Asshole.
After dinner, Lindsay told Sam to take me upstairs so I could borrow some pajama pants. “Because Lee’s would fall right off your ass.” She looked at Lee. “No offense, hon.”
“Wait, which one of us are you trying not to offend?” Lee asked.
“She said your ass is fat,” Sam said.
“I did not say that!” Lindsay protested.
“I like your ass, Lee,” I said. “I think it’s pretty perfect.”
I let Sam drag me upstairs before Lee could answer. But an hour or so after that, when we were cuddling in his bed, Lee’s hands cupped my ass over my borrowed Hello Kitty pajama pants, and he murmured, “Your ass is pretty perfect too.”
“Yeah,” I said, knocking my chin against his jaw. “I know. I’m hot.”
I liked the way his whole body shook as he laughed quietly.
The room was dark except for a narrow strip of light in the gap between the curtains from the streetlight outside. It was a nice room. It was bigger than the one I shared with Cash, and Lee’s bed wasn’t a twin, which meant there was plenty of room to spread out. Not that we were. Not that I wanted to. I liked lying here like this, Lee almost sprawled on top of me, his knee between mine. I wasn’t hard, but his thigh was right there if I needed some friction, and the thought of lazily frotting against him was a nice one. Though, if I was honest, I’d eaten so much that any repetitive action like that would probably lead to motion sickness. Plus these pajamas were way too nice to get jizz all over.
It felt strange settling down in a bed that wasn’t mine, with a person that wasn’t Cash. Lee didn’t rest his head on my chest so he could hear my heartbeat, and he was bigger and heavier than Cash. But the bed was comfortable, so it didn’t take me too long to fall asleep. I woke up once or twice when I heard cars in the street—we didn’t get much traffic down our street in Goose Run, though the sort we did get was almost guaranteed to come with modified mufflers which made them loud as hell. I also heard the stairs creaking at some point, like someone was going down them, but I fell asleep again before they came back upstairs.
When I woke up it was still dark, and Lee was plastered against my side with one arm thrown over me. I went to move and his arm tightened around me, and I relaxed back against him. I hadn’t ever slept over with a boyfriend—hadn’t everhadaboyfriend—but if this was part of the deal, I wasn’t complaining. I lay there and let myself be spooned.
It must have been close to dawn because the room slowly brightened, revealing Lee’s bookshelf, his closet door, his desk, his chair with the hoodie thrown over the back. I’d tried to snoop around last night while the light was still on as we got ready for bed, but this morning I could stare at his stuff for longer. I felt like a movie detective, looking for the right clue that would tell me all Lee’s secrets. But it was just a regular room filled with regular stuff that belonged to a regular guy. And maybe that was Lee’s biggest secret. He wasn’t hiding anything at all. When he said he liked me, he meant it.
Lee woke up by degrees. First, his breathing changed, then he tightened his arms around me again, and then mumbled something against the back of my neck. Then he pulled his arm out from under me, stretched, and pressed a kiss to my ear. “Morning.”
“Morning.”
“Breakfast?” he asked through a yawn.
“That had better be an offer, not a request.”
He snorted. “Of course it is. Come on.”
We went downstairs and Lee made scrambled eggs and toast. Lindsay wandered into the kitchen while we were eating.
“Morning, hon,” she said. “How’d you sleep?”
It took me a minute to figure out she was talking to me. I swallowed and said, “Um, fine I guess?”
“He snores,” Lee said.
I flipped him the bird and Lindsay laughed. Then she reached over, ruffled Lee's hair, and said, “Make your mother a coffee?”
Was this what moms were meant to be like? When we were kids, Cash and I had watched all those sitcom moms and told ourselves they were too good to be true, even though we’ddesperately wanted one just like them. Lindsay wasn’t a sitcom mom, but she was nothing like our mom either. Shelikedher kids—and they liked her back. And nobody was watching what they said, reading the shifts in the air like animals sensing a storm building and checking the paths to the exits.
The love in this house didn’t come with screaming and yelling and things getting smashed. It didn’t come like those sitcoms either, where there was a heartfelt lesson learned every half hour. It was just here. Just here all the time, built into the foundations of the house where nothing could ever shake it.
Me and Cash, we had something like that with Danny and Wilder, but it didn’t feel exactly the same. Like, there was a part of me that would always be waiting for the other shoe to drop—and that was on me, not on the guys. I knew that. But I always had to have a plan, you know? If it went to shit, what would we do? Where would we go? How fast could we get the hell out? But this house here, this family, it didn’t seem like anyone would ever have to have that kind of plan.
This was the house you ran to, not from.
“So what do you boys have planned for your day off?” Lindsay asked. “Sam and I are going into Richmond later to do some shopping. You’re welcome to tag along.”
“Hell no,” Lee told her. Then he said to me, “Shopping with Mom and Sam is an ordeal, trust me.”
I think I do, I wanted to say.I really want to. But I snorted instead and said, “Okay.”
