Chapter 6
Jeremy
Ifelt like I was intruding on something I shouldn’t have been.
It was sweet to see Austin with his mother and how excited she’d been, but it was their moment and not mine.
I slipped out of the room and back into the kitchen to make myself another cup of coffee.
The night before had been rough, full of tossing and turning, realizing that the person I truly desired was right down the hall and not in bed next to me.
I stood at the window as I sipped the bitter liquid. My thoughts kept wandering to what was going on in the other room. Things had felt so natural with Austin. It was like the years apart had vanished and we’d been able to pick back up where we’d left off and ignore all the hurt.
The longer I stood there, the white flakes began to fall from the sky. Growing up in California, I’d never really experienced a white Christmas until I’d moved to New York. The type of cold they experienced in the Northeast was something else entirely. I thought I would die that first year.
After I finished my cup of coffee, I made my way back up to the bedroom.
Leah was still sleeping, and I didn’t want to disturb her.
I searched through my luggage and found the e-reader that I’d packed.
It had been a while since I’d read a good book, but figured that if we were there for two weeks that it was time that I caught up on some books I’d been hoarding.
Buying and reading books were two entirely different hobbies. Even in the electronic format. Thanks to the minimal space in our apartment in New York, I collected more of the digital variety versus the physical.
As carefully as I could, I climbed onto the bed, lifting the covers over my lap and opening up the latest psychological thriller.
I dove in, and the story gripped me from the first page.
It was about a man who had bought an old bookstore only to discover a hidden basement that had all sorts of old artifacts.
At night, strange things started happening, and people were breaking into the store, trying to get to the basement.
The story had just started getting really juicy.
Another woman had broken into the store in the middle of the night wielding a machete, ranting about evil spirits and how she needed to destroy the shop.
When the protagonist was locked in a heated battle, trying to stop the woman from hacking away at the books and other parts of the store, I felt a pressure on my leg.
It was enough to make me jump and almost throw my reader across the room. Damn intense moments and all of that.
“What are you doing?” Leah was groggy as she stared up at me, though my heart beat a million miles a minute.
“Well, I was reading a book. You just scared the shit out of me.”
She laughed as she sat up, pushing her long hair out of her face before grabbing a hair tie from around her wrist and securing it in a messy bun on top of her head.
“I’ve been awake for like, ten minutes. I was starting to wonder if you’d ever notice.”
I laughed, though it sounded awkward and forced. If she hadn’t touched me or said something, I would have been too engrossed in my book to pay attention.
“It’s snowing...”
I didn’t know what possessed me to say it. Looking at the window, the flakes were falling thicker than before I’d come up there earlier. My eyes widened at the realization. Those were much fatter flakes. It was enough to have me shooting from the bed to the windowsill.
A thin coating of white covered the ground. It wasn’t enough to have me that concerned. I’d certainly seen more in my time in NYC, but I knew enough that in areas like this, that could change really quickly.
“Yeah? We usually get a decent amount around here. I normally don’t get to come home because of it. Looks like it held off this year until I could make it.”
That should have made me feel better, but it didn’t. If things got bad, would we be stuck here for more than the two weeks? I had a job back in the city, one that I had just recently started and didn’t have a shit ton of time off saved for.
“Would you chill out? I see you panicking over there. You forget this is Chicago. They’re used to this crap around here.”
It still didn’t ease my anxiety, and Leah crawled from the bed to stand behind me. She draped her arms over my shoulders and kissed my neck. Most men would probably find the move arousing, but for me all it did was make something slither in my gut that didn’t feel right.
Instead of sinking into her attempts at comfort, I pulled away entirely. My phone sat on the charger, and I picked it up. The move was dismissive as hell. I knew that. It didn’t stop me, though.
“According to the forecast, this is going to keep up for the next several days and through the holidays.” I took a deep breath.
It wasn’t the end of the world. I’d even seen it in New York, where it dumped for days on end only for us to suddenly be hit with a warm stretch and it all melted in a day or two.
Maybe similar things like that happened here.
Leah came up behind me again, pushing my phone out of my hand. It landed on the bed with a soft thump, and my heart started thudding a million miles a minute again. Her arms curled around me, and that squirmy, uneasy feeling returned.
“You know what I always imagined?”
I swallowed thickly around the lump in my throat because I had an idea about what she was going to say.
“What’s that?”
“I’ve always wanted to have someone take me apart under my parents’ roof... in my childhood bed. What do you think? Wouldn’t it be poetic? Our first time? We’re engaged, you’ve met my family, and we finally did the deed in my childhood bed?”
I tensed in her hold. Somehow I knew there was a chance of this coming up again while we were here. There had been a small part of me that hoped that she would be too weirded out to try anything under her parent’s roof, but some people were into that. Go figure she was one of them.
“Leah—”
“No? Come on, Jer. What are we waiting for? The whole waiting for the wedding day thing is so old-fashioned, don’t you think?”
My eyes slammed closed as insects crawled under my skin.
If only she knew that wasn’t the problem I was having.
I’d always claimed to be bisexual, but maybe that wasn’t the case.
Bi-romantic maybe? I loved Leah. She was an amazing friend, and we shared a deep bond that I hadn’t shared with anyone since my brief fling with Austin.
I just didn’t have the desire to sleep with her. Or any woman for that matter.
“It’s not that—” My voice cracked as Leah let go of me, throwing her arms into the air.
“What is it, Jeremy? We’ve been doing this for years. Am I doing something wrong?”
My eyes widened because the last thing I’d wanted to do was make her think that I’d been leading her on, but it looked like I’d done that, anyway.
Things escalated from there. If I thought I’d get off the hook with a simple ‘no’ this time, I was wrong.
Leah was a woman on a mission. She lifted her sweater up and over her head to reveal a lacy red bra over her perky breasts.
The lingerie was pretty, but it did nothing for me, and it sucked that I had to be in this position.
Though I’d put myself in it by getting down on one knee and asking her to marry me.
This was a disaster.
Her hands cupped her breasts, massaging the soft mounds, and any other man would probably fall all over themselves to see it. All I could do was sit there like a damn idiot and stare at her.
“This. No. I’m so sorry.” The words tumbled out of me as I backed across the room, my ass hitting the wall as I stared at the woman whose face fell as she watched me retreat.
“What do you mean?”
I choked on the words because I hated doing it to her. She deserved so much more. We were at her parents’ house for fucking Christmas, and here I was acting like a psycho turning down sex with his fiancée.
“I mean, I don’t...” God. I could say it.
Be a man. Own up to it and tell her I didn’t want to.
That was the responsible thing. A good person respected their partner’s wishes.
My eyes burned, and a wave of humiliation washed through me as I realized I was about to cry trying to explain this to her. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“What do you mean?”
When my eyes closed again, I lost the battle against that burn. A tear blazed down my cheek as I pressed myself harder into the wall. Maybe if I tried hard enough, it would open up and swallow me whole before I had to finish speaking.
“I mean, I don’t think I can sleep with you. I’m so fucking sorry.”