He pulls back but plants a second quick and gentle kiss on my lips. “We should be working on our project,” he says.
“Or…we could start that in, like…twenty minutes…” I say and push against his chest, nudging him toward the couch.
His hold on me tightens. Mac gets the hint and walks with me, a devilish grin on his face. When the back of his legs hit the couch, he sits. I climb onto his lap, one leg on either side of his hips, and run my fingers through his hair. He closes his eyes, pure pleasure etched into his features. I do it again, running my nails against his scalp. This time the motion elicits a groan, encouraging me. His fingers flex against my thighs and then clamp down. It’s almost too much pressure, but it also feels good. It feels like desire, and knowing he’s feeling everything I am eggs me on.
One last time, I run my fingers through his hair, but I curl my fingers and clench them, grabbing a fistful of hair at the base of his neck. Mac responds with another groan, his hands sliding up to my ribs and around to my back. He shifts my body so it collides with his, our mouths meeting with all the inevitability of a flood in springtime.
There’s something so familiar about Mac, like maybe we’ve kissed before. Maybe we’ve kissed a hundred times in another life and in each new one we find our way back to each other. But it isn’t just the kissing or his hands; it’s the chemistry. Familiarity pricks at the back of my eyes, in the back of my throat. It crawls through me, growing and expanding until I can’t ignore it.
I break our kiss and shake my head from side to side.
“Sorry, I got deja vu. Just…wanted to get rid of it,” I say.
Mac acknowledges me with a hint of a smile and then leans in, tilting his head to my exposed neck, his breath brushing a spot just below my jaw. With the lightest touch he grazes my neck and a heat rises from my hips, spreading a familiar sense of longing and power through me.
“I’m sorry, it’s just…this is so weird. This is so familiar. I feel like we’ve done this before.”
“We have, silly. In the truck, when we listened to the album,” he murmurs against my neck. I can hear a half-smile on his face.
“No, no, you didn’t kiss my neck then,” I say, leaning back a little.
Mac’s neck stretches toward me like he isn’t done yet, but I know he’s only half-listening. His eyes are glazed with desire, his lips red and a little puffed from the kissing. He shrugs, giving me an “I’m not sure what to tell you” look.
I shrug too, shaking my head, and we kiss again, but not for long as I pull back once more.
“I’m sorry, it’s just that you remind me so much of that guy. The guy I made out with at the Halloween party. The Sexy Shakespeare guy. I know that’s so dumb. I’m not trying to compare you. It’s just, sort of…I don’t know, it’s so familiar. Sorry I keep harping on this. It’s just so…uncanny. So weird,” I say, my sentences punctuated with awkward laughter.
Mac’s face is rosy, his grin wide, his eyebrows raised, but there’s something off in his eyes. His look has shifted as before. Now he has the look of someone who’s laughing along with you but not fully connected to your words. “That’s, uh…actually…because it was me,” he says, choking out a chuckle. His grin turns to a grimace and his grip loosens on me a little.
A strangled, weird laugh escapes me. “You’re hilarious,” I say and lean back in to kiss him, but he turns his head just slightly. A rejection that hits harder than any words he just said. A punch to the stomach that kills any vestiges of the lingering mood.
“It was me, Jessie,” Mac says with all the seriousness of a doctor delivering bad news.
I blink a few times, trying to let his words sink in. I slide off his lap and onto the couch, pulling my legs up to my chest. Every thought in my mind is frozen. All the cogs in the machine have stopped working.
“No. You would have told me.”
“I should have told you. I tried to tell you.”
“I don’t understand,” I say. I glance around the room, looking for someone to confirm or deny what he’s telling me, but there’s no one.
Mac bites his bottom lip. He looks pale, and his hands are twisted together in his lap. This is not the posture of a person who’s joking. Or lying. He looks like he wants to say something, but his mouth moves without a sound.
“Oh my god,” I say, covering my mouth. A curtain lifts inside of me and all the confusion is gone. The moment is crystal-clear. “You knew it was me,” I say. “At the Halloween party when it happened.”
“A cat costume is not a grand disguise. I swear, I thought you knew it was me. And the next day I thought you knew it was me. I didn’t—” He reaches out, but I scramble up off the couch as if his touch might sting me.
“Do not…do not touch me right now,” I hiss through gritted teeth.
Adrenaline pumps through my bloodstream, my heart racing. Blood thrums in my ears, anger pounding at my walls. Mac has been lying to me. Mac kept this from me. Intentionally. I carve my hands through my hair, clenching them just to feel the pull of that pain instead of the slow glide of the knife down my back.
“Why didn’t you tell me? Immediately. Or the next day. You could have said something in class or after class,” I say, my voice sharp.
“I swear I thought you knew it was me,” he pleads.
“What!? It was pitch-black. I’d been drinking. You were wearing a mask and a wig. You had an accent!” My voice shakes with the effort of not yelling. My lips still tingle from our kiss, but the memory is tinged with pain.
“It wasn’t that dark,” Mac says, but not with a lot of confidence.
