Chapter 2: Tangled Beneath the Glow

The afternoon dragged in that hazy, sun-baked way only a cheap apartment can manage. I’d been parked on the pull-out couch since noon, laptop balanced on my thighs, fingers flying across the keyboard while lines of code blurred in front of my eyes. The place already felt lived-in—my coffee mug from breakfast still on the milk-crate table, Sophie’s work apron draped over the back of the single chair we owned. Every creak of the floorboards when I shifted reminded me this was ours now, this cramped little box with its peeling walls and the faint smell of last night’s pizza grease still clinging to the air. I tried to focus on the bug I was hunting, but my mind kept slipping back to the way her leg had brushed against me in the dark, the soft weight of her head on my chest, the way I’d come undone in the bathroom afterward like some guilty teenager.

By the time the key scraped in the lock around six, I was half-hard again just from the memory. Sophie stepped in, kicking the door shut with one heel, her black polo shirt untucked and her coffee-shop shorts riding low on her hips. She looked wrecked in the best way—hair pulled into a messy ponytail, a faint sheen of sweat on her collarbone from the walk home in the heat. She dropped her bag with a thud and toed off her sneakers, sighing like the floor itself had offended her.

“God, today was endless. Some guy tipped me in nickels because he ‘didn’t have anything smaller.’ Who even does that?” She peeled off the polo right there in the living room, revealing a thin white tank underneath that clung just enough to the curve of her breasts to make my throat tighten. No bra. The fabric whispered against her skin as she moved, the faint outline of her nipples pressing through when she stretched. She didn’t notice or didn’t care, grabbing an oversized gray T-shirt from the box still half-unpacked by the couch and tugging it on. It swallowed her, hem skimming the tops of her thighs, but it still managed to hint at everything underneath—soft, braless, dangerously close.

She flopped onto the couch beside me, legs sprawling, and nudged my laptop with her knee. “Movie night. We’re broke and Netflix is free, so no arguments. I need something mindless after today.”

I closed the screen, trying to keep my voice casual even as last night’s heat flashed behind my eyes—the blanket, her breath on my neck, the way I’d jerked off whispering her name like a curse. “Yeah, sure. Sounds good. What are we watching?”