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Oh. Oh? I had to let go of him. I hadn’t even realised that I was still kind of half on his lap and half on the sofa with my arms around his neck and…
If things had ever been awkward between us before, we’d just risen to a brand-new level of super-awkward. Idiotic-awkward. Full-on stupid.
“Ben…”
“Sorry.That was too much, wasn’t it?” The horrified look on his face was heartbreaking.
“Ben—”
“Sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t… It’s fine. Promise. Just…please don’t move out. Not yet.”
“I’m not moving out.” My head was kind of spinning. What the fuck?
“Sorry for making this weird. I, you know? I know you don’t feel that way about me. You’ve just come out of a horrific ordeal, and the last thing you need is me…trying to awkwardly…hit on you.” He wiped his eyes with those big hands of his, but there were more tears coming, and I couldn’t bear to see him cry, my Ben.
That thought hit me like a dumper truck dumping its load on my chest. Of course he was my Ben. He’d been mine since…
“Sorry,” I said. “I just need to process all of this because you’re not the only one with a broken brain around here. You like me? Like, likelikeme?”
Now he laughed. Fuck. Fuck you, Benjamin Desjardins or whatever your name is.
“Yeah.”
“Yet you lie to people about having girlfriends? I’ve already had one boyfriend so deep in the closet that he could barely see the light, but I’m confused here.”
“Well, I’m not,” he said. “I might seem like it at times. Thing is, I’ve always been in love with Mark, but not in a sexual way, not like you think. My lips have never touched his. We’ve never done stuff like that. Well…” He shuffled on the sofa. “I kiss his head. He smacks kisses on my cheeks.That’s as far as it goes. And we sleep in the same bed and cuddle. Because I need that. Sometimes he needs that too. End of.”
“You’re not helping yourself here,” I said sternly because I was still so very, very confused. He was in love with Mark, but he liked me, and he’d lied about dating girls, except he hadn’t, and he hadn’t hooked up with Mark and…ugh.
“I slept with this girl at a party at college,” he said. “Suzie. It was awful—not her fault—but at least I lost my virginity, which felt like a step on the ladder to getting my life back. I desperately wanted to feel normal. You know?”
“Yeah.” I actually did. “I let Lewis kiss me in the geography classroom so I could get my first kiss over and done with.”
“We’re stupid when we’re young,” he said with a wistful smile. I liked that.
“Lewis asked me to give him a blow job in the equipment shed after sports day in year ten. I beat him at 100 metres, and he said I owed him. I didn’t know any better, so I did it.”
“Oh, Hugo.”
“Don’t youOh, Hugome. I bet you didn’t even officially break up with…what was her name? Suzie?”
“Yeah, and no, I didn’t. I didn’t even finish and I couldn’t face her. I faked an orgasm, went back to my dorm and cried.”
“I threw up in the toilets.”
“See? We were as bad as each other.”
I had to agree to that. And now we were both on a roll, throwing our secrets out into the room like confetti.
“I kissed a bloke once, in a club. Right in front of Mark.” He was laughing. I loved that sound.
“Oh. Jealousy is a bitch.” I was curled closer to him, adjusting the blanket so we were both underneath it.
“Yeah, but that’s not why I did it. I wanted to make out with a bloke and see if I liked it, but I was too drunk to even remember it afterwards. Felt like I’d been totally cheated by the universe again, like this thing with other people was meant to always fail.”
“Well, at least you were smart enough to figure that out. I wasn’t. I went along with the universe at its most fucked up, and well…I ended up here. On your sofa.”
“In that case, I’m glad you did because the past few weeks have been the best relationship I’ve ever had.”
