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The laughter in his eyes dies. He stares at me as his thumbs rub gently along my sides. “I’ll be honest with you, yes. I’ll do whatever you want, Ziggy. You just have to ask.”
I hold his gaze, deliberating, weighing, how reckless I’m brave enough to be. “Where are my panties from that night? At the wedding?”
Sebastian’s expression morphs to surprise. “That’s what you want to ask?”
I shrug, then set my hands on his shoulders, lacing them together around his neck. “I’m starting there. Now, kindly answer me.”
“They’re…in my nightstand.”
“Your nightstand.” I lift my eyebrows. “Why are they there?”
He presses his tongue into his cheek. “Next question.”
I frown at him. “You said you’d be honest.”
“And I have been. I didn’t say I’d answer every question you asked.”
“You said you’d do whatever I asked.”
He hesitates, then says, “There was a silent clause in there that you missed—it’s a footnote. If you looked at the transcript, you’d have to squint real close, but it says, ‘within reason.’ That question is outside reason.”
I sigh, defeated. “Fine.”
His hands drift gently across my back. “Next question.”
“Hmmm.” I search his eyes, gathering my courage. “You’ve told me you just want to be my friend. You’ve told me not to ask you for more.”
A muscle in his jaw jumps. His grip on my back tightens like it’s a reflex. “Those aren’t questions.”
“I’m getting there.”
He swallows. “Okay.”
Slowly, I twirl my fingers into the tips of his hair, gaze locked on his. “Do you only want to be my friend because that’s all you want from me? Or because it’s all you think you should want from me?”
Sebastian’s quiet for a moment, hands softly circling my back. “I only want to be your friend because you matter that much to me, Ziggy. Because I’m just learning how to do this well and trying to do any more than that sounds like pure fucking hubris, like Icarus flying straight toward the sun. Because this is how I can…show you what you mean to me without hurting you or disappointing you. Because if I hurt or disappointed you, I don’t think I’d be able to forgive myself.”
“But what if it wasn’t hubris?” I whisper, my heart aching. I’ve never met someone harder on themselves, someone who believed in themselves less.
“But it is hubris,” he whispers back.
I blink, tears filling my eyes. How do I get him to see the goodness that I see in him? How do I make him believe he’s safe to be more than a friend to me if he wants that, to try and risk and allow himself to fail sometimes and pick himself up, knowing I’ll be right here, every step of the way?
His face tightens as he registers the unshed tears turning my eyes glassy. I hold his gaze, and his words drift through my mind:
Saying thank you is fine, but it wasn’t enough… I wanted to show you.
Those words…they’re an important reminder, and they give me a little sliver of hope.
Sebastian is someone who needs to experience things, to feel them, not hear words about them.
I’ll just have to show him this isn’t hubris—it’s life, and it’s scary, trying to learn someone, to take care of them, to do right by them, when you’re human and you’re imperfect, with your own needs and fears and pitfalls, and you’re bound to fail sometimes.
I’m not a terribly patient person. I like to set my eye on something and get it done. I’ve been that way with every soccer team I wanted to make, every academic goal I set, my checklist of adulthood milestones—college in three years, finally getting my driver’s license, achieving financial independence, securing my own apartment. But for Sebastian, I can be patient. For Sebastian, I can wait until maybe, just maybe, one day he’ll realize he’s safe with me to want more, if he wants more.
I hope he wants more.
Because I sure as hell do.
