Chapter 1 #3
“What do you want, Cole?” The words cut my lips as they tumble out, and I turn my back, balling my hands into fists and trying to keep the hot surge of anger inside me under control. But I don’t look away fast enough, because I see the way he folds inward, casting his eyes toward the ground.
“Um, I mean —” The seconds tick by, and we’re both breathing hard. “Look, this is hard for me too, okay? I just figured it out yesterday —”
“I find that hard to believe —” I snort, and it feels good to throw myself at something.
“Okay, here’s the thing — Bree is — could you please look at me?
” he pleads, and I turn, watching him as he spreads his hands in the moonlight.
“Bree is like a sister to me, but she can also be impulsive, and she’s the kind of friend where you don’t ask twice when she calls you up on the phone and tells you that you have to pack up everything and cross an ocean for her because she’s marrying some dude she just met — no shade to your brother.
So I did it — and it wasn’t until yesterday that she told me where the party was, and that’s when I put two and two together. ”
“Does she know?” I cut in. “About you and me?”
“Of course not,” Cole scoffs. “You know I’d never —”
He stops, and I know we’re both thinking about the last time we saw each other, about all the things we never said. My eyes are stinging, and I blink angrily, cuffing the side of my head with my hand as I will the feeling away.
“Where did you go?” I can barely force the words out. “I called and called and called, but you never —”
“Ezra, I’m sorry —” Cole’s eyes are sad, but there’s something fierce in them as he steps towards me, his hands reaching out for thin air. “You have no idea how sorry I am —”
The noise that explodes out of me is somewhere between a snort and a sob, and his words hang in the air, both of us blazing, his eyes flicking down to my mouth.
Then we’re closing the gap between us, our lips crashing together as we grab for whatever we can find.
Cole’s hands are on my face, brushing the stubble on my cheeks, and mine are holding on to his skinny hips as if they’re the last thing keeping me from spinning off the face of the earth.
And inside my head I’m thinking it’s a fucking cliche, that I always roll my eyes at scenes like this in movies, at the desperate clinches that come out of nowhere, between two characters who have no business being in each other’s orbit.
But even as my brain is spitting out these thoughts, my tongue is claiming Cole’s mouth, one of my hands finding the scant meat of his ass, and I’m eighteen again, rolling him underneath me while he wraps his thighs around my waist. And Cole is walking me backwards, and I feel one of the wooden posts of the swingset digging into my back, and I lean hard against it, letting it center me, even as I’m splitting apart at the seams.
And I can’t say it doesn’t feel good, listening to his reedy moans as I dip my thumbs beneath his waistband, finding the hollows of his hips.
I can’t say I haven’t thought about this, haven’t wondered what it would be like to meet him again.
Haven’t woken up with his name a strangled cry bursting from my throat.
I don’t fucking deserve this, but he’s giving it to me, and I’m too tired to be the bigger person, to tell him all the reasons that he’s making a mistake, all the ways I’m going to disappoint him.
So I let him undo my tie and reel me in, and when his fingers find my collar a few moments later, opening the top two buttons, I tilt my head to the side, groaning as his teeth find my flesh.
And when he slides to the ground — when he drags his open lips down the front of my white shirt — when the knees of those pink trousers hit the dirt in the backyard that was once my entire world — when he presses his face just below my belt and looks up at me with moonbright eyes — I nod and give him permission, because there is no universe where I’ve ever been able to say no to him.
And so he draws me gently out into the cold air, and his mouth is hot and wet, and one of my hands is stretched above my head, wrapped around the wooden support behind me.
The other is in his hair, and those waves are just as fine and silky as I remember, supple between my fingers.
I’m watching his handsome face, his eyes shut tight as he takes me deep, and I know he’s always been sunshine, that when he was mine, he brightened even my darkest days.
But I’m just as sure — I know this, even as my thighs are burning, even as I’m ready to shake apart — that I am not, that I have never been, that I will never be — good enough for him.
That I’ll drag him down as surely as a stone around his neck.
And in the moment that my world shatters — in the horrible clarity that follows — I know what I have to do.
He’s climbing to his feet, and he’s kissing me, and I don’t mind that he tastes like me, but I keep my hands at my sides and my lips closed. And when he pulls back to study my face, there’s a line between his brows and I think he sees it too.
But he plays it off as he tucks me back into my trousers and caresses the side of my face, and when he speaks, his whisper is playful and a little hoarse. “So, uh — what do we tell Bree and Seth?”
I take his hand, pressing it against his chest, and leave it there. “We don’t tell them anything — because there’s nothing to tell.”
I might as well have slapped him. “There’s — what?”
“Nothing to tell,” I repeat, folding my arms. “It’s never going to work.”
He opens his mouth, then shuts it, his eyes flashing. Then he opens it once more. “Sorry, it was my mistake. You know, you really are an asshole.”
He turns on his heel and marches across the yard, slipping back out the way he came. And once again, I’m alone in the moonlight, one more door closed to me.
I know what you’re thinking, and I know you’re screaming at me to go after him. But this isn’t going to be that kind of story.