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Not now. Not this time.
I nodded my understanding and pulled back from him.
Asher was quick to turn away and put some distance between us.
“Ash,” I called as he hurried away. He halted. He didn’t look over his shoulder, but he waited. “Midnight. I’ll leave my outside door unlocked.” My throat closed and fear filled me to the brim. I didn’t know what else to do. This was as far as I could go. This was as much as I could say to him.
I feared the disappointment. I feared the loneliness. I feared his stubbornness. And I feared midnight.
Asher walked away, but I didn’t follow. I wanted to be anywhere other than at the house. Just now, I wanted to be alone. And I wanted to search for the well of tranquility in me that I had misplaced in an instant.
ELEVEN
Asher
Though my heart had lurched and my unquenched lust had soared at his invitation, the day’s slow passage of time chipped away my longing for him and left me furious. How did he even dare put me in this spot? Why had he made it my choice?
Life would have been simple if he had never offered to wrestle me. Or if he simply took the thing he wanted. I didn’t want it to be up to me. I didn’t want to choose between him and our parents. And he was cruel for making me.
Jordan was missing from that night’s dinner table. He hadn’t returned from the lake, but he had texted George to tell him he would stay and enjoy the sunset. Our parents didn’t worry. They picked a bottle of red and took it to the front porch rather than the backyard, played music for themselves, and left me in my sullen silence.
I stalked back to my room. I paced. I showered. I paced some more. I was restless. My heart moved from one end of the spectrum to the other, never even bothering to linger around some reasonable middle. It either burned with desire or ached with disappointment.
There had been a moment in the forest when I almost gave in. I had stood so close to the edge of that cliff. One wrong breath would have sent me over. There would have been nothing left for me other than a free fall.
My heart clenched as I gazed out of the balcony door. The tired summer dusk gave way to the night before his footsteps in the hallway alerted me that Jordan had returned.
A long time later, I sat in my chair and stared at the empty desk. It crossed my mind that this summer break wouldn’t be the end of it. We were returning to the same team house, to the same locker room, to the same showers. We had another year before Jordan graduated. Then the realization squeezed all my insides: he was leaving me in less than a year.
Just like when he’d graduated from high school, Jordan was going to move on, and I would stay behind. Would he look into my eyes next year and tell me, once again, that I was nothing to him? I doubted it. We’d crossed that bridge with no way to return.
I saw him from the corner of my eye when he stepped out onto the balcony. He lingered at the balustrade for a few moments, then returned to his room. I looked at my wristwatch. Twenty minutes to go.
I wasn’t sure which I dreaded more; ending this for good or letting us push and pull and grapple for another year.
Isn’t this what you’ve been dreaming about for years? It was exactly as I had prayed it would be. A hot summer night, silence disrupted only by the breeze rustling the leaves in the nearby forest and Jordan unashamedly wanting all I had to offer. A few years ago, when I had spent my night wide-eyed in this room, fantasizing about him and trying not to make a sound in my ecstasy, would I have balked at him doing the very thing I had wanted him to do? What if he had, in fact, walked into my room in the middle of the night, found me naked and heated, and joined me like I’d dreamed? Would I have sent him away? I doubted it. It was hard to imagine that anything would have deterred me on those nights.
So when had I become a coward?
When he made you decide, I whispered internally. And again, anger washed over me. I shot to my feet but made sure I was quiet as I feathered across the room and tiptoed onto the balcony. The backyard was empty and no light came from downstairs. Our parents had retired to their bedroom or stayed on the front porch.
Even before I entered his room, I could see him bathed in the dim yellow lamplight, sprawled out on his bed, his left foot dangling from the edge, shaking endlessly. He was looking at his phone. The visage was filtered by a thin white curtain, but I saw his bare torso and his red shorts.
I slipped inside as something lurched inside of my chest. He’d promised to keep the door unlocked for me. And he hadn’t changed his mind. I wasn’t sure if I was sorry or overjoyed at that. Perhaps all would have been easier had he decided for both of us and left it locked. But there had never been anything easy in our relationship. Why would I expect him to change now?
“You came,” he whispered, pulling earbuds from his ears and dropping them on his nightstand. He sat up and leaned forward as if to stand.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said and bit back a nastier thing I might have said.
Jordan cocked his head, a slight frown creasing his forehead. “Oh?”
“You’re cruel,” I said indignantly, my chin lifted. I stared him down and followed the line of his eyes as he got up and stepped closer, towering over me. I wasn’t afraid of his size even if I wished I could keep looking down instead of all the way up. I moved past the subtle power play. “You’re putting me in an impossible position.”
He kept looking at me with his full attention and no interruption.
His silence was louder than any question he could ask me. It prompted me to continue and I realized he had remained silent on purpose.
I couldn’t hold my words back. I couldn’t let this silence go on. “You’re forcing me to choose between you and our family. You’re throwing all the responsibility on me. And when it blows up in our faces like it is going to, it’ll be my fault. Because I made the choice.”
