And yeah, he was still unsettled, but maybe that was because he now couldn’t stop thinking about how she’d made it damn clear that she’d always found him to be physically attractive, too. And she didn’t wax poetic about his graceful lips and laughing eyes. She’d made it very clear that she still wanted to climb naked into his bed and jump his bones.
And after, lie in his arms, forever at ease.
It hit him, like a blow to the gut, that with Tasha in his arms, he’d be at ease forever, too. With Tasha in his arms, he’d at long last be able to breathe.
And suddenly now the question What about Ted? was no longer the conversational shield that he’d thought it to be. Suddenly, now, he wanted to know.
What about Ted?
Back soon.
Tasha worked at the dining table in the pod’s main living space, occasionally eating a small handful of her peanuts from today’s jar.
That was what Thomas had recommended in terms of rationing their limited food. For the next three days, they’d each get a full jar of both peanuts and olives. After three days, if they hadn’t been rescued, they’d cut back to what he called half rations, which was, quite literally, half of that.
Back soon.
He’d signed his terse note with a T, and had also put the time of his departure—0515—so she’d have a reference point for that soon.
She’d gotten up at 5:30, thinking he wouldn’t have left yet.
Hah.
She’d showered and washed her hair and put her clothes back on, but then decided that her sweater smelled ripe, so she’d washed that too. It was going to take forever to dry, so she got another blanket from the bedroom, in case she needed to add a layer as she went back to work on the fleece “pants” she was making for Thomas.
She winced every time he left the pod dressed only in those thin plaid PJ pants, even though he shrugged it off. I’m fine.
Back when they’d first arrived, she’d helped him engineer some waterproof toes for his cut-open, too-small boots, using a trash bag and a couple of rubber bands she’d found in the kitchen’s junk drawer. It wasn’t great, and Thomas had pointed out that the thick plastic was a recipe for trench foot—or it would be if he didn’t have the opportunity to take his boots off, shower, and then go barefoot while back inside for most of the day.
But after she’d helped him cut a hole in one of the fleece blankets to create a poncho against the cold, she realized that she could make him warmer pants, too. Or she could at least try. There were certainly enough fleece blankets to spare if she ruined one in her attempt.
There’d been a small collection of sewing kits in that kitchen junk drawer—many bearing the names of five-star hotels, where they’d no doubt been available in the bathroom along with the expensive tiny shampoos and variety of lotions. Each of the kits had a small amount of thread in a rainbow of colors. They were designed for mending or sewing buttons back onto shirts and blouses. So, not a lot of thread, but there were six kits. She was also being careful not to waste any thread—to use as much of it as humanly possible on the two inseams and the single side-seam that she was sewing by hand. One of the sides of the “pants” didn’t have a seam—she’d simply folded the blanket over.
So no, they would not be pretty—that much was clear—which was why she used scare quotes around the word “pants,” even when thinking about them.
Although her aunt Mia had been incredibly crafty, with a sewing machine that she’d inherited from an elderly relative, Tasha hadn’t done much sewing—and certainly never without a machine. But she’d taken a look at the seams of her shirt and was attempting to duplicate the tiny, reinforced stitches. Her handiwork was ugly, but what she was doing seemed to be holding the pieces of fabric together securely.
Also filed under remarkably unattractive was the fact that the “pants” would be much too big for Thomas—but better that than too small. They would keep him warm. Warmer. But only if she could figure out some way to keep them on. A pair of suspenders. Some kind of belt or... ooh, maybe a drawstring.
Yeah, a drawstring at the alleged waistline would work. She could use the cord from one of the bedside table lamps in the bedroom, if she couldn’t find anything else. And rather than folding over the top and painstakingly sewing a casing—and possibly running out of thread in the process—she could simply cut a series of holes in the approximate waist and run the cord both inside and out of the “pants.” Although best to wait to do that until after Thomas came back, and tried them on. Probably after he showered.
And probably also after he sat her down and told her—gently, because he was Thomas and he absolutely loved her—that he didn’t love her that way, and that he was glad they’d talked, but now it was time to let it go and put the White Russian incident fully behind them.
Still friends? he’d ask.
And she’d nod, and say Of course, because the alternative was too awful to consider. So yes, they’d remain friends. Except they wouldn’t. They would merely be friendly. But that would be better than the past five years.
Still, it was going to suck, having Thomas try on the “pants,” fresh from the shower. His chest and stomach bare as she tried to ignore his gorgeous rich brown skin and hard muscles, as she crouched in front of him, checking to see where the “pants” met his hips, so she could figure out where above them to cut the holes for the drawstring, while still giving him enough inseam space in the crotch to move and not get his male package squeezed.
Oh, good. Perfect thing to be thinking about.
In truth, she could simply let him do it. Toss him the “pants,” the lamp cord, and a pair of scissors—okay, she wouldn’t throw scissors at him, not even in theory—and let him figure it out. He was certainly smart enough—the poncho had been his idea.
Of course, maybe this time he’d finally return from the extraction point with some SEALs and FBI agents in tow, and she’d leave the “pants” behind for archeologists to puzzle over, five hundred years from now.
As Tasha threaded the needle with the next segment of thread—she was out of everything but red, orange, and pink—the lights abruptly went off, signaling that the door at the top of the stairs was being opened.
It was officially soon, and Thomas was back.
Heart in her throat, Tash sat very still as she waited the endlessly long five seconds before the lights came back on again. When they did, she moved deliberately carefully, securing the needle back in the plastic case—mostly because stepping on it with bare feet would suck, but also because a sewing needle was a limited resource, and each kit only contained one.
She stood up, moving toward the door, ready to open it at Thomas’s Lizzo-knock.
But the knock didn’t come.
And it didn’t come.
Do not open this door if it’s not our established knock.
Okay. She’d understood that very clearly. But the options were always Thomas doesn’t come back, or Thomas comes back, then knocks in their established pattern, or Thomas comes back, but knocks a non-Lizzo knock.
It hadn’t occurred to either of them to create a rule for Thomas comes back, but doesn’t knock.
And the big question that popped up was why? Why wasn’t he knocking? Or perhaps more accurately, why couldn’t he knock?