Chapter 42
42
RHYS
T he first sensation I register is the feeling of Maddie’s silky soft hair feathered over my chest.
I crack my eyes open, and the sight of her raven-black strands strewn across the wide plane of my chest fills me with a deep, mellow satisfaction. Maddie is warm against me, one of her breasts pressed to the side of my chest, her bare thigh crooked on top of my leg under the covers.
Light streams through her window, the rising sun angled perfectly to cast the room in an ethereal, golden amber hue. Above the covers, the air is crisp, while underneath, our body heat creates a warm cocoon that I never want to get out of.
For so many years, I’ve dreamed of waking up in the same bed as Maddie. Just lying still with her tucked against me as her chest swells with the soft and peaceful breaths of sleep.
My heart sings in my chest. Happiness suffuses through me. This is the purest satisfaction I’ve ever known. I close my eyes, not to go back to sleep, but just to try and snatch this moment out of time, brand every feeling and sensation and emotion into my brain so I’ll never forget it.
I don’t know how much time passes while I lie with my eyes closed, marinating in the bliss of the moment. All I know is it isn’t long enough.
When I open my eyes again, my heart squeezes in my chest, because when I look down at Maddie, hers are open, too, and our gazes meet.
I drown in the deep pools of her pristine blue eyes, and as mine tether with hers for a long stretch of time, it feels like the thread connecting our hearts vibrates.
“Morning.” She’s the first to break the silence. A sweet smile pulls at the edges of her mouth after the word leaves it.
“Morning.”
She buries her face in my chest, pulling in a breath. The movement sends her silky hair fanning further over my torso.
“I don’t want to get up,” she says.
“Then let’s not.” I don’t think there’s a limit to how long I could lie here with her. Even if I started to starve, the bliss of being with Maddie like this would overpower the pangs of hunger.
A sigh from her mouth warms the skin on my chest. “We have to get up at some point.”
“No, we don’t.”
She shakes against me with laughter. “I think Jasmine might protest having an extra roommate. Especially one who’s naked in my bed and never lets me go anywhere else. Plus, I’ll start failing my classes. And what happens when I have to pee?”
I make a tisk sound with my tongue on the roof of my mouth. “You just have to be the realist, don’t you?”
“You know me, Miss Practical. You can tell how realistic I am by the way I switched from a business major to an art major.”
My chest rumbles, and my lips tug up. After a moment of reflection, I say, “Did I ever tell you how fucking brave I think you are for doing that?”
Her cheeks flush, and I can see her eyes rolling. “Brave. Yeah, right.”
I tilt her chin with my index finger so she’s looking at me. “I mean it. You were planning on studying business and getting an MBA since elementary school. Your parents were pushing you to do it. Everyone expected it of you. You stopped on a dime and decided to do the thing you love, the risky thing, rather than the safe and guaranteed thing that made you miserable. Not a lot of people would do that.”
Her eyes shift up. “Well, I never would have done it if you hadn’t encouraged and supported me.”
Satisfaction floods my chest. “Just promise you won’t forget your lowly hockey player friends when you’re a world-famous painter.”
She huffs a laugh, swatting my finger away from her chin to rest her head against me. “You’re ridiculous.”
I curl my hand over her bare shoulder and tug her closer. “Let’s listen to some music before we have to get up ,” I put on a mocking voice for those words, “since you’re so damn insistent that we do eventually.”
I reach for my phone and open my Spotify app, putting on a playlist I made of some of the songs I’ve been listening to recently. Almost every one of these songs stirs memories of Maddie. They’re songs we’ve listened to together hanging out. Just about every time we did, deep in the center of my mind there always glowed the warm fantasy of holding her just like I am now.
If that me of the past knew it would one day be a reality—well, he’d probably have died of joy and now I wouldn’t be alive to experience it. Talk about a time-travel paradox.
Poor Song by The Yeah Yeah Yeahs comes on, and the breath in my throat catches.
“Oh, I love this song,” Maddie exclaims. “Everyone knows Maps, but I think this is actually my favorite from this album.”
Emotion rolls through my chest. It’s a lo-fi, stripped-down song where the lead singer sings about her love. It’s always made me think about Maddie, and hearing it right now, like this … I don’t have the words.
“Yeah,” I say when I catch my breath. “Mine, too.”
After a couple more songs, Maddie pushes out a sigh. “Alright, I do have to pee now.”
I groan out the blissful grogginess still lodged in my throat. “Fine,” I reply, a mocking whine to my voice.
Maddie clambers over me and out from underneath the covers. I damn sure appreciate the view as she stands fully nude, honey-gold morning sunlight kissing her creamy skin, before she steps into a pair of shorts and pulls on a shirt.
She grabs her phone, types out a message—to Jasmine I assume—and then heads to the bathroom.
I wait until she comes back to fling the blankets off and get up myself.
Maddie leans against her door, arms folded and crooking an appreciative look at me. “Was waiting for me to come back to get dressed an act of charity?” she quips as I stand up naked.
I make sure to flex my ass muscles when I turn around to pick up my boxers. “Well, you know how thoughtful I am.”
I get dressed and press my lips to Maddie’s as she’s leaned against the door. “You still coming over tonight?”
Tonight’s Halloween night, so the guys are going to be handing out candy to the neighborhood kids who go trick-or-treating. There are actually a lot of families in and near Cedar Shade, so there’s always a huge turnout, which is fun.
She nods. “Yeah. See you then.”
A smile warms my face. “See you then.”
“There he is!” Sebastian exclaims when I step through the door.
Lane shoots me a wry smile as he looks me up and down. I’m wearing my baseball pants and a wrinkled and untucked undershirt, my baseball jersey is slung over my shoulder, and my cleats are untied. “You look like you had a wild night,” he says teasingly.
Guilt laces through me. The first negative emotion I’ve felt since waking up.
Lying naked in bed with Maddie felt like being in a bubble of paradise, set aside from the rest of the world—but we’re still living in that world, and I have to reckon with it.
That includes the fact that I just slept with my best friend’s little sister, and he has no clue.
Coldness pools low and heavy in my stomach. “Something like that,” I say vaguely.
“Not gonna regale us with the salacious details?” Lane prods as I walk to the kitchen to make some coffee.
“You know I don’t kiss and tell,” I say.
Especially when it’s your little sister , a voice in my head whispers, those words stabbing at my chest so sharply I almost wince.
Lane drops his line of questioning and goes back to the video game he’s playing with Sebastian.
“Hudson and Tuck home?” I ask.
“Nah, they went back with Summer and Olivia,” Sebastian answers.
I chuckle. “Wonder if Tuck’s gonna come home with his whole face swollen again.”
Tuck’s badly allergic to Hudson’s cat, Salsa, who lives with Summer now. Summer and Olivia are roommates. With Tuck being Olivia’s boyfriend, the girls try to keep Olivia’s room and the common areas of the house as cat-hair-free as possible, but sometimes Tuck still pays the price for risking it.
It’s a price I know he’d gladly pay any day of the week, though. For what a player he was the first two and a half years I knew him, he’s sure fallen hard.
And so have I.
A pulse of intense realization rockets through me.
Obviously, my feelings for Maddie are nothing new. I’ve been smitten with her for years. But it was the kind of love that accepted its own impossibility, that accepted that one day I’d have to move on, have to live with seeing her eventually end up with another guy.
I loved Maddie the way a great sculptor might think of an incredibly ambitious sculpture; a sculpture that needs to live in his dreams for years before he can even begin the endeavor of creating it; a sculpture that he implicitly accepts he might never be able to bring to life.
Now, I love Maddie the way that sculptor would love his three-quarters-finished work of art, seeing the fruits of maybe decades of dreams and years of labors now so close to complete—something that, if it were to be damaged or destroyed, more than half of his heart would die with it.
Ever since that first kiss Maddie and I shared, I’d worried that us finally sleeping together would be the end of this thing we’re doing.
But this morning sure as hell didn’t feel like the end. It felt like a new beginning.
But does Maddie really want something more than physical—with me? Does she want our emotional relationship to leap far beyond the bounds of our decade-long friendship?
And if she does, will I have to choose between the girl I’m in love with and the best friend who I’ve considered a brother for most of my life?