Menagerie

Chapter 17 - Charlotte

By the time we arrived in Edmonton, my voice was hoarse from reading aloud. I gladly put away "The Hobbit" and got out of the car, stretching my limbs and luxuriating in finally having clean air to breathe. Don't get me wrong, Simon smelled wonderful to me, but it was getting harder and harder to focus on the book I was reading rather than on the many ideas that came to me of what we could do if he would just pull over for a while.

I caught sight of Simon standing on the other side of the car with his arms tucked behind his head, his eyes shut, and a look of pure bliss on his face. He was breathing in deeply. I couldn't help but laugh at him. His eyes snapped open and he smiled at me. His smile was distractingly beautiful.

He walked around the car and pulled me in for a hug, pressing his nose to my hair. I laughed again. Hadn't he just been enjoying leaving behind the saturated scents in his car? "Are you a masochist?" I asked.

"Not at all, Charlotte. Besides, we're about to have an awful lot of privacy." I pulled away from him just in time to see his eyebrows waggle suggestively.

I couldn't help feeling nervous. I was alone with a man I had just met last night. We were in a city I'd never been to and I was moving in. I stared up at the apartment building before me and tried to fit the word "home" to it. How long until it actually felt like home? We were moving again in May, so it was entirely possible the instant I started getting comfortable here, my life would turn on its head again.

Simon caught onto my mood. He pressed a kiss to my forehead and entwined his fingers with mine. "I'm going to do everything I can to make sure you're happy here, Charlotte. Thank you for this – for moving in with me."

"You can stop thanking me," I insisted. "From here on out, you and I are a team. This is where you need to be right now, so this is where I am."

We each loaded up with bags and Simon led the way into the building and to his second-floor flat. He gave me an apologetic look before opening the door to reveal a studio apartment whose only kind descriptor was "economical." It was tiny. I could lay down by the shorter wall and almost reach both ends. The longer wall was only a couple of feet bigger. You could cross the kitchen in three steps. There wasn't even room for a couch. Instead, Simon had a queen-sized bed – no frame – and an armchair. Instead of a kitchen table, there were two stools pulled up to the kitchen counter that served as the only divider between rooms.

"I know it's not much," Simon started.

I cut him off with a kiss. "We'll be fine here for a few months. Stop apologizing."

"Okay. Well, I'm going to need to clear a couple of drawers for you and I've already got an empty bathroom shelf. I hope you'll feel at home here. I know we don't know each other well yet, but everything I have is yours. You can make whatever changes here you want – I bet you'll spend more time at home than I will."

Some people might have been offended by that, but he had to go out for classes and lab time, not to mention that I didn't know anyone but Simon in this city. I cast another glance around the room and could already picture spending hours here. There was no desk, so my work would be done on the bed or at the kitchen counter. The television could be watched from the bed, too.

"Do you ever leave your bed when you're here?" I asked, only a little bit joking.

Simon chuckled. "I have a feeling I'm about to find out just how much time can be spent in bed," he said, waggling his brows and sweeping a lingering look down my body.

I blinked at him, surprised. "I didn't know your mind was so dirty!"

He frowned and said, "It's not usually. You do something to me, Charlotte." The playfulness left his tone by the end and he stared at me with hungry eyes. His expression ignited a fire in me and I rose up on my toes to kiss him. His response was immediate and enthusiastic. In an impressive feat of athleticism and multitasking, he kept the kiss going while he lifted me and carried me the few steps it took to get to the bed.