Chapter 16
Tristan
I knew it. I totally fucking knew it.
When Jesse emerges from the bathroom, complete with shower-damp hair and a beige-y sweater that doesn’t begin to do his sexy-self justice, along with a pair of khakis that it should be illegal to match with beige anything, he’s wearing two totally unmatching socks.
And not just sorta mismatched. One is black with a neon green toe, and the other is ash grey with charcoal pinstripes for fuck’s sake.
I can’t decide whether it’s totally adorable or skin-crawlingly horrifying.
Okay, fine, it’s totally adorable and I know it. Even if I might just have an honest-to-god panic attack if I let myself think too much about the fact that those socks can’t even have similar textures…
And yeah, I’m probably mentally deflecting from some far more serious shit right now, but if fixating on Jesse’s highly questionable sock-related choices keeps me from having to freak out about the fact that sleeping with him left me all kinds of warm and fuzzy and feeling far too fucking good for my own good, I’ll take it.
Just sleeping. All snuggled up in his arms, breathing in that spicy, citrus-cinnamon smell of him.
Never mind that my morbid fascination with his terrible judgment in sock selection is also somewhat helping to keep at bay the brain-melting need to jump him right now.
Otherwise, I might end up on my knees, begging him to put me out of my misery and just fuck me already.
Can you really blame me after that grade-A cocktease act he pulled right before he left me high and dry and hard as hell, all alone in his bed?
Okay, yeah. Maybe it’s a teensy bit difficult not to focus on that one.
Especially since, this morning, I have a feeling he wouldn’t have been able to hold out and stop at just teasing if he could’ve stuck around.
Not that I blame him for leaving. Those kids are totally adorable.
Then there was that moment when he’d looked at me and I’d felt like I could read his mind. Like I could see the wheels turning as he tried to decide whether he should invite me to come along.
I’m not gonna lie, it might’ve stung a little to derail that.
What would’ve stung more though? Having him ask me only because he felt like he should.
Besides, even if he had invited me, what would I know about being part of that sort of happy family shit, even with someone else’s family? Sunshine though, he’s cut out to fit right in.
“What are you doing?”
Jesse doesn’t sound pissed as his question jerks me back to reality. That still doesn’t stop my flinch at his words as my eyes snap up from his socks to his face in an instinctive panic to check his expression.
Not pissed, but—
“I don’t mind, obviously,” he blurts, taking a step toward me with his hands slightly raised, like he can see right through me to the fear I just shook off. “You just didn’t have to.”
I look down at the neatly made bed I’d been giving a final smoothing, tugging at the already straight comforter. “Just didn’t want to leave you with a mess,” I shrug, trying to seem normal as I come down from my reaction.
“You have work today?”
He sounds surprised, and when I shake my head, he tilts his questioningly for a moment before hot, bright pink spreads across his cheeks.
“You’ve only had one day off, so I didn’t think— But I didn’t mean— You don’t have to— Or that work is the only place you’d go—” He cuts off his cute and confusing as hell jabbering, breathing out a long breath as the pink darkens nearly to scarlet as it spreads down across his neck.
“If you want to hang out here so you stay warm, you’re welcome to.
I can leave you a key, so it’s not like you’ll be stuck here.
And there’s food. Unless you have something else you’re doing and don’t want to stay at all, I mean. ”
He throws those words out even faster than before, but at least they string together to make sense. Why they should make my heart go all fluttery and my chest go all toasty-mushy feeling though, I really don’t have any idea.
Except, fuck. I do.
Because he’s just going and doing that same damn thing he did last night when he wrapped me up in those warm, thick, gentle arms of his and held me while I pulled myself back from my stupid-ass freak out.
He’s making me believe, once again, that what you see really is what you get with him.
Sweet as hell, kind and sincere, and totally fucking adorable.
And ohh, it really is time for a distraction right about now.
“You know what I think you’re up to, sunshine?
” I sidle up to him, tipping up onto my toes to lean in so that my question finishes in a whisper right against his scorching-pink blushed ear.
And fuck but does the fact that I can feel the heat of that blush radiating off his skin onto my lips do it for me.
This isn’t just about the tease, or even just to get my own mind off shit I most definitely shouldn’t be thinking. That panicky-embarrassed, wide-eyed look he’d just been giving me tells me he needs a little deflection just about as bad as I do.
I’m not gonna lie though and say I don’t totally love that shuddery shiver of his that I can practically feel running through my own body.
“I think you’re just trying to make sure I’m here when you get back,” I lean in a little closer so my lips brush against the shell of his ear.
And fuuuck does a shock of electric heat crash through me with that breathy little exhale he gives when his body legitimately jolts against mine at the contact.
“’Cause I don’t think you can wait any more than I can to pick up where we left off in your bed. ”
I think I can do this.
I can’t shut off the thought as I flit around Jesse’s apartment, straightening up the weird mixture of barren and cluttered.
Not that I’m going through his things or anything like that.
Even if it is true that there isn’t much I wouldn’t do to get into wherever he keeps his socks so I can match up the pairs and throw away the rest so that he never again repeats this morning’s travesty.
For now though, I’m just tidying up the stuff he has out.
Getting rid of the collection of recyclables he’s left piled on his counter rather than just dropping them in the recycle bin that’s sitting only a foot away on the floor? Definitely not what anyone could call snooping.
I think I can do this.
By this I mean ride this thing with Jesse out as long as it’s good, instead of turning and running the hell away from it now, or after one fuck, like I’ve perfected over the last year. Not that I’ve ever really wanted anything else before this…
It doesn’t mean anything though. Not really. Nothing permanent or big or dangerous, like getting any sort of real feelings or other shit I simply can’t do, mixed up in the situation with us.
But hang out? Have a little fun that lasts longer than just getting each other off?
Yeah, that I think I can manage.
Take how he’s drawing things out, being all touchy-feely without just jumping in and giving me that thorough fucking I know he wants to give me.
Maybe it doesn’t seem like much, but usually, any kind of mushy cuddle fest before (or for that matter after) getting down to it would be enough to send me running.
Fuck, I’ve never once slept all snuggled up with anyone in my life.
Until last night, of course.
So why the hell did I want that with him? And why does the fact that I’ll be doing it again tonight make my heart go all melty-warm and wake up those damn butterflies all over again?
Still, what’s the harm in enjoying a little cuddling?
For the record, it’s not self-flattery or any other arrogant BS that’s making me say I know sunshine wants to fuck me six ways to Sunday.
Not after he as good as told me last night and again this morning with that mouthwateringly thick, impossible to miss hard-on he’d tried not to let me feel.
And just from a little bit of cuddling too…
Not that I’m blaming him at all, ‘cause, not gonna lie, just the memory of that little bit of cuddling has me seriously tenting my joggers.
That sexy sunshine better hurry his cute ass back here.
Before I’d launched into my surface level tidying efforts, I’d done what I’d been itching to do all morning and got my hands on Jesse’s piano.
Considering the fact that it’s been thirteen years since I’ve played anything but my keyboard, the heavier keys felt weird under my fingers, and, as I’d guessed from hearing Jesse play through the wall, that thing is hella out of tune.
For about five seconds, I’d thought I’d be able to tune it myself. I know what it’s supposed to sound like, so how hard could it be?
A quick search on Google was all it took to do away with that idea though. Apparently, the answer is very hard. And you need all kinds of special tools and shit.
So instead, I just messed around with the keys for an hour or so, getting used to where they were off and which ones I needed to use to get the right notes.
It’s been just about as long since anyone’s watched me play the piano as it’s been since I’ve played on a real one, but for some reason, the idea of playing for Jesse—like for real, not just through the wall—got stuck in my head.
Because he’s fucking Jesse and he makes me want to share myself in ways that feel too fucking real to be safe.
After straightening up the kitchen, which had included sorting the random pile of utensils back into their organizer and throwing out the empty bread bag I’d found stuffed in the cupboard next to the boring-as-fuck breakfast options of oats and unsweetened bran cereal, I’d taken a pause to go and retrieve something actually worth eating, along with a few other essentials, from my apartment.
And OMFG, I think if I had slept there, I might have actually died. The place is a freezer.
Like an I-was-surprised-my-still-damp-paint-brushes-I’d-left-behind-hadn’t-frozen-solid freezer.
And from the look I got at the roads while I ran—okay, stumbly-skidded—from Jesse’s front door to my own and from mine back to Jesse’s to protect myself from the very real danger of literally freezing my balls off, I don’t think anyone is gonna be coming to fix my heater any time soon.
Looks like sunshine and I are gonna be getting pretty cozy again tonight.
I’m in what I guess you’d call the living room area of Jesse’s apartment now, about to give the floor a good sweeping, all the while doing my very best not to think about just how cozy I’m hoping the two of us will get tonight, when Jesse finally gives in and bends me over his bed and fucks my brains out…
Okay, so maybe not succeeding so much at the not thinking about the two of us getting cozy…
This space is by far the most cluttery in the apartment.
Along with his piano and the chair he’d claimed he’d be able to sleep in last night; a nineteen seventies-looking monstrosity of a trainwreck between a burlap bag and Halloween colored shag carpet that still manages to look about as comfortable as a bus stop bench, Jesse’s got a bookshelf that’s so full that he’s stacked books sideways and on top of other books.
Beside that, there’s a huge desk that’s piled over with more books and papers and a laptop that looks like it’s about to fall off the top of the stack it’s balanced on.
Making sure to steer clear of that hot mess—one, because that’s the sort of pile of stuff that feels distinctly not-my-business to start tidying up, and, two, because I have a full-blown, psychic-style premonition of that laptop of his sliding right off the top of it and smashing on the floor if I so much as breathe on it, I set to work sweeping.
I’ve only just realized that the floor is actually an awful lot cleaner than I’d expected, when my phone vibrates, chiming to life with a sound that makes my skin itchy-prickle and my adrenaline race.
And not in a good way.
Not the ringtone I’d set for work—
The one for unknown calls.
Sweat breaks out on my palms and my goddamn stupid hands shake so bad that it takes me two tries to fish the still vibrating, chiming thing out of my pocket.
And what the fuck, really? Getting a call or a text I’m not expecting doesn’t usually get me so bent out of shape.
Or at least it hasn’t in months. Not since Josh’s nonstop threats and harassment ended after one last text telling me I’d run out of chances ‘cause he’d replaced my pathetic ass with someone better.
So why am I freaking out now?
Anyway, whoever’s calling me, it’s from a local number, which should make me calm the fuck down.
But fuck. That only makes my heart pound so hard it makes me dizzy.
Because if it is him and he’s calling from a number here—