Free The Sex Was Great But... by Tyne O’Connell Page A

hear her warning the gardener to keep an eye on me.
    So, having established Joseph’s role as her protector, we went into the house—all minimal and Zen-like, as you’d expect. And that’s good. I don’t like a girl who’s into “stuff.” You know—all that ornaments and clutter shit.
    I like a place where you can stretch out without knocking over an antique smoking pipe from Egypt that turns out to be worth more than your entire education—which admittedly, in my case, was provided free of charge by the State.
    I was well impressed by Holly’s decor. All clean lines and space. Tifanie’s apartment would fit in one of the cupboards. Holly made me an ice pack and borrowed somecereal for me from her gardener. She tried to palm me off with a wheat-grass shot, but after the gut rot I got from Kev’s beer I stood firm and demanded Cap’n Crunch. After twenty minutes with the ice pack we agreed that my nose wasn’t broken, just bruised. Very bruised. Along with the rest of my face.
    She gave me some Tylenol and said she had to make a call. I was starting to think I could get used to this life as I munched my way through three bowls of cereal. When she didn’t come back after a while I thought I’d check out her music collection and ended up in the dining room. You can tell a lot about a girl by the music she listens to.
    When Holly came in from her call, the expression on her face was pure poison. “Would you like a shower?” she asked crisply.
    â€œMaybe later,” I agreed, sniffing my pits noisily—my idea of a joke.
    I didn’t want to use her shower. It was too intimate. Intimate’s good, but the wrong sort of intimate is bad. In my experience, using girls’ bathrooms has never left girls with a warm feeling about me. I always do something wrong. Leave a sock on the shower rail, hair scum in the drain or the toothpaste lid off the tube.
    â€œI think you should,” she persisted. The edge to her voice was so sharp you could shave on it.
    I stayed casual. “Yeah, cheers. Maybe later, eh?”
    â€œOnly, I think I should tell you that you do, well…more or less…smell.”
    â€œMe? Smell?” I gasped—as if shocked. Remembering Kev’s philosophy of, Never explain. Deny! I sniffed my pitsagain and shook my head. “I don’t smell, do I?” I asked, all innocence.
    I know it was crap of me, but she was cute when she cringed. It made me like her again, the idea that a rich, gorgeous girl like her could feel self-conscious around me. “Erm, well, yeah. Just a bit,” she admitted.
    I laughed. “Chill, will you? I’m just winding you up. I stink and I know it. I was out all last night checking out this new club, and after that Kev dragged me to this late-night dive in Hollywood. Drank a skinful. Guess I was too knackered to have a shower when I got home.”
    â€œHome? You have a home?”
    She thinks I’m homeless.
    â€œIt’s not a palace like this, or nothing. I share a lounge room with two others. Opposite where you were mugged, as it happens—the Hollymount Apartments?” By now I’d decided to relent on the shower thing. It was sweet of her to offer, really. I’d just have to remember to clean up after me and remember where things went.
    â€œWell, we won’t go into that. I was thinking that you might prefer to take a shower outside by the pool, to take the worst off.”
    The worst off? “Yeah…sure…whatever.”
    I thought that was the end of it. The shower battle won, I hoped we could have a laugh and go back to where we were in the car. Me fancying her, and her giving me the impression that she didn’t think I was a complete waste of space.
    Instead she went into a feverish lecture on chairs and how I was defiling hers.
    â€œDefiling?” No one had ever used the word “defiling”about me before. If