Kieran
BY THE TIME I finished adding a last minute addition to my duffel bag and headed down the stairs, Jordy was already outside.
He’d dashed off like a cheetah. A very confusing cheetah.
What the hell had he been so embarrassed about?
The damn fish? I’d never cared about that.
I’d never even ribbed him about it in a casual way.
Knowing where it’d come from, and why he was so attached to it, I’d have to be the biggest asshole on the planet to even consider it.
Maybe he was just feeling extra sensitive because of the trip.
I couldn’t blame him. My nerves felt singed and raw, like live wires ready to spark and set things on fire from one careless touch.
From an outsider’s perspective, nothing was strange or inappropriate.
But from my perspective, it felt like we were about to cross this line that we could never go back over.
If I showed him how incredibly tense I was, it would only feed into what he wanted from me.
But the idea of avoiding him, avoiding going too far with him, was starting to feel like an impossibility.
Like something that had already slipped from my fingers and into the wind, where it could never be retrieved.
I’d already revealed too much of myself to him.
Too much of how I felt. But maybe that was just the selfish part of me that was so desperate to let go and let him have his way.
Once I’d wedged my feet into my combat boots, I leaned my hip onto the frame of our front door, raising my eyebrow. “Don’t you want to wait until your dad gets up, at least? Or let him know we’re leaving?”
“Um, no,” he answered quickly, clutching his bag to his chest. The sun wasn’t that bright yet, but it was still shining down right into his hair, lighting up the pale ends with a pretty sheen.
“I already talked to him about everything and got his rules and all that, so we’re fine. Can we just go? Like, now?”
He was way too eager to be alone with me, like always.
If he was normal, he would have avoided it as much as possible.
But Jordy had never been able to sense the ugly part of me, even with how smart he was.
Sometimes it started to feel like he was incapable of noticing that part.
But if he couldn’t tell what kind of person I was, then wasn’t it my responsibility to protect him from it?
He wasn’t a kid or an idiot, but when it came to me…
He had absolutely no sense of self-preservation.
“Yeah.” For a second I thought about walking to his side and opening his door for him, but he yanked it open and launched himself in before I had more than a second to consider it. Which was good, since I probably would have looked like a moron if I’d done that. We weren’t on some cheesy date.
I slung my bag into the little space behind our seats, and he shoved his into the floorboard. When I revved the engine, the radio flipped on to the heavy rock station I’d set it to. Jordy winced, slapping at the volume knob to silence it.
“Can I pick the music?” He asked, turning toward me so he could bat his long, dark eyelashes at me. “I actually made a fun road trip playlist for us.”
Groaning lightly, I grimaced.
“Please?” He asked again, poking out his pink bottom lip. “Your music gives me a headache.”
“I know, I know,” I grumbled. We were barely out of the driveway and I already felt wrapped around his finger. “Fine. Whatever.”
“Thanks!” He grabbed the aux cord, plugging it into his phone so he could open up the playlist. When the first song started playing, an extremely peppy and upbeat sugary pop song, I snorted and shook my head.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“What?” He laughed, biting down into his lower lip. “You don’t like this?”
“Come on, Jordy. Didn’t I have to watch enough of this crap when we were kids?
” It was the theme song to a show he’d been absolutely obsessed with, about a popular and pretty girl who was secretly a badass crime-fighting spy, and all the drama that came with her vastly different double lives.
“Back then, I would have bet a million dollars that you were in love with Bunny,” I commented, referring to the main character.
He grinned, shaking his head. “I was in love with her older brother, actually.”
“I forgot about him,” I said. “He wore eyeliner and rode a motorcycle, right?”
“Yeah,” he answered, giving an exaggerated, dreamy sigh. “He was so cool.”
“But you always said that guy reminded you of me,” I commented as I remembered, furrowing my brows together.
Turning toward me in his seat, he stared at me with his signature how can you be so stupid expression. “… Yeah. Exactly.”
Feeling heat rise up to the surface of my skin, I cleared my throat, keeping my eyes straight ahead on the road. Through my peripherals, I could see his smug expression fade into one of absolute adoration, like he was gushing about me in his head. “Are you going to be like that the whole time?”
“Like what?”
Like the most insanely fucking adorable person that had ever or would ever live. “Looking at me like that.”
“I’m just happy.”
“It really makes you that happy to be crammed up in some cheap hotel room with me for the weekend?” I asked. I couldn’t help it. It seemed unfathomable that someone like him could be so enthralled by that idea.
“Yeah!” His answer was unapologetically enthusiastic, but he also sounded confused by why I would even ask.
“But why?”
“Because it’s you,” he answered, before propping his knees up onto the dash and plopping down a bit further into the seat. “What do I have to do to make you understand that I like you? Rent out a billboard?”
“I…” I stopped, shaking my head. These conversations always made me so twitchy and dizzy, like I couldn’t handle all the conflicting emotions in my brain at once. “I know you’ve said that, but…”
“Kieran, I want to be around you all the time. I think about you all the time. Isn’t it… I mean, don’t you feel like that for me, too?”
The automatic urge to lie, to try and make him think that he wasn’t constantly in my head, burst to life in my head and wanted to shoot out from my mouth. But the vulnerability in his voice, like all his happiness for the rest of his life hinged on my answer, stopped me cold.
I swallowed hard, but it felt like my throat was coated in glue.
“You know I do.”
“So-”
“But that doesn’t mean it’s right, or that we can do anything about it.”
“But don’t you…” He stopped, and turned away from me to stare out of the window. “Never mind.”
“What?”
“I don’t want you to be mad at me,” he said.
“I don’t get mad at you, okay? If I’m pissed off, it’s because of the situation.”
“Don’t you think that the fact that we’re always thinking of each other, and always want to be around each other means something?”
His words hung in the air like heavy fog until they seeped into my brain, swirling in there until I could think of what to say.
“It doesn’t mean anything. I’d have to be blind not to be attracted to you, Jordy.” And deaf, and with no sense of smell or any brain function whatsoever. “And I’m not blind. You’re… Gorgeous. And smart and funny and sweet. Of course I want to be around you. It’s not some cosmic mystery.”
Why those feelings were mutual and he wanted to constantly be around me was a cosmic mystery, but leaving that part out made my argument a little more feasible.
When he didn’t answer for a long time, I was forced to glance away from the road to look at him.
“What?” I asked, immediately snapping my eyes back to the road. His syrupy sweet expression was going to make my dick hard. And that was the last thing I wanted when trapped in a tiny inescapable space with him.
“Nothing,” he said quickly, probably sensing the mild panic in my voice.
It seemed like as soon as he could tell I was upset, he shifted into this perfect little comforting presence to calm me down, even if it was just for a second.
The logical part of my brain knew that was exactly what I needed in a partner, but life just couldn’t be that easy.
“It’s just nice. I’m really glad you feel that way about me. ”
“Well, I’m not,” I couldn’t help but answer gruffly.
“I know,” he said, but the lovely smile didn’t fade from his pretty face. “We’ll work on it.”
Was that his master plan? To spend the weekend working on me and wearing me down until I gave in to what he wanted? My immediate response was that I had to be strong and be sure not to let myself go. But a tiny part of me, that I almost didn’t want to admit existed, was excited to let him try.
The rest of the ride was easy. We just talked about mutual acquaintances and TV shows we were both watching and what he wanted to do at the beach.
I wished it could always be like this between us, because I did feel comfortable and at ease with him, when I wasn’t trying to deny and avoid acting on my obsession.
He had this really cute habit of reading out road signs and billboards as we passed them.
If it had been anyone else, I was sure I would have been annoyed.
But he was just so genuine and enthusiastic, I couldn’t help but find it endearing.
But as we got close to the city, there was one giant billboard that featured an array of ocean creatures on it.
“Oldport Aquarium, discover the wonder,” he said, then paused. When I glanced over, his eyebrows were furrowed together and his expression was subdued. “I didn’t know there was an aquarium here.”
“Me neither,” I answered, just so the silence wasn’t so heavy and tense.
It was before I’d met him, of course, but I knew the aquarium in our city was the last place he’d been able to go out and have fun with his mom before the cancer had gotten really bad.
And she’d gotten him the stuffed clownfish in the souvenir shop on their way out. “Do you… Want to go?”
I didn’t know if it was okay for me to ask that, but I had to say something.