Chapter Seventeen #2
He almost didn’t know what to say to that. There was so much he could say, and yet he didn’t know how much he should. But he also couldn’t just leave her thinking that.
“It was perfect,” he said. “You didn’t make me do anything, and you didn’t come on too strong.”
“ Pitchfork would give it a ten?”
He could tell she was trying to make a joke out of it to lighten the mood, but the fact that she’d brought it up at all meant that it had to have bothered her some, over the years.
“You know Pitchfork is stingy with those,” John said. “But maybe a nine point eight.”
She looked at him. “Where did I lose the two tenths?”
“You could’ve given me a second to recover so I could kiss you back.”
She pulled at the towel elephant’s ear, and the entire thing unwrapped in her hands until she was holding a balled-up strip of terry cloth.
“Oh,” she said, laughing a little, and he couldn’t tell if she was referring to the elephant or to what he’d just said.
Either way, this conversation was starting to feel like a minefield, so he pushed himself off the bed, standing up.
“Well,” he said. “I should—”
“Are you dating anyone right now?” she burst out.
“No.” He paused. “Are you?”
“No.”
For a minute those short words just hung there, like that was the end of the conversation and there was nothing more to it. Micah was looking at him, her lips parted, like she was about to speak, or maybe waiting for him to. He didn’t know what she wanted him to say.
“It’s weird,” she said finally, “to think of all the people we’ve been with since we saw each other last.”
John spent a lot of energy not thinking about that kind of thing, but he thought he knew what she meant.
Weird to think about these whole relationships that might’ve played out, first dates and anniversaries and fights and breakups, in these years when they’d been out of each other’s lives.
He raised his eyebrows in a way that he hoped read as jokey and light, not like he was being sincere or, god forbid, trying to flirt.
“Are you asking for my body count, Micah?”
She flushed. “No,” she said. “Or I mean, you can tell me if you want. That’s something friends talk about.”
John had been flirting, at least a little.
Because the wild part was that he was pretty sure Micah had started it, had maybe started it the second she’d opened the door wearing that oversized T-shirt falling off her shoulder, although he couldn’t think why he’d gotten that feeling.
Even the show had felt a bit like foreplay.
The revelation of that first kiss, so long ago, was still knocking around his brain, making him wonder if they’d both carried around wrong impressions from that false start that had affected everything after.
“Let’s not talk about it,” he said.
He’d meant that he didn’t know if he could be that kind of friend to her, one who listened to all her sex and love stories and pretended they didn’t eat him alive.
He’d meant that he didn’t know how open he wanted to be about his own relationship history, worried it’d help her read between the lines in ways he wasn’t ready for.
But from the sudden light in Micah’s eyes, he wondered if she’d read something else into his words.
Something more like Let’s not talk about it, let’s do something about it .
His gaze dipped briefly to the rise and fall of her chest before he brought it back up to her face, where she was still watching him.
“God,” she said after the silence stretched uncomfortably long. “I’m just so horny . Aren’t you horny?”
Hearing her even say the word sent a rush to his dick. Of course he was horny. He thought of his dream that morning, how real it had felt, the softness of her bare skin against his hand.
But he also felt…he didn’t even know what the word was. Not quite disappointed. Not quite resigned. Hopeless , he guessed. Hearing her say that word made him feel a little hopeless.
“Sure,” he said. “That’s probably why I’m going to go back to my room and jerk off before I go to bed.”
“I always wondered,” she said, “how you did that while we were on tour. The bus didn’t give a ton of privacy.”
She’d always wondered? What did that mean? “Shower,” he said, then cleared his throat. He couldn’t believe they were having this conversation. “I would do it in the shower. I assumed that’s what everyone was doing.”
She shook her head, and he closed his eyes. He wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t—“Not you?”
“I mostly abstained. I’m, uh…” She bit her lip, giving him a smile that was such a perfect blend of shy and sexy that something in his stomach flipped. “Not very quiet.”
Something he really didn’t need to know about Micah, because now he wouldn’t be able to get it out of his head.
Although now that he knew that, it did make it interesting that he’d never overheard her and Ryder, because that had always been one of his biggest fears while they were dating.
They’d stayed in more hotels on that ill-fated European tour, which had provided some separation at least.
“I don’t think sex is a good idea,” he said, cutting to the chase. He’d given her an out, to backtrack and pretend that wasn’t what she’d been talking about, but somehow he knew she wouldn’t do that.
“Why not?”
He found that the go-to answers on his tongue didn’t really apply anymore.
Because it would fuck up the band? What band.
Because it would fuck up their friendship?
If he was being honest—what friendship. They’d been out of each other’s lives for so long that he supposed it proved that they could be out of each other’s lives for even longer, if it came to that.
But he still felt a knee-jerk panic at the idea of losing Micah in any permanent way, and he worried this was one thing they couldn’t come back from. He didn’t know if he could.
“Because if I touch you…” He swallowed, not sure how to finish that sentence. The dream of her was one thing. He wanted it to be real. But like, he wanted it to be real .
“So don’t touch me.”
He bit back a smile. “That’s a loophole and you know it.”
She sat back against the pillows, rubbing her feet along the covers. Even that small rustling sound shot straight to his dick.
“Well, I’m not going to beg,” she said. “Unless you want me to.”
Maybe it was the blood quickly leaving John’s head and going straight to his lower body, but suddenly he wondered if maybe this had been the ticking time bomb in their friendship from the very start.
He’d always been aware of Micah in that way.
He’d thought never acting on it was the only way to keep things stable, but maybe he’d gotten that all wrong.
Maybe it was a building pressure that needed a release valve or it would never go away.
He leaned on the bed, his fingers splayed against the sheets, his face close to hers.
He could tell he’d taken her by surprise by the way her eyes widened and she drew in a shaky breath, and for a second he saw beneath all the bravado she had on the surface to the woman who was actually scared as hell to put herself out there like this.
It was that glimpse that made him suddenly decide Fuck it .
“If I wanted you to, huh?” he asked.
She nodded slowly, her gaze steady on his. “Just tell me.”
John could get off on the potential alone—the possibility. How many times had he watched the way she moved during a show, had he sat so close to her he could smell her shampoo, had he touched her in casual ways he had to pretend didn’t mean anything?
“Undo your braid.”
She reached up to pull the elastic off the end of it, her fingers a little clumsy as she untwined the strands, running her fingers through them until her hair was splayed out over her shoulders.
John wanted to reach up and touch it, but he felt weirdly like he’d made a promise—not to her even, but to himself. So he settled for just looking at her hair, letting his gaze run over it from the top of her head to where a strand swayed slightly every time she took a shallow breath.
“You really do have uncommonly beautiful hair,” he said. “I can see why it confuses people.”
“It’s just hair.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat that was meant to be a rejection of that. “Put your hands in it,” he said. “And say Fuck , I have beautiful hair.”
A smile played around her lips as she shook her head. “I’m not doing that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh? Are we at your limit already?”
She rolled her eyes, but she reached up to bury both hands in her hair, gripping it around the scalp and scrunching it a little. “ Fuck ,” she said, putting the same emphasis on the word that he had. “I have beautiful hair.”
“Hmm,” he said. “That was pretty good. But I didn’t feel it. Try again.”
She seemed to get that he was serious then, that he wasn’t going to move on until she said the words right. She slid her hands into her hair again, her grip gentler this time, more sensual. “ Fuck ,” she breathed, “I have beautiful hair.”
He waited for her to open her eyes again. “Perfect,” he said. “You should own that, you know.”
She was staring at him almost like he was a stranger, like she was seeing him for the first time. “What about when I cut my hair and dyed it black and looked like Prince Valiant?”
He smiled. “Then I’d make you put your hands in it and say I’m a sexy Prince Valiant . I know it’s just hair, but it’s okay to admit it’s gorgeous.”
Her gaze went up to the top of his head, then back to his face. “I want to touch yours so badly.”
He remembered the show only a few hours ago, that slide of her hand, the way she’d tugged. “That would be breaking the rules, though,” he said. “Wouldn’t it.”
He saw the pulse jump in her throat, but she didn’t say anything in response. His gaze traced the line of her jaw, that tattoo at her neck, the hint of the one at her shoulder showing next to her exposed collarbone from the loose collar of her shirt.
“Pull your shirt down,” he said.