AllFreeNovel
Share Us
A moan rose through my chest and escaped my mouth, alerting my ears. It was real. This was happening. Tyler. My best friend. He was kissing me.
What would Courtney say?
Fear returned to my body and gripped my heart in its wretched hand.
What if my parents found out? I was in enough trouble with them already. They would…they would…
I squirmed and released his arm. My open palm pressed his chest in an attempt to push him away, but I savored a single instant of touching him there, feeling his defined pecs under my hand, catching the beat of his heart, following the rise of his chest as he inhaled.
Then I pushed him away.
My ears still rang as I turned from him. It was my heartbeat that I could hear. It thumped so loudly that I almost didn’t hear Tyler’s flood of apologies. But the tingling in my feet that I had attributed to alcohol was rising, soaring through me, reaching all the nerve endings in my body. My breathing was shallow, my fingers twitchy, and my… Fuck. My dick was hard as hell and my head was so light it would have floated into the clouds if it wasn’t attached to my body.
I wheezed in a breath of air. “It’s okay,” I said. Or I thought I had said it.
“…Sebastian, you have to believe me,” he said quickly. “I have no idea what came over me. I think I’m drunk. I thought…maybe…”
“It’s okay,” I said, making sure that my words left my mouth this time. I looked at him.
Horror painted his face. His mouth was open mid-apology and his eyebrows were unnaturally twisted in pain and regret. Fear had narrowed his pupils so much that they were just tiny black specs in rich brown eyes. “Oh, God, Sebastian, I swear…”
My friend was spiraling. The moment I realized it, I pushed aside whatever confusing and wonderful and terrible things I was feeling. I looked into his eyes and made my voice loud enough to drown out his erratic rambling. “Ty, it’s fine,” I said. “We’re drunk. We made a mistake. It’s nothing.” Somehow, somewhere, I found a smile for him. “We’re not the first people to drunk-kiss at midnight.”
“…mistake,” he whispered, frowning a little, then nodding with determination and an eagerness I had rarely seen him exhibit. “Totally. Still, I’m sorry. I usually ask.” His voice thinned almost to a squeak at the last part.
I laughed at that bit. I couldn’t imagine Tyler often mistakenly kissing his heartbroken friends. But I also didn’t know what else to say. So I pulled him in and hugged him.
As I held him in the same sort of embrace he had given me countless times over the last week, I thought I felt his fast heartbeat and his shallow breathing. He hugged me back and didn’t let go.
I was grateful that he didn’t want to break it off right away. My face must have been glowing with heat. I didn’t know what I looked like, but I knew I didn’t want him reading my expressions. My body was still on the verge of shuddering, my legs heavy as lead. I didn’t even dare consider why my dick was throbbing with painful hardness and why my heart was dragging all the way down into my stomach with some feeling I didn’t understand. It couldn’t possibly be disappointment that he had listened to me and stopped.
SIX
Tyler
What the fuck have I done? The question rang through my skull as if I’d climbed the highest mountain and shouted into the endless, empty sky. It echoed and rippled all through my consciousness as Sebastian promised it wasn’t a big deal.
We separated and I shifted uncomfortably to face someplace other than toward Sebastian.
His comforting words had stung me because it wasn’t his job to soothe me, but the other way around. Even so, when the silence came, it was infinitely worse than any comfort he had been providing.
Confusion swirled through my mind as I tried to slow down. Why had I done that? Booze-fueled sentimentality? We had been talking about soulmates and something monumental revealed itself in the center of my mind.
“Actually, I’m pretty drunk,” Sebastian said. “I should probably sleep it off.”
It was a relief that he said it first. He was sparing me the embarrassment of making up an excuse to get out of the basement. “Right.” My throat was sore and my voice was hoarse. “Probably should.”
Sebastian forced a smile, then wished me a good night and left the basement.
As the door shut, I slid lower on the sofa, wanting to squeeze myself between the cushions and disappear. Now that I could truly feel every ounce of embarrassment over that stupid thing I’d done, I indulged. My face was burning, my fingers trembling, my heart racing. What the fuck was wrong with me? The guy had just gotten cheated on and my idea of helping him through it was to make a confused and awkward move on him. I was such an idiot.
Memories of a lifetime spent orbiting each other had shifted in my mind as we talked. They had taken on a slightly different shape, glimmered in a brighter light, and some trick of the eye made me think that maybe, maybe…nonsense. I had no idea what I’d been thinking.
That night, I slept in my own bed. Well, I lay there with my eyes closed, at least. If Sebastian was awake when I entered the room, he didn’t stir. I guessed he had passed out, so I changed into my pajamas and turned away from the room, facing the wall under the window.
A perfect storm of emotions carried me through the night. I was hot and uncomfortable under my covers. I was cold from the air seeping through the microscopic cracks in the window. I was angry at my impulsive behavior and scared by what I had done.
But there was one thing I didn’t dare face. One thing I couldn’t even begin questioning. There was a scary lack of regret in me. I couldn’t be sorry for kissing him when that feeling of connection had seemed so bright and brilliant.
