Page 123 of Legally Mine

Slowly, I turned around, still wary of what I might see. Eric had shoved his boxers back on, while Jane just sat on the couch, wrapped in a throw blanket.

"Keep your pants on, Eric," Jane retorted. "Once, you know, you actually get them on. I wasn't talking about your junk. Just your boyish, Aryan looks."

"Whatever," Eric said with a roll of his eyes. "Hey, Crosby. Sorry. We weren't expecting you back until later."

I glanced between the two of them. Jane had the decency to avoid my gaze, but Eric just looked at me directly while wearing nothing but his boxers, oblivious to the fact that half of his hair was standing up or that he had splotches on his neck and a set of angry red scratch marks on his pale chest that looked remarkably like fingernail tracks.

"What happened to no fucking on the couch?" I demanded, trying my best not to crack a smile. My lips twitched, but that was it.

"Seriously?" Eric asked. "Like I haven't had to come home to you sucking my boss's face at least five times?"

I shrugged. "Clothes on, my friend. There were no bare asses anywhere near that couch. Speaking of which––" I looked back at Jane, who was sitting with her hand shoved into her bedraggled bob. "I'll expect you to take care of cleaning that blanket when you're...done with it."

She nodded and made a muffled "of course, Sky." Eric blinked, still unabashed, then stretched his long arms up toward the ceiling.

"All right," he said. "Since we won't be finishing what we started, unless, Jane..." He nodded at his bedroom, and Jane gave him a look like he was actually insane. "Right, then," he said. "Shower for me."

It wasn't until he disappeared into the bathroom and the water started running that Jane finally looked directly at me. She found her glasses and shoved them over her face.

"That's better," she muttered. "I'd like to be able to see your condescension with crystal clarity."

I smirked and went to sit on the couch next to her, then thought better of it and took the opposite chair instead.

"Hey, I'm not judging," I said, holding my hands up innocently. "You're the one who calls him 'Petri Dish'."

Jane leaned back into the couch and pulled the blanket up her bare form to cover her shoulders completely, so that now all I saw of her was a rumpled head with glasses.

"He's...yeah. Maybe not so much that anymore."

I raised a brow. "So, are you guys dating?"

She shot me a wide look. "Um, no. It's still just fucking, Sky. That's it."

"Isn't flying in for the weekend from Chicago three weeks before the bar exam a little bit more than 'just fucking'?" I asked. "And, since you're still here, presumably skipping a day of prep class? Does Eric know it's 'just fucking'?"

"Oh, like he'd want more," Jane said, not quite able to hide the bitterness in her voice. "I know the score, and he does too. You think I don't know where that thing goes when I'm not around? Trust me, I'm making him double-bag it."

I glanced back at the bathroom, where steam was starting to filter out through the bottom of the door.

"I don't know about that," I said. "I happen to know that Eric doesn't bring women home. And unless he's sneaking in quickies at the grocery store, I don't think he's meeting them anywhere else, either. All I've seen him do for the last month is eat, sleep, and study."

"Well, then it's only a matter of time. He's not going to commit to a skinny Korean girl with weird hair who lives a thousand miles away." Jane bit her lip while she stared down at the folds of the blanket.

"Janey. Since when do you talk about yourself like you're nothing?" I reached over the coffee table and gave my friend a pat on the knee. "You're the shit, and you know it."

The shower stopped. Jane tensed.

"It's just sex," she repeated, this time louder and with more surety than before. She popped an arm out of the blanket and held it wrapped around her lean form. "I'm going to shower and get dressed, and then you and I are going to a late lunch after your class, before my flight tonight. No walking dildos allowed." She looked to the still-closed bathroom door. "You got that, Mr. Clean?" she called.

The door opened, and Eric walked out in nothing but a towel wrapped around his hips, his long muscles somehow more on display despite the fact that his boxers had actually covered less of him.

"Loud and clear," he said with a grim look, and disappeared into his room.

Jane followed his form, then closed her eyes tight when the door slammed shut with a loud bang. Then, with a heavy sigh, she stood up.

"It's just sex," she said like a mantra as she walked to the bathroom. "Just sex."

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