self. I smile to myself, further mystifying him, judging by his expression, which is polite but puzzled.
    I laugh as I turn to him. “Don’t worry. My head won’t spin around or anything. It’s been a while since that happened.”
    “I don’t scare easy.”
    I look around our surroundings. “I see that.”
    “It’s better than a park bench or a doorway.”
    He’s right, but that doesn’t mean I have to concede the point. “I just hope I didn’t catch anything, sleeping on that bag.”
    Derek adopts a totally fake hurt expression. “It’s not