Page 14 of The Cubby Hole

My face burned. My chest felt too small for my lungs. It felt too good to hear him say that.

There was one other time Ben and I had slept together, about three years after we’d broken up. That first awful year had passed and then another that hadn’t been quite so horrible. We’d at least been able to engage in small talk when we’d run into each other in a group of our mutual friends. And then, in that third year, we’d started to hang out again on our own. Just as friends of course. He’d come over to my apartment on weeknights, we’d smoke a little pot, and we’d watch syndicated reruns of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Neither of us had been drinking much anymore, but one night we’d gone to a friend’s art opening earlier in the evening and gotten pretty buzzed on free wine.

Later, back at my place, we’d smoked a bowl on top of the booze, and…

We’d ended up fooling around.

The circumstances had been awfully similar to the way our relationship had begun in the first place, but we hadn’t talked about it, and it hadn’t happened again. It had been a one-off, and I’d privately blamed it on the alcohol.

Ben left the sofa arm and flopped down in the armchair to my left. To hide my disappointment that he’d moved away from me, I pretended to be engrossed in the photographs.

There was the unmistakable sound of a digital shutter clicking.

I jerked my head up to find him with his phone pointed at me.

The shutter sounded again.

“Hey!” My outrage was genuine. I’d been hot and cold, wet and dry too many times to be camera ready. “I thought you didn’t want to take pictures of me.”

“I never said that.”

6

11:11 P.M.

Ben didn’t meet my eyes. He continued to look at his phone, chewing the inside of his cheek. “It’s a good pic.”

“I’ll be the judge of that.” I gestured impatiently. “Lemme see it.”

Instead of handing it over, Ben popped back up out of the chair and slid onto the sofa cushion next to me, close enough that we could both see the screen.

Our thighs pressed together, separated only by the damp towels.

“You look sexy.” The low rumble of his voice made the compliment harder to dismiss.

Still, I pretended to study the image, pulling a skeptical face. “I look drunk as fuck and like I’m trying to be sexy.”

Ben chuckled. “I like that you’re not posed. It’s just you, in the moment, sitting here with me.”

I huffed. “This is definitely not going online.”

Ben cleared his throat. “I don’t want it to.”

He leaned forward to set his phone on the coffee table. I noticed his ears were bright red. He’d been out of the hot tub too long for it to be a purely physical response. He settled back beside me, his bare arm brushing mine through the sleeve of the sweatshirt he’d loaned me.

He held his breath, and the only sound I could hear in the cabin was a ringing in my ears.

He reached for my hand and threaded our fingers together on my lap like it was the most normal thing in the world instead of an action that changed everything.

My cock started to swell beneath the towel under the weight of our hands.

Sophomore year he’d lain beside me on my narrow dorm bed in his underwear, a little drunk, saying nothing, pressing the side of his body against mine until I hadn’t been able to stand the suspense any longer. Our hearts had been beating so hard the mattress was actually moving.

Enduring that breathless silence had been torture.

It had felt like the biggest risk in the world, but I’d finally rolled over and tackled him, covering his mouth and his body with mine.