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I can’t relax, because I’m afraid of what I might say, or do, if I forget for one moment that he’s my best friend’s boyfriend. It’s torture, and yet I don’t want it to end. I can’t bring myself to roll away from him. I remember what Daria said about Colin, and I know exactly what she was talking about.
A few minutes later, Daria comes stumbling out of the bathroom. I pull back the blankets and get out of bed, because I’m not going to be like she was with Colin. I push her in next to Chase, then climb in next to her. “It’s warmer there,” I say, catching Chase’s accusing look but ignoring it.
“Sky’s afraid I might bite,” he says. “Maybe I will.”
“Don’t bite me,” Daria groans. “You might get drunk.”
Five minutes later she’s snoring. I lie beside her, stiff as a board. Chase’s hand touches my hair, and a rush goes through my entire body. He absently winds a curl around his finger. Then he’s stroking my cheek, then my throat, my shoulder. His touch goes from soft to deep pressure like a massage and then back to barely touching me, his fingers tickling up and down my neck with the softest touch. I am suspended in excruciating, mortifying bliss.
I can barely breathe, let alone watch a movie. He presses into the flesh between my shoulder and my neck, kneading the muscles until I relax, melting under his skillful fingers. His fingers tickle the hairs on the back of my neck, then gently stroke my earlobe until my whole body is a helpless puddle of need.
The warmth spreading inside me has nothing to do with the alcohol. I’m lost to the world, to everything but his hand and my body, to the current of electricity pulsing through every inch of me from his touch.
When the credits start rolling up the screen, I jerk upright, shocked out of my trance, breathing hard.
“Stop!” I whisper, staring straight ahead with wide eyes. The sheets rustle, and then he sits up too. I glance past him at the two girls sleeping there, and then at Daria sleeping between us. I’m so grateful for my moment of sanity in putting her there that I could cry.
Chase grabs my face with both hands and pulls me toward him. I try to pull back, thinking he’s about to kiss me, and wanting it so much, but so scared.
“You’rekillingme,” he whispers.
He rests his forehead against mine, his hands sliding back into my hair. His breathing is shallow and quick. He runs one hand over my cheek and under my chin, lifting my face towards his. Our noses bump together, and then his lips brush across mine, not exactly a kiss but just touching for half a second as his face turns away from me. A jolt of electricity slams through me at the contact, as hot as a bolt of lightning surging through me. I gasp and jerk back, and his hand slips from my hair.
“Shhh,” he says, his eyes blurry with hunger as they stare into mine.
Lindsey!I think, panicked at the thought of her.
“What are you doing?” I whisper. “What amIdoing?”
“I’ve gotta get out of here,” Chase whispers, but he’s not talking to me any more than I was talking to him. He slides from the blankets and carefully climbs over the girls to hop down from the bed.
Before he leaves, he stops and looks at me, his face eerily blue in the light from the TV screen. His expression falters, softens, and he steps back toward the bed. His face hidden is in shadow when he tips my chin up the way he does, stroking my cheek with his thumb.
My eyes fall closed, and I involuntarily melt into his touch. He runs his thumb over my lips to the middle, curling my bottom lip down until my lips part.
“Fuck, Sky,” he says, his whisper choked, as if he’s about to cry.
My eyes fly open, and he jerks his hand back. “I gotta get out of here,” he repeats, then turns and hurries out.
As soon as the door closes behind him, there’s a huge emptiness left in his wake. I fall back onto the bed wondering what the hell just happened, how I missed an entire movie when I know I wasn’t asleep, how I can do this to Lindsey, feel this way. Wondering what Chase meant, how I’m killing him, why he’s always touching me, why I think it means something. It’s like torture being near him, being touched and not able to touch him back, wanting him so badly, and never being able to have him.
I’ll never be able to have him.
Tears prick at my eyes. I curl onto my side and let myself cry. Is this what love feels like? Is it supposed to feel like this? I think about what Daria said about Colin, and how she cried every day she was with him. So that’s why she dates guys who adore her, while she feels nothing for them. Because love hurts too damn much.
I bet she’s never cried a single tear for Brandon.
I don’t realize she’s awake until she turns toward me and curls her arm over my shoulder. “It’s okay to cry,” she whispers into my hair. “I know it doesn’t feel like it, but you’ll get through it.”
So I lie there, letting my silent tears for Chase soak into his girlfriend’s high thread-count Egyptian cotton pillowcase and wondering when I’ll be through it and it can stop hurting.
ten
Now Playing:
“All For You”—Sister Hazel
I wake up with dry eyes, a terrible taste in my mouth, and a fuzzy feeling in my brain. I can’t quite clear my head. I lie there, trying to put together the events of the night before.
