Chapter Thirty-Eight
I’m worried last night was a dream.
As I’m waking up, I think it over and try to piece it together. Who even was I last night? I’m not mad at myself, and there’s no way I could ever regret the kiss. I rest my hands on my stomach and look up at the ceiling.
But now I’m the one who has to try to clean up the enormous mess I’ve made. Because where exactly am I supposed to go from here? I kissed Zarmenus, the guy that I’m in a fake relationship with. He’s also my roommate, and the entire world is watching us to see if humans and demons can coexist.
Kissing him is like lobbing a grenade into an already complicated and delicate situation.
If I regret anything about the kiss, it’s that.
I sit up and look under my blankets until I find my shirt and pull it on.
It reminds me of when he took it off me.
Was that the hottest moment of my life? The answer is an easy yes.
“Good morning.”
Zarmenus is standing by our closet in his workout gear.
“Morning.”
“How’d you sleep?”
“Pretty good,” I say. “How about you?”
“Never better.”
He comes over and gives me a quick peck on the lips. I’m so startled I nearly flinch away.
“I’m going for a run,” he says. “I’ll get us coffee after, you want the usual?”
My lips are tingling. Is this the new status quo? “Yes, please.”
“Okay, see you soon.”
As soon as he leaves, I sit up. Bell is sitting on his spot on Zarmenus’s desk. She stares at me, and tilts her head in a way that almost reads as if she is rolling her eyes.
I start smiling so damn hard.
I kissed Zarmenus. He kissed me again this morning.
And it was amazing.
I wish I could bask in how good last night was, but even though my entire life changed last night, the rest of the world didn’t.
This isn’t like the discovery that Hell is real.
The world isn’t on pause because I kissed my roommate.
I have papers due in two weeks and I am annoyingly behind, despite my best efforts.
I will have to work on them pretty much every night until they’re due, and they will need to take priority for a while.
I turn my head and see Bell watching me, her eyes narrowed.
Wait, is she protective of Zarmenus? I hope she can’t read my mind, or tell how conflicted I am.
I get up, use the bathroom, make myself a bowl of cereal and a coffee in the kitchen area down the hall from my dorm, then go back and lift the lift of my laptop. Thoughts about kissing can wait until this essay is done. It’s a paper about database management systems.
After five minutes of writing I check my phone. Nothing from Zarmenus, but I do have a message from Ashley.
I had a dream about you last night!
I’m stunned that I haven’t even thought to tell her yet. I just had my first kiss! She needs to know.
I start a call to her, but then cancel it.
I should tell her what happened last night.
She’s my best friend. Me having my first kiss is absolutely something she should know about.
Yet I can’t get myself to start another call to her.
I know she’ll have questions about the kiss, and my feelings, which is complicated because I’m not even sure how I feel about these feelings yet.
What exactly does it mean that I enjoyed the kiss as much as I did?
Why does just thinking about it make me smile?
Is this normal? Plus, I don’t want to risk Zarmenus coming home while I’m explaining how I feel to her.
Zarmenus is attractive and interesting and nice to me, as well as a great kisser.
Feeling all fluttery and giddy is probably par for the course, and doesn’t definitively mean I have a crush.
Which is good, because a crush would make things complicated.
I text Ashley back, keeping the kiss to myself, and then check my messages again.
I don’t even know what kind of message I want from Zarmenus, but something would be nice.
I put my phone face down. I need to concentrate. I can indulge these feelings once I have a finished draft of this essay.
I spend the next two hours working, only briefly distracted by my phone. But I make good progress. I think throwing myself into this work is intentional, because if I don’t, then I’ll have to think about Zarmenus.
I’m not sure where he is. It’s nearly ten in the morning, and by now he’s usually back.
I hear the door unlock.
Speak of the devil, I think.
He comes inside and kicks off his sneakers. The smile he gives me brings another huge spike of endorphins. Again, it’s a possibly normal post-make-out response, no cause for alarm just yet.
“Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“What are you doing?”
“Essay on databases.”
“Hot.”
He sits down at his desk so he’s facing away from me. On any other day, this would be perfectly ordinary. He would work on an assessment or, truth be told, he’d probably be playing a video game or reading in bed.
Today isn’t normal, though. We made out last night.
“Owen,” says Zarmenus. He’s still looking away from me. I keep my focus locked onto my computer.
“Yes?”
“What are you thinking about?”
I chew my bottom lip. “Nothing.”
“I can practically hear your thoughts.”
Something jabs into my back. He’s poked me with his foot. I spin around in my chair.
“Is this about last night?” he asks. “Talk to me.”
A part of me is incredibly relieved. I was already imagining what it would be like if we weren’t able to speak about what happened last night. I’m not sure how well I would handle having to repress and pretend as if kisses like that happen to me all the time.
“Did you not like it?” he asks, his voice painfully sincere. “You can tell me.”
“No!” I say, immediately regretting my enthusiasm. “It was amazing, you’re great, no complaints.”
I remember him kissing my neck. “Great” simply doesn’t do it justice. He can’t know this, but that was easily in the top five best moments of my life.
“Then why are you stewing?” he asks.
“I’m not stewing!”
He gives me a blank look, and I deserve it.
“I guess I wasn’t expecting us to do that,” I say. “Were you?”
He shrugs. “I thought it would be fun. Walk me through what you’re feeling.”
“I just. I feel like this makes things complicated and messy.”
“How so?”
“I’m not really a hookup type of guy.”
Or am I? The thought does hold some appeal, but there’s always been something holding me back. I would never judge anyone for wanting to be as active as they wanted to be when it comes to hooking up. It’s just never seemed like the type of thing I would do. I’m too much of an overthinker.
“Oh,” he says. “Right. I’m sorry, we should’ve talked about this more last night.”
Even though I know I’m being myself, I find it kind of annoying that I’m saying these things.
Why am I playing this part if I don’t even like it?
I know what I should say, and the right course of action.
But there’s this new part of me that wants to throw caution completely out the window and tell Zarmenus that whole, terrifying truth, which is that kissing him was amazing, and even though I don’t have a pinpoint on exactly what it means, I want to do it again.
But what if he doesn’t feel the same way?
The thought of sharing a room with him, of spending the entire rest of the semester together pretending to be boyfriends?
I’d honestly rather come face-to-face with an eldritch horror.
Or maybe not. But it’s close.
“Well, listen,” he says. “I’ll lay my cards on the table.
You’re a hot guy and a great kisser, and I have no problems with casual hookups.
I think we can hook up and it won’t impact me emotionally, and it won’t interfere with our agreement.
So if you want to make out again, I’m down.
But I’m most likely leaving at the end of the semester, so we have to keep it casual. ”
Oh.
“Ball’s totally in your court,” he continues. “I’m happy with whatever.”
I mean, it’s good that he’s honest. But there’s a part of me that feels like I’ve been gutted. It just confirms what I’ve been thinking: these crush-like feelings need to be destroyed. We could hook up again, but we will never move past that. Which is fine. Good, even. It makes sense.
If it weren’t for these feelings, maybe we could just hook up.
But they’re real, and as much as I want them gone, I don’t have that level of control.
This morning they’ve been more intense than they’ve ever been, and it’s obviously because we kissed.
If we keep hooking up they’ll just get worse, and when he leaves I’ll be more devastated than I’m sure I’ll already be.
“I thought you were going to ask your parents if you could stay?” I ask, a desperate part of me clinging to that hope.
“I am,” he says. “But I feel like if I was allowed to stay, they would’ve told me by now. I’m sure I’ll visit Earth a lot, but Hell is my home. Besides, they’ve never been huge fans of letting me do what I want.”
I think it over.
“So what do you want to do?” he asks.
“I think we should go back to being platonic,” I say. “I don’t want to make things too complicated.”
“Easy.”
He turns around in his chair and returns his attention to his computer. I was right, he isn’t working on one of his papers or anything college related. He’s playing a game, a cozy farming simulator that Ashley has sunk hundreds of hours into. It’s so cute it makes my heart swell.
Being friends is better.
It is.