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Twenty-One
As promised, Andrew stayed the night. Luckily for me, I didn’t throw up again. I drank water and went to sleep, hoping that whatever alcohol was left would wipe the night straight from my memory.
But it didn’t. I woke up to light streaming through my window and onto the bed where Andrew lay facing me, fully clothed. His peaceful face made all the night’s events come crashing back into my memory. The heated look he gave me after I undressed in front of him. The look of sympathy and pity as he avoided my desperate, pathetic question. I might as well have asked him what made me not good enough for him to love. Inwardly, I groaned.
I must have made some movement because Andrew stirred. He grumbled something in his sleep, his deep frown causing quiet laughter to bubble up in me. He seemed to gravitate toward the sound, even in his half-sleep state. He groped around until he found my hip and pulled me in, tucking me into his chest. Knowing that he would never know, I inhaled deep, taking his scent deep into my body, trying to commit this moment to my memory. After all these years, he still smelled like my favorite combination: bonfire smoke and mint and home. I indulged in my secret desire to get physically closer to him, wrapping an arm and a leg around his body, burrowing into his chest like he was mine. Like I was his.
His arm tightened just a little around my waist, accepting the contact, encouraging it. His hand kneaded my side, a low groan escaping from him. I held my breath as another part of him stood fully awake between us, despite its master’s slumber. I couldn’t help noticing that, despite being with Michael in every romantic and physical sense, I had never felt as intimate with or close to him as I did Andrew. Michael’s body reacted just as quickly as Andrew’s did to our proximity, but with him, it was less passion, more safety, more deliberation, more about duty—and on my part, more wrestling for control over my rights to my own body. Andrew felt what he felt—sadness, anger, lust—freely and with his whole body. And he encouraged me to do the same.
With Andrew, I was free. And there’s an intimacy in that.
I tried to take my attention from that and just focus on being close to Andrew, having what I dreamed about within my reach and yet, so far outside my grasp. If worse came to worst, if Andrew woke up and realized what was happening, I would pretend to be asleep.
But I froze once I felt Andrew’s eyes open.
At first, he stiffened. His eyes, when they found mine, were a muddle of confusion and apprehension. But then, something changed. Maybe it was the pleading look he saw in my eyes, the utter desperation I felt to just be seen and loved for the person that I was in the moment. Or maybe he was feeling his own longing. Whatever it was, we both felt the shift, an inevitable draw toward the end of the cliff.
“Ace.” He only said my nickname, and it was steeped in the remains of sleep, but it was also layered with everything I had hoped for from Michael. Joy. Need. Boundless desire. I closed my eyes as I fought the urge to taste the lips that made this oath, fought the part of me that raged against the promises that I had made to another.
He said it again—my nickname, sounding more strained, teetering on the precipice. His fingers started a brushfire across the expanse of skin on my hip, my neck, my face. He made a small sound in the back of his throat, so unlike him, then a hiss as I accidentally brushed against his crotch. My breathing sped up as I made a decision, right then and there, knowing it would be impossible to go back, to drag us out of the abyss.
I kissed him.
