Hayden Maragos (hayden_maragos) wrote in low_tide, @ 2010-01-12 14:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | hayden maragos, kris michaels |
Laundry Day
All sorted, Hayden's laundry made up three loads: whites, darks, and a pile haphazardly called 'miscellaneous' because its owner had no idea what to do with it. Was a blue-and-white striped shirt a light or a dark? He sat on a vinyl couch in Old Town Laundry, jingling his pocket full of quarters and watching the three washers he took up vibrate on spin cycle. In the corner, a television flashed the bright colors of afternoon programming on a weekday. Between soap operas and game shows, he saw commercials for mops, diapers, and tampons. Clearly, not designed for the single guy market.
He slumped and stretched his legs out. When the angle became uncomfortable, he rubbed his neck. One of these days, he thought, I'll live someplace where the appliances don't catch fire. When the soap opera returned (easy to tell from the piano music and hushed voices of melodrama), Hayden sneaked looks at the screen. The men on The Young and the Restless never aged. It was weird. Take that dude Victor for example, with the not-quite-European accent. What was he supposed to be, a vampire?
Laundry - one of the most boring and tedious domestic chores that God himsef had created just for his own personal entertainment, this much Kris was convinced of.
Given that she spent more time in her uniform than out of it, the load of laundry currently bundled up into a bag was far more expansive than it had any right to be. She was pretty sure Simon had sneaked some of his into her wash. Kris wasn't in the habit of wearing men's boxers. And just for that? She was going to dye his underwear pink.
She was in her a-typical laundry day clothes that consisted of a pair of semi loose-fitting sweatpants, a black tank-top with the only bra (which just so happened to be white) she could find underneath it and trainers. Hair was pulled back and secured at the base of her skull, meaning only a few stray strands escaped the vice-like grip. It wasn't sexy, but she didn't really run into a lot of good looking men at the laundromat, so she hadn't dressed with that in mind.
Kris was humming along to the music blaring in her ears, occasionally letting a word or two slip out as she let herself into the laundromat and she went about trying to locate a machine.
Hayden folded his arms and idly scratched his bicep in the t-shirt sleeve. On the television screen, actors traded emotional close-ups. He found himself wishing for a surprise explosion. It could be blamed on faulty wiring in the mansion or a gas leak. Months later, the police would discover that Jill set it up in a jealous rage, a shocker that would be topped when the dead burn victims appeared off-screen, inexplicably alive and swearing vengeance. Something like that.
He glanced at the woman humming to herself. Pieces of brown hair hid her face. He watched her walking back and forth, looking for an empty washer. He didn't know why, but visible bra straps were one of those details that could either be sexy as hell or kind of trashy. Which way it went depended on the woman. Hayden followed the cord from her earbuds to the iPod on her hip. Sexy, he decided. He tugged on his earlobe and went back to staring at his laundry.
He would've stayed tuned to it, except she had picked washer number 8. "Ah... hey! That one eats your quarters," he said, raising his voice.
Kris was totally unaware that there were other people in the laundromat until she faintly heard a male voice over the loud sounds of the rock and roll that she was currently torturing her eardrums with. She'd put her bag on washer number 7 with the full intention of using the number 8 until the interruption, lifting her head to catch sight of a vaguely familiar blonde.
"Hey," she said with a small quirky smile. "I know you." She switched her Ipod off and went about wrapping her earphone cord around it, kind of wishing she was wearing something a little more put together than what she had on right now.
She glanced up at him through her lashes. "Not sure if you remember me though."
His eyebrows pulled together. Yeah, now that he saw her face, he remembered her. Hayden's brain even supplied a name. "It's Kris, right?" He just couldn't figure out where he knew her from. That happened to him all the time. He sat forward and rubbed his palms on his knees, trying to decide if it was the bar. Christ, he was going to feel like a jackass if he couldn't place her. "Sorry, I can't remember how we met." New Year's party? The date of a friend of his?
Something about the iPod helped the lightbulb flicker and come on. iPod on hip, gun on hip, cop. He took a breath. "Oh man. You're the uh... that really nice cop. I mean police officer." Policewoman? What was the polite way to say it? Hayden gripped his jeans and was grateful she hadn't arrested him the night he smoked a joint on the pier. That would've made this about ten times more awkward.
Kris was enjoying the guessing game Hayden was playing with his own mind as he tried to place her, fully aware of how different she looked out of the uniform. They hadn't exactly met under the best circumstances so she couldn't really blame him for struggling. "Yeah," she said as she began to take clothes out of the bag. "That would be me."
She separated Simon's boxers from the rest of the washing and placed a very red dress with them, intending on putting them in a separate wash so the full spectrum of pink could be diluted and stained into the fabric. That would serve him right for sneaking his washing in with hers. He'd probably try and kill her, but that was half the fun.
"Though I've got to say this is a much nicer way to meet you."
Even if she was reluctant to sort her delicates, as she wasn't entirely sure if they were considered sexy or whatever it was men thought when they saw women's underwear. She'd never really worn lingerie for anybody other than herself. This might prove to be a bit on the awkward side because he was an attractive guy and it was never fun making an ass out of yourself in front of an attractive guy.
"Agreed," he said.
Some guys looked for rings. Hayden looked for men's clothes in her wash. He spotted the boxers right off. Boyfriend. He was a little disappointed, even though there was no way he would've asked for a law enforcement officer's number after she busted him for marijuana possession. "Use number seven," he said. "Eight only works half the time." The first washer into which he'd put his laundry stopped spinning and he got up to lift the lid. While he tossed dark garments and jeans in the front of the nearest dryer, he looked over to see what Kris was doing.
Red dress. White underwear. Guy must've pissed her off. Her idea of revenge put a grin on his face. He had a thing for ass-kicking women.
When he needed a dryer sheet, he looked around for the box he kept in his empty basket. Pushing the cardboad lid back, he plucked out two sheets. Two sheets... three loads of laundry. Would he look like a tool if he ripped one in half? He stuffed one in the dryer and loaded quarters, figuring he'd cross that bridge when he got to it.
"I'll be sure to remember that," Kris said as she moved from washer 8 to washer 7. "Thanks for that." Knowing her, she probably would have used 8 only for it not to work and then she'd spend some time smacking it followed by a couple curses and then an eventual kick, which probably would have broken it. She had a knack for that. She took a look at Hayden, watching him for a moment as he slung his clothes into the washer.
She decided she'd put Simon's wash on first and went about slinging the dress in, followed by the boxers. "And this'll teach my housemate to sneak laundry in with mine. Lazy bastard that he is." Kris very happily went about filling the machine up with detergent, but skipped on the softener. Simon could have itchy balls for a while, and she wasn't that fond of that dress as it was. Kris closed the machine and fed it a couple quarters before she put it on, returning her attention to sorting her own clothes.
Kris looked up as Hayden seemed to be having an issue with dryer sheets. "You need one?" A hand disappeared into her bag and she produced a box worth of them. "I've got plenty if you do." She believed in being prepared.
Hayden perked up. "Yeah actually." He took a third sheet from the box Kris held. "Thanks. Now my hair won't stand up straight, next time I put on a shirt." He smiled and took care of the other two loads, which timed out shortly after the first. Boxers, socks, and undershirts in one, the miscellaneous load in the other. After he put in the quarters, he sat down on the couch again. The cushion, which was a 1970s shade of orange, had a rip on the corner and it oozed foam stuffing and air as his weight settled.
Alright, she's got a housemate, so maybe she's single... If she even likes men. It's Key West.
"Sounds like they're keeping you guys pretty busy," he said, making conversation. Not that the recent spike in crime was a particularly good topic, especially as it related to work. "All the break-ins and assaults." Hayden wondered if she heard about the 9-1-1 call that went out from Abandon Ship! Part of him hoped she didn't, since calling the police because a woman bit him didn't paint him in the greatest (or toughest) light. Knowing his penchant for illegal substances, she'd probably think he dropped acid and hallucinated it.
Kris smiled and placed her box back on the nearby washer. "Don't mention it. Static hair is the worst." She winked at him, obviously teasing. She sorted through her clothes and moved an assortment to one side before she took the plunge and started to separate her delicates, trying to ignore the fact that some of them had seen better days whilst others were new and all shiny.
"It's been pretty crazy," she affirmed with a nod of her head. "It's like the entire city's gone mad, but nothing we can't handle." Or her, at the very least. Leon was very much the kind of cop who preferred to sit in the car whilst she did all the legwork. Something about her being able to handle herself and being younger. "I trust you've been keeping safe?"
Whilst he was busy checking out her laundry, she'd been doing the same with his, noticing the distinct lack of anything... feminine. What? Smoking weed didn't make somebody a bad person; Daniel smoked enough weed to keep the whole of the city high and she'd never busted him.
So she didn't hear. Awesome. "Yeah, you know... Look both ways before crossing the street, don't take candy from strangers." He smiled, his eyes accidentally ticking downward when a scrap of black lace flew past his field of vision. That was in a whole other category than white bra. She looked like she was in a big hurry to hide it, so he pulled the leftover quarters out of his pocket and sorted them instead of gawking. Delaware. Hawaii. Hey, Arizona, he hadn't seen that one before. He brushed his thumb across the cactus, the desert landscape behind it.
Peeked up again.
"What were you listening to when you came in?" he asked. He hadn't recognized the music from the few notes he picked up.
It was as he was peeking up that Kris was in the process of putting delicates in a whole different wash. A pair of red boyshorts disappeared into the washer before it was closed and put on. "Hm?" She asked, looking up before she seemed to tug on her ear. "Just some really old rock n' roll. Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Blue Oyster Cult. Stuff like that. And my brother stuck some really weird alternative rock on there when he borrowed my Ipod. I'm definitely never letting him borrow it again. Ever."
She hopped up onto a nearby empty washer and leaned back, placing her weight on her palms as she took a look at what was on the television. "Wow, that's some really bad TV right there. Who killed who this time and was anybody cheating on somebody? Isn't that the way it goes in shows like that?"
Kris shot Hayden a smile and curled her leg up, frowning as there appeared to be a hole on the stretch of cotton across her knee. Yeah, she was totally wishing she'd worn something a little better to the laundromat.
"Nice." Classic rock? He leaned forward and poured the quarters into his right hand. She could've plucked those names right out of his CD collection. Hayden hadn't 100% caught up with the millennium and still kept discs on rotation in his Jeep, which didn't have an mp3 port. "That guy's brother is trying to pull off a hostile business takeover," he said. "And some redheaded girl's in a vegetative state, but when they got ready to pull the plug, I guess she had some..." He trailed off, realizing he should've just shrugged and claimed ignorance. His ears felt hot. "Brain activity."
He shoved the quarters back in his pocket. "I work nights. There's like nothing else on."
"Uh huh," Kris drawled with an amused expression on her face, chuckling quietly a second later. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. Your masculinity is safe with me." She winked and tipped her head to get a better look at the show on television, wondering how a couple women she knew thought that guys who looked like they were made out of playdo were attractive.
She lifted her weight up onto her knees to grab a nearby basket, to have something to put her wet washing into before she shoved it into the dryers.
Hopefully Simon's underwear was a nice shade of disgusting pink.
Your masculinity is safe with me. He wondered if Kris knew how that sounded. He leaned back on the couch again (was he officially squirming?) and pinched the denim on top of his thighs, pulling it down a bit. Because he needed to derail that train of thought before he said something stupid and typical, like, 'I'd like to test that theory', he searched for something else to bring up, like her tennis shoes. "Do you run?" he asked, gesturing at her feet with an index finger. "I figure police officers have to work out or jog or something." That was stretching the truth; judging by some of the men he saw in the uniform (particularly traffic cops), Hayden guessed they didn't have to pass regular fitness tests, but she looked really toned.
Kris glanced at her trainers and nodded her head. "Yeah, I run. More on the job than I'd care to, but I also do it recreationally. Helps to clear my mind and keep me fit." She also attended gym on a regular basis, not to mention all those additional classes she took to help better her physical capability, not to mention her mental capability to do her job.
"Plus, I have a partner that's not too fond of running."
She tipped her head at him. "Do you work out? I mean..." Wait, what did she mean? Kris' cheeks flushed with colour. "I mean, you..." Aw, crap. That really came out wrong. And her mother had to ask why she hadn't had a date in a while? Here you go, mom, exhibit A.
He nodded. "Yeah. Not with weights or anything, I like to run and swim. I like playing sports, too, but I don't get to do it much anymore." After college, his ready-made group of male friends dwindled, at least those who felt like tossing around a football or shooting hoops. Most of his friends on the island would rather kick back with a six-pack and watch other people do the sweating. Hayden thought about her question. Shit, did it look like he didn't work out? He tried to take a quick look at his stomach without being too obvious about it, under the guise of removing a piece of lint. Maybe he ought to lay off the bags of chips. Wasn't his dad always busting his balls about drinking beer and how it was going to give him a potbelly when he was fifty?
He rubbed his stomach and looked at the dryers. They had clear doors. He wondered how Kris was going to be discreet with her panties once they were tumbling around in there. Dude, get a grip.
"I've been thinking about joining a gym," he said. Total crap.
"I'd imagine working a lot of long hours would do that to you," Kris remarked as she hopped off the washer she was sat on to open up the one holding onto Simon's underwear and her red dress. "I'm lucky in that I have free access to the force's gym whenever I want." She pulled out a pair of boxers and observed it, frowning a little. "You know I'm not really sure this is... grotesque enough, what do you think?"
She really wanted Simon to look at his boxers and go 'what the fuck?', just to prove a point.
"But I didn't mean to say that you needed to," she hurriedly pointed out as she realised that Hayden may have taken her cut-off comment the wrong way. "What I meant to say was that you look like you do. Work out that is." Kris cleared her throat and returned her attention quite firmly to the boxers clasped in her hands.
When she said 'the force', it took Hayden a full two seconds to connect the dots: police, not Star Wars.
"...Thanks." Hayden scratched his cheek while a wave of relief washed through him. He'd much rather have a compliment than a politely-worded suggestion that he buff up. He turned his attention to the boxers Kris held up. "Ah... They look pretty gross to me," he said, narrowing an eye in consideration at the cotton shorts, which were now a weird shade of band-aid pink. "But that might just be because they're another man's underwear, so." He shrugged and chuckled. "For what it's worth, I wouldn't wear them anymore."
He thought for a minute. "Maybe you should shrink them, too. The only thing worse than pink boxers has gotta be tiny, pink boxers."
At this point, Kris' head peered around the boxers in question and her eyebrow lifted as her expression turned to one of mischief. "I like that idea, I like that idea a lot." She placed the dress to one side and gathered up the boxers, slinging them into the nearest empty dryer. Kris didn't even bother with a dryer sheet, take that Simon. She cranked up the heat, slid in a couple quarters and let the machine do its work.
"That ought to do the trick."
She surreptitiously caught a hold of a wandering bra strap and eased it back up to rest on her shoulder, covering the movement with a pretend brush of fingers over her collarbone. "That'll teach Simon to sneak stuff into my wash. You'd think for a man with a ton of free time on his hands he'd have time to do his own washing, but.... no."
"Simon's the housemate," he said, clarifying. "Is he unemployed or something?"
On his right, a man with a huge beard walked up and started stuffing armloads of sheets into a washer, which looked like they fit an adult-size mattress, but had some yellow stains on them. Hayden got a 'what the fuck?' look on his face. He watched the man toss in a cup of granulated detergent, then hurriedly looked back at Kris before any eye contact was made. His expression said it all, but he kept his reaction to a minimum. Whenever he came to the laundromat, without fail he saw something odd.
Tired of sitting on the couch, he stood up and hopped onto a washing machine. The metal lid made a hollow sound as it bowed under him, but it would pop back into shape.
"He is the housemate and my best friend of many years," Kris affirmed with a nod of his head. "Very far from being unemployed, runs a local music store, but he lives with a cop and a doctor, so out of all of us he has the most free time."
She noticed the man at the same time as Hayden did, reflecting that expression on her own face, perhaps even edging that much farther away from the man in question. She scratched at her neck and peered at the machine holding her clothes, waiting for the spin cycle to come to an end. When it did, she gathered them up and shoved them into a dryer, putting a sheet in this time around.
"He's just really lazy when it comes to chores."
Hayden nodded. From his perch on the washing machine, he was at eye-level with Kris. He realized both times he'd run into her, he spent most of the conversation sitting while she stood above him. Up close, she looked a little different than he thought. Softer, less like a cop. "Who's the doctor?" He gripped the front edge of the machine he sat on, trying to let his legs dangle without his heels banging and making a ton of noise. A doctor, a police officer, and a business owner sharing a house... Well, that just went to show how fucking expensive Key West was, and why Hayden was crammed into the tiny first floor of a two-story house. He could barely turn around without tripping over furniture.
Kris turned to face Hayden after she'd finished cramming a dryer full of her clothing. "That would be Jenny, my other housemate. She works all hours God sends and I think I'm going to have to resort to a little physical coercion to get her to come out for the night."
The other man in the laundromat made himself comfortable on one of the nearby benches, giving Kris a good old once over as, to be fair, she was the most interesting thing in the place at this moment in time.
"How about you? You live with any interesting housemates?"
One corner of Hayden's mouth twitched into a smile. "Just my upstairs neighbors."
He was aware of the other guy looking at her. He thought men had a radar for that kind of thing, like competition detection, left over from their primitive days of being cave men. Luckily, as the other guy was apparently a bed-wetter, Hayden was pretty sure he could hold onto the conversation without her wandering off to greener pastures. "And my house plants. Don't worry, they're just regular ferns." It had been a matter of time until somebody brought up his life of debauchery; he was glad he got to do it first. "My last name is Maragos. Just in case you want to use your police connections to look up my criminal record."
"Duly noted," Kris said with a smirk. She often caught herself wondering about the plants in her brother's home, but hadn't gone so far as to sniff them. "Maragos, huh? That's kinda exotic. Is it from a specific place or...?"
The machine holding her delicates slowed and eventually came to a stop, meaning Kris needed to rummage them out. Oh, this would be fun with mister bed-wetter over there gawking. Kris crouched down and reached into the machine to get a mass of them, trying her very best to stop certain decorated straps from adorning her arm on the way to the dryer.
"I have a very regular surname, but that's to be expected given that my dad is American."
"So's mine," he said, giving her a puzzled look and a low laugh. He was probably going to regret it, but he couldn't help pulling her leg a little. "If you had a real American last name, I'd have to call you... like... Kris Counts Many Coup. You know, because of your prowess in Native American battle." He scratched the back of his neck and cringed a little, as if waiting for the brunette to swat him. He knew what she meant, that her non-white bloodlines weren't reflected in her surname, but still.
"But um... my grandpa on my dad's side was from Greece." That's right, he thought, deflect from any oncoming blows by telling her you've got the genetics of a Grecian, who always look really ripped in artwork.
Kris lifted an eyebrow and waved a finger in his direction menacingly. "Don't make me climb these washers because I will." She held up the expression and the finger waggling for a moment longer before she put many different things into the washer, making sure she added at least two dryer sheets because she definitely didn't want static in those areas.
"Greece?" She asked, closing the door of the dryer and setting it to the right temperature. "Very nice. Can you speak the language? I can speak Spanish, but only because my mother has a fierce belief in instilling culture, especially if it relates to the family."
"Unh-uh," he said. "Well, a little, just enough to get by when we visited when I was a kid." He pulled on the itchy tag in his t-shirt and asked himself for the hundredth time why he didn't cut them out. "I can ask where the bathroom is, how to get to the nearest junk food store, things like that. You know, useful stuff." He smiled, then pointed at her. "But I uh... I can speak a little Spanish." It was an understatement, thanks to four years of it in high school and a college minor in it, but he'd rather undersell himself when sitting in front of a girl who was probably fluent. Watch her pull something completely obscure out of her ass and leave him staring like an idiot.
"Useful is always good," Kris said with a smile.
Kris hopped up on the nearby washer, ignoring the other man who was happily watching and eavesdropping on their conversation. That wasn't creepy, not at all. "A little Spanish?" She asked, lips curling into a much bigger smile. "Guess I'll have to remember that if I ever want to talk about you when you're in the room. Jenny and I do it all the time to Simon, he hates it." It was mean and she realised that, but sometimes, just sometimes, he deserved it.
"My mom always pulls the Spanish card on my dad when she's really angry about something."
"Oh yeah? My mom pulls out the frying pan." He lifted his arm. "You know, she waves it around like a cartoon character. When I was a kid, I actually thought she might use it. Which is less scary than the silent treatment... That's how you know she's really pissed." He crossed his ankles and looked at his shoes for a second, a pair of beat-up, blue Adidas under his jeans. A zipper or button scratched the dryer as it went around in circles and he replayed what she said about Spanish. Hayden looked up.
"Hey, forget that last part about my parents," he said. "Unimportant. I want to hear about this plan to be in a room with me at some point."
Kris was busy pulling at the small hole in her sweatpants, trying to turn it into a bigger one, obviously. She looked up at his last comment and chuckled. "Do you now?" Nothing wrong with being a little coy, nothing at all.
She glanced in the direction of the dryer with Simon's underwear in it before sliding off her washer as the machine seemed to come to a stop at the same time. "Just saying," she muttered as she opened the door and pulled out the boxers, grinning triumphantly as they were officially a mangled shade of pink and ever so tiny. Perfect.
"Might be fun to get to know one another when I'm not the authority and we're not airing our dirty laundry, in a manner of speaking."
"Hmm." He made a clicking sound in his cheek and nodded, albeit in a noncommittal way. "Maybe so." Bullshit, maybe. Having seen her in a police uniform and lounge-around clothes, he had already donated about thirty seconds to picturing her in the red dress, although he mentally jabbed himself to keep from imagining the rest of the laundry. He couldn't figure out why those tiny shorts that women wore as underwear were so appealing. Technically, they covered more than usual. He thought it had to do with just the bottom of the cheeks hanging out.
Out the window, he could see a woman across the street in the bank parking lot. She was trying to carry an armload of files and nudge her car door shut. In the process, she dropped a sheaf of paper and went chasing the stray pieces around, all while straining to keep a foot on the remaining stack. It made him smile.
The first of his dryers buzzed. Hayden hopped down and slid his basket across the gritty floor. He began to stuff his darks into it, not bothering to fold them, which was a problem of his. Out came jeans, a Pink Floyd t-shirt, black and gray boxers, an undershirt that had gotten into the mix in his impatience. "I guess you're kinda cool, considering the whole cop thing." He was messing around, but kept his face impassive.
Kris tossed the now blotchy pink stained and itty bitty boxers into her bag, looking forward to the look on Simon's face when he saw them. She'd have to tell Jenny to have the camera ready.
She glanced in his direction as his dryer buzzed and lifted an eyebrow at the Pink Floyd t-shirt. Guess her having a dark sleeping shirt with their details emblazoned across the front of it wasn't so bad after all.
"Kinda cool?" Kris inquired, turning her head to shoot him a smile. "Guess that's better than what I get from other guys." Most of which took one look at her in uniform and promptly ran in the opposite direction. She turned her head to check on the dryer holding her underwear, giving the other man in the laundromat very much a 'wtf?' expression as he appeared transfixed.
It seemed to work as he looked away and made like he'd been watching the bad soap opera all along.
"Ow!" Hayden sucked on his knuckle, which had gotten burnt on the snap of his jeans, scorching hot from the dryer. He waved his hand around and went back to stuffing clothes in the basket. "You think maybe it's the firearm? You probably shouldn't take it on dates." From his squat, he smiled at the brunette and stuffed handfuls of socks into the corners, where they wouldn't fall out. "I think it's kind of reassuring, personally." Maybe he didn't mind strong women because of his mother, who was an athletic type who could take care of herself. It ran in that side of the family. It didn't phase his dad, so it didn't phase Hayden, either.
After the third dryer was empty, he cleaned out his lint trays and threw the fuzz in a garbage can.
Kris shifted from her perch as a dryer pinged and she opened the door, piling her arms full of various shapes and forms of laundry. "You know what?" She remarked with a smirk. "I just knew I was doing something wrong!" Kris winked at Hayden and chuckled as she began to separate her clothing, folding the items one by one.
"That'll teach me," Kris shook her head. "Next date? No firearm."
With his laundry finished, Hayden stood next to the baskets, hands on his hips. He needed to load them into his Jeep, but he kind of regretted the end of the conversation. But with the clothes done, it wasn't like they were going to hang out and shoot the shit on the vinyl couch, surrounded by the smell of Bounce sheets. "You should come by the bar sometime," he said. "Back where you saw me at the dock, that's where I work. Bring your roommates, too, if you want." Nice move. It was a pansy-ass way of telling her he wanted to get to know her better, involving absolutely no risk to himself. Hayden reached back and pulled the hair at the nape of his neck. "Or just yourself."
Kris took a note of that and nodded her head. "That sounds nice, I might do that." She did need to show her brother a good night out, given that he'd been in town for a while and had only managed to get out once on New Years. "I'll have to make sure I'm not working too many late shifts."
She finished off with her main laundry and turned her attention to taking her underwear out of the dryer, trying to hide it from the bed wetter. "Let my so called partner do the late shift for a change, that'll be nice."
"Yeah." He nodded, lacing his fingers behind his head. His elbows bowed outward and his biceps were paler than his forearms. Hayden watched her unload for a second, then decided he felt like too much of a jackass to keep standing there. Also, what was with the stance he picked? He looked like he was under arrest.
"Alright, well maybe I'll see you." He picked up a basket and set it on top of the less full one. Crouching down, he grabbed the handles and hefted them up, leaning his head around to watch where he was going. "Bye. Officer." He winked, like he was totally in control of the situation, totally confident and definitely not an idiot. He blamed the panties.