“Well, that makes me feel less embarrassed,” Wren says cheerfully. She flashes me a mischievous grin before turning to him. “It’s 407.”
CHAPTER 47
WREN
“What if everyone starts asking us questions when we go in together,” Miles asks. We’re outside of my apartment door but as I tried to open the door, he blocked it with his body. The muffled music coming from inside reverberates off the door as loud voices shout over it.
"Do you really think we're that important, Davis” I ask, raising an eyebrow. He shrugs. “Besides, it’s Kennedy’s Day, no one is going to care that we’re together.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have stayed in the car for so long,”he looks back to the elevator and then to me. I don’t know why he’s acting so skittish, like we need to sneak around. I don’t hate it though. I liked the idea of us getting caught in the locker room or in the car.
“Don’t tell me you’re regretting it because just five minutes ago you said it was the best head of your life,” I whisper in his ear, standing on my tiptoes. He tenses beneath me and swallows hard as I open the door behind him.
As I expected, our apartment is full of drunk teenagers dressed in hilarious costumes. The balloon arch that took us all morning to fix has toppled over into a heap of popped balloons in the corner. People walk back and forth from the corridors to the living room where we tried to push back our furniture to make more room. I finally installed a lock on my bedroom door to avoid the odd partygoer landing in a drunken mess in my room. I’m trying my hardest to find it within myself to enjoy tonight and attempt to conquer my fear of parties. We decided to keep the party fairly small so our landlord doesn’t attack us and so we can actually fit people into the space.
Miles and I scan the area, trying to find a way to keep ourselves hidden until I’ve got into my costume. Yet Kennedy finds some way to stop us on our way to my room. When her eyes connect with mine across the corridor, she sprints up to us.
“Miles. Fancy seeing you here." Kennedy winks at him, dressed how she dresses every day in a blue denim dungarees and white tee. She said that she doesn’t need to dress up because she already knows she’ll be famous someday. Miles looks down to me and he blushes when his eyes connect with her wild ones.
“Happy birthday, Ken. I got you something,” he says, riffling through his pocket. He lets out a frustrated groan when he reaches into his wrong pocket and of course, a condom accidentally drops out.
“Oh, wow, Miles. For me? You shouldn’t have,” she teases as she picks it up from the ground. He snatches it back off her and shoves it back into his pocket, glaring at her.
“Ha-ha,” he retorts sarcastically before he pulls out her real gift. I watch from beside him as he rambles. “It’s a Canon gift voucher so you can get that endless filmfor your camera like you wished for. My sister is a filmmaker, so she got me a good deal. She added her number on the back if you ever want to-”
Before he can finish his sentence, she pulls him into a deep hug, nearly suffocating him. Kennedy has these kinds of hugs that even though you kind of want to pull away, she makes them so comforting that all you want to do is melt into her.
“Thank you. Thank you. That’s so thoughtful,” she exclaims. While Miles’ back is to me and her blushed face is turned to me, she points at him silently behind his back.Keep him,she mouths to me.I’m trying to,I mouth back.
“Okay, let him go,” I say out loud, pulling Miles off her. “I need to change into my costume.”
“I’msoexcited,” Kennedy squeals. “Scarlett has refused to get ready until you have so she’s aggressively playing beer pong with Evan.”
“That’s not concerning at all… Anyway, you’re going to love it,” I beam, pulling on Miles’ arm down the corridor and into my bedroom.
Touching him feels like such second nature that I don’t think twice before kissing him again on the mouth before he backs up into my bed. We might have already made up for lost time in the car but when I'm around him, I can't keep my hands off him. It feels like we’ve spent so much time apart yet at the same time, it feels like we’ve been together this whole time.
He sits down at the side of my bed as I slowly back away from him. It’s no use trying to fight the ridiculous grin that has spread across my face. After my championship win and having his mouth on my body again, I feel like I’ve reached a new high. A high that I’m not going to worry about falling down from.
“Did you not bring a costume?” I ask as I pull out my outfit from my closet. I lay it down next to him and he looks at it and then at me.
“No. I was half expecting you to scream at me and tell me to leave,” he says with a shrug, pushing himself further back on my bed so his legs swing forward. “Why didn’t you?”
“What do you mean?” I draw my face into a puzzled expression, pushing off my shorts to the ground and stepping out of them. I can tell his eyes are on me as I wander around my room for my last bits of my outfit in nothing but a thin top.
“How come you didn’t push me away again?”
If I hadn’t spent the last few months, thinking over that question, I would have been more caught off guard. After spending so much time with Austin telling me straight up how much I could have ruined something good, I’ve come to realise the underlying fears I’ve had about committing to a relationship. It turns out that my sister is a perfect relationship guru.
“I’m sick of pushing people away. I just want to exist, y’know? Fear and guilt have controlled my life for so long but having you in my life makes me really fucking happy and I don’t want to jeopardise that again,” I explain. My body feels lighter the second the words leave my mouth.
He just nods at me with a little smile, not knowing what to say. Secretly, I don’t want him to say anything. I just want him to understand.
"Can I tell you something?" he asks.
"Of course," I reply. He sighs, throwing his head back dramatically, like always.
"I didn't want to do all the romance grovelling shit because I knew it wouldn't help," he begins. "I know you, Wren. And as much as you love to read about that kind of stuff, sometimes, the reality is, space is better. Time is better. If I was constantly showing up, making a fool of myself just to get you to talk to me, it would have given you more of a reason to push me away. So, I'm not sorry that I didn't grovel. Believe me, I was pining after you in secret. That's always hotter, right?"
