Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 95421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 95421 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 477(@200wpm)___ 382(@250wpm)___ 318(@300wpm)
I smiled.
Dawson: He tried to get me to play, but I declined. They’re both sleeping now.
Naomi: Great, thanks. The ottoman in the living room opens. The cushion from the top lifts off and there are blankets and pillows inside if you want to try to get some sleep. The couch is pretty comfy. It’s where I’ve been sleeping. I’ll be back as soon as I can.
Dawson: Don’t rush. I’m good. Really.
I didn’t think I’d fall asleep, but I must’ve dozed off sitting up, because I woke with a startle, falling over to one side somewhere around 1 AM. Tomorrow I had a pretty full day, and staying up all night didn’t land like it had in my early twenties, so rather than fight sleep anymore, I opened the ottoman and dug out a blanket and pillow. Slipping off my shoes, I tried to catch some actual shut-eye. But on my first big inhale, the smell of coconut wafted through my nose. My eyes sprung open. I’m not imagining it this time. It was the scent I’d caught around the office on a few occasions, and I was pretty sure it was coming from this pillow.
I turned my head, pushed my nose into the plushness, and took a deep whiff. My eyes closed. Definitely coconut. I took a second inhale, even though I was sure, because it smelled so damn good. Absolutely delicious. A clean scent mixed with something else—maybe vanilla—but there was no mistaking that the main scent was coconut. And it was on the pillow, so it had to be a face cream or a perfume, or possibly even a shampoo. And if I smelled it, there was no way in hell the head of whoever had been lying here didn’t smell it, too. Yet Naomi had made me think I was going crazy when I’d asked her if she was wearing the scent.
I tried to relax and ignore it for the longest time, but every time I breathed in, the smell made me more and more curious. Eventually, I pulled back the blanket and decided to do a little exploring in the bathroom. My first stop was the sink. There was a bottle of Softsoap antibacterial hand wash. I lifted it and brought it to my nose. Definitely not this. Next I opened the mirrored medicine cabinet. Inside was the usual array of things people kept—toothpaste, mouthwash, deodorant, Band-Aids, a few medicines—nothing coconut scented. So I turned to the shower and pulled back the dark purple curtain. Two shelves had been built into the tile. Nothing suspicious on the first one, so I started to lose hope. Then I picked up the first plastic bottle on the second shelf and turned it around to read the label.
Bumble and Bumble Crème de Coco Shampoo.
There was even a big coconut on the label. I lifted it to my nose and took a whiff.
Mmmm... That was it. As always, the smell made my mouth water. Though at the moment, it wasn’t food I was salivating for. The scent now made me think of the woman who wore it. Naomi has to know. She has to be doing it on purpose.
I stood there with the bottle in my hand for a long time, random questions rattling around in my head. At the forefront of them all was, why did she lie about it?
I supposed it could have been innocent enough. Maybe her sense of smell wasn’t that good. Women used a half-dozen products when they got ready, so perhaps by the time she finished her shower routine, the rest of the scents were more prominent.
Maybe that was it. Maybe she had no idea there was even coconut in this bottle.
But when I set the bottle back on the shelf, something else caught my eye. A coconut on a different bottle. Four different products were jammed onto that little shelf. I picked them up one at a time.
Bumble and Bumble Crème de Coco Conditioner
Native Coconut and Vanilla Body Wash
The last item wasn’t in a squeeze bottle; it was in a jar.
Dr. Teal’s Shea Sugar Body Scrub with Coconut Oil
Once could be an oversight, but four products with coconut? That was absolutely intentional. Now I wasn’t sure what I was more riled up about, the fact that she’d gone out of her way to buy things that smelled like my favorite food, or the thought of her rubbing these products all over her sexy body.
Fuck me.
I needed to get out of the bathroom, get away from these smells, and stop thinking about her touching herself naked, or there was a real chance I would start to grow hard. And that was not fucking good while babysitting two little kids.
So I went back out to the living room couch. Sometime later—after at least an hour or two of obsessing over what it meant that Naomi had apparently been rubbing coconut scents all over her body—I fell asleep and woke to a soft hand at my cheek.