Chapter Fifteen #2
“Shit,” she says softly. Then she presses her palms against her eyes. “Shit, Zoe.”
“It’s fine. It was incredible. You were—”
“You’re a virgin.”
“I mean, technically not anymore.”
“That’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
She drops her hands. She looks wrecked. Not angry, not regretful, but shaken in a way I’ve never seen her.
Teague Moran who doesn’t flinch, who tends bar and holds still for tattoo needles and doesn’t let anything get under her skin, looks like someone just rearranged the furniture in her entire life.
“I didn’t know,” she says. “You should have told me.”
“When? When you were kissing me against the door? When your hand was in my jeans? There wasn’t exactly a natural pause for my sexual history.”
“There’s always a pause.”
“Not for us. We don’t pause. That’s not how we work.”
She looks at the ceiling. Breathes. Then she looks at me.
“I can’t be someone’s first and also be nobody’s girlfriend,” she says. “Those two things don’t go together. And I just—” She gestures at my body, at the couch, at the space between us. “I just did that without knowing. And now we’re in a place I didn’t sign up for.”
“I signed up for it.”
“You signed up for everything. You always sign up for everything. Station 11, my bar, my bed. Sorry. My couch.” She runs her hand over her face.
“I like you. I like you so much it’s scaring the shit out of me, and I just gave you your first orgasm and you’re lying on my couch looking at me like I’m the whole world and I am not equipped for that. ”
“Then get equipped.”
She almost laughs. Almost. It dies in her throat and she shakes her head and stands up and goes to her dresser and comes back with a pair of sweats that are too long for me and a faded Black Flag t-shirt that smells like her laundry detergent and her skin underneath, baked into the cotton from years of wearing.
“Put these on,” she says. Not cold. Gentle, in her way. “I’m not kicking you out. I just need us to not be naked right now. Before I do things I shouldn't do to you. At least not yet.”
I put them on. The sweats pool at my ankles.
The shirt hangs off one shoulder. I look ridiculous.
I feel warm and surrounded and slightly heartbroken and also like I might be in love, which is insane because I’ve known this woman for three weeks and she just told me she can’t be what I need and I’m standing in her living room wearing her clothes with the ghost of her mouth still between my legs and trying not to cry.
“Come here,” she says. She sits on the couch and pats the cushion next to her and picks up the remote. “What do you know about women’s soccer?”
“Nothing.”
“Good. Portland Thorns are playing. They’re my team.” She turns on the TV. The screen fills with green and the sound of a crowd and the steady rhythm of a commentator’s voice, and Teague pulls a blanket off the back of the couch and tosses half of it over my legs.
We watch soccer. Teague explains the offside rule. I ask questions I half-care about because the other half of me is focused on the inch of space between our thighs and the fact that thirty minutes ago she had her mouth between my legs and now she’s explaining throw-ins like nothing happened.
But something happened. She didn’t stop because she doesn’t want me.
She stopped because she found out what she’d done and it scared her.
Not the sex. The significance. She gave me my first orgasm and I looked at her like she gave me the world, and Teague Moran has never been someone’s world before and she doesn’t know where to put it.
I get it. Or at least I'm trying to. She freaked out.
I didn't. I want more of her. Maybe...maybe after she calms down a bit she'll want more too.
The Portland Thorns score and Teague pumps her fist and says “yes, get in” and her knee bumps mine and she doesn’t move it away.
I press my knee against hers and she lets me.
We sit there in the dark with the soccer on and the blanket over us and our knees touching and nobody talks about what’s happening because what’s happening doesn’t need words right now.
Around halftime I lean my head on her shoulder. She stiffens for exactly two seconds. Then her arm comes up and around and rests on the back of the couch behind me, not touching, but close enough that I can feel the warmth.
“I’m not the dating kind,” she says quietly.
“I know.”
“I’m not going to meet your parents.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not going to become your girlfriend.”
“Okay.”
“Stop saying okay like you don’t believe me.”
I smirk. “Okay.”
She turns her head. Her mouth is close to my hair. She doesn’t kiss me. She just breathes there for a second, close and warm.
“You’re going to be trouble,” she says.
“I’m going to be a firefighter.”
“Same thing.” Her arm drops from the couch to my shoulders. Not around me, just resting there, the weight of it warm through the Black Flag shirt. “Watch the game, Zoe.”
I watch the game. I fall asleep in the second half, my head on her shoulder, wearing her clothes, in her apartment. The last thing I hear is the commentator’s voice and the crowd and Teague breathing next to me, steady and slow.
I sleep better than I have in three weeks.