“No,” I said forcefully. Ryan leaving was already going to be a challenge, a good challenge though. One that was best for him, so it was best for us. This no alone time together thing? That was just a challenge challenge. “Just, this is a big deal, right?”
Ryan purred, or tried to purr but it sounded kind of like a garbage disposal. “I certainly hope so.” He winked and looked down at my jeans. So stupid. Why did that kind of work for me?
“We should be serious,” I said in my serious voice; did it sound huskier than normal? “We shouldn’t think with,” I stopped, not trusting myself to say it without throwing myself at Ryan. “We should think with our brains.”
“Thank you for explaining how thinking works,” Ryan sassed and I tried to listen instead of being really attracted to him. “But what are you afraid of? Nobody’s pressuring anybody, we can’t get each other pregnant. You’re not going to sell one of my kidneys on the black market, and there’s no stalker waiting in the wings to take over my life.”
He started out in a reasonable place but now was descending into Lifetime movie plots. Maybe he was having a difficult time thinking too. One of us really needed to be thinking. But just, Ryan was a lot smarter than me, so reducing him to not thinking because he was so excited at the prospect of alone time with me? Yeah, super hot.
I tuned back into Ryan, figuring he was wrapping up his insane tangent and about to get close to the point again. “And it’s not like we’ll do it and then find out we’re related and we’ll have to go live in an attic to be together.” Nope, he wasn’t quite back to normal yet. “Or do you think I’m only going to say I love you so I can get sex?”
I frowned. “You wouldn’t do that.” I was almost annoyed on his behalf. Nobody insulted Ryan in front of me. Not even Ryan.
“Are you going to do that?” he asked next. Guess he had taken the pro sex position. Oh, positions.
“I already said I love you,” I reminded him.
“And not even for sex?” he made a tsking noise, like he was judging me. So rude. “Why then?”
I pretended to think about it and then shrugged. “I don’t know. It made sense at the time.” It still made sense now. As he sat above me with his crazy brunette hair and warm brown eyes. I always wanted him around and as close as possible. Even when he was being a weirdo. Even when he was snarking at me. Maybe especially those times.
Ryan leaned away from me. “Just for that, you’re not getting any.”
“What, really?” Cool, whatever. I could respect that. Okay. Just don’t break down in tears. That’s not sexy.
“Wow,” Ryan marveled, leaning back towards me. “You cracked even sooner than me because I was about to say, who am I kidding, yes, you can definitely get some.” He brought a hand to my face in what was maybe supposed to be a soft caress, but was really sort of like half petting me, half slapping me. But his words were nice. “It’s really sweet you want to think about this, even though that’s usually where we get into problems,” We overthought or we didn’t think at all; there was no middle ground yet. “But I mean, I have thought about this before, haven’t you?”
“Yeah.” Then I tried not to because we didn’t get a lot of alone time together and I didn’t want to die of sexual frustration; that would probably be a really embarrassing funeral, but at least I’d be dead then. However, if my tombstone read, killed by sexual frustration, courtesy of Ryan Miller, one: I’d be dead and that would suck and two: when I saw Ryan again, he would be such a smug ghost.
I tried to just live my life, not thinking about all the things we weren’t doing that I wanted to be doing, then I’d see him in stupid short shorts or I’d catch myself staring at his hands and think about it anyway. How every time I touched him, all I wanted to do was keep touching him.
“The only thing stopping us is that we haven’t had a bed and privacy.” Ryan sounded rational. He would grin every few seconds, but still, that counted. “And at this point I would settle for privacy. Beds are overrated.”
Speaking of privacy. “Oh, I should ask Joey how many of his siblings are home.” His parents were at a little league tournament with the younger ones, so maybe we would have the whole house to ourselves. If I paid Joey another $10, maybe he’d go outside.
“I don’t even care as long as they’re not in the room with us.” He made a goofy face. “They won’t be, right?”
“Right.” Probably.
“Okay, so we have a room and some time. We should act on it while we can, that’s what I think.” Ryan nodded sensibly, and his hand was on my face again, so he tried to nod my face along with his.
Ryan was so smart. And so sensible, even now. He wanted to freak out a moment ago but now that this was on the table, he was all business. Hot. Of course everything about him was hot right now. He was leaving tomorrow, so this would be the perfect ending, except a different word. It wasn’t an ending and it wasn’t even a pause, because we would still be together. A transition. From one phase to the next.
Basically, and I wholeheartedly mean this:
Wheeee!
