Chapter 36 Will #2
He leaps up as soon as he does it. Victorious. He’s wound up and amped, flying on adrenaline. I fist-bump him, and he pulls me into a tight hug.
“Told you I had it.”
He laughs, and for a second, all I can smell is him. It’s so strong I can almost taste it. Muscle pump and endorphins. An elevated heart rate. Blood rushing. An excess of testosterone pumping through his veins and out of his pores.
We switch positions. He stands at my head, and I take my turn on the bench. As I lie back, my eye wanders up his shorts past his bulge. His athletic shorts are flimsy and clingy, but his T-shirt covers most of his groin. I can see part of him, but not all of him.
Is he hard?
I push the thought down hard.
What the fuck?
What am I thinking? Even if he is, I don’t look at him like this.
He’s Mat. He’s at the gym. He’s working out.
What his dick is doing in his pants is none of my business.
I never look at him like that. We’ve been here together like this a thousand times, and I’ve never once checked out his dick, or any other part of him, for that matter.
I must be having an off night. I’m short of breath before I start pressing.
Feels like I can’t get a deep enough breath, and when I try to correct it, I feel like I’m suffocating, like there’s something heavy on my chest, trapping something big and unwieldy in my rib cage.
I start feeling warm again. Strangely warm, like I felt the other night.
It’s different this time because, this time, I’m acutely aware of where the heat is coming from.
It enters at my crown and burns its way down my face, leaving my chest and shoulders warm and toasty.
Fuck.
It’s late. We’re sitting on the sofa together, and I’m contemplating whether I should get up to get a chunk of cheese from the fridge.
I know we have some of the good Swiss we got at the farmers’ market left over.
It would probably be good if I paired it with some of the sundried tomatoes Mat bought when he went grocery shopping last week.
I go back and forth on the matter for a while and eventually decide against it.
I’m tired and can’t drag my ass off the sofa.
I’m at the point where I’m starting to regret agreeing to watch this goddamn show.
I haven’t been sleeping well, and I’m sure all this blood and gore can’t be helping.
Mat’s sitting close to me. We aren’t touching, but if I moved up even a little, we would be.
He has his head leaning back on the sofa, turned slightly so it’s leaning toward me.
He has two of the throw pillows we bought stuffed between us, and we’re both leaning against them.
Now and again, we have to pummel them to stop them from sliding down.
I’m on the fence about whether they do anything to improve the comfort of the sofa or if they make it worse.
I shift down in my seat and lean my head back too. I look over at Mat. He tosses the pillows on the floor and scoots up, nestling his head into my shoulder.
“More comfortable,” he says before I have time to ask if he’s okay.
I let my hand drop onto his shoulder, and he leans into me with his bulk.
For some reason, the pressure and weight of him on my chest make me feel like I can breathe better than I have all day.
I comb my fingers through his hair. I feel him smile against my chest. I look down and see his lips turned up at the corners.
His eyelids are droopy. He looks tired and relaxed.
He butts my shoulder lightly, making me adjust my position a fraction, and then he sighs happily.
It’s a soft, sweet sound. It sounds like home and contentment and everything right with the world.
I try to keep watching the show. I’m getting behind, and this show is so crazy that something tells me it won’t be easy to catch up if I get totally lost. Every few minutes, I look down.
Mat’s in my arms, so happy and relaxed it looks like he might fall asleep.
I tilt my head toward his. He’s so close to me.
It feels like it would be the most natural thing in the world to lean down and brush my lips against his.
So natural that I start leaning down before I think it through.
The fuck am I doing?
It’s Mat!
I quickly retreat and look determinedly back at the screen.
It feels a lot harder than it should not to kiss him.
It would be so easy. It would feel so right.
It would feel like a perfectly natural extension of what we already have.
Of what we already do. Even though I feel warm from Mat, a chill passes through me when I realize what I’m thinking.
Jesus.
This is Mat. Mat. Matthew Thompson. My best fucking friend, who I don’t fucking kiss unless we’re up to our eyeballs in the kind of trouble that literally renders us unable to think straight.
The kind of trouble that throws its head back and laughs in the face of our pleasure.
The kind of trouble that makes us forget who we are and what we normally do.
The kind of trouble that starts with a capital T.