25. Orion
Orion
Jordan wakes later than I do, which is rare.
When I tiptoed past his room on my way to bed last night, I heard an uneven drone.
A soft in-and-out saw of air entering and leaving his lungs.
He usually only snores when he’s passed out drunk, so I took it as a compliment that I’d worn him out to that level.
I was pleased, especially since it meant I could get to my room without him seeing the tear-stained state I was in.
I’m better today.
I’m fine.
I’m ready.
I knew this would be hard, but I spent all night talking myself through various scenarios.
Basically, I’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing I can do is to act as if nothing happened.
I’m sure Jordan is going to feel majorly weird about everything that went down, and since he’s the one who went out of his way to help me, it’s on me to normalize things.
I considered ordering breakfast tacos—his favorite—but that would almost certainly make him think something is amiss. Instead, I’m making the breakfast we always have when we run out of cereal: everything I can find in the fridge on a defrosted, toasted bagel.
Lucky for him, all we have that’s breakfast-y is egg and avocado. With a bit of hot sauce, his bagel won’t actually be all that bad today. We’ve had cheese and peanut butter before, so it could be way worse.
“Mm,” he says, sniffing as he shuffles out of his room in bare feet and soft checkered pajama pants. “Are you toasting bagels?”
“Yup. We’re out of cereal.”
“Thanks.” He takes the mug of coffee I hand him and brings it to his lips reverently. “Sleep okay?”
“Like a log,” I lie.
“Same.”
He has another sip of coffee and puts his mug on the counter, looking at me in an unsettling way. As if things between us aren’t already weird enough, it looks like he’s intent on making them weirder. He gestures to the space between us. “This feels a little fraught. Want to hug it out?”
I very badly don’t want to hug it out. I want to drop my pants, bend over, and get fucked in the ass about it.
I want to slam him against the closest wall and dry hump him so savagely we both come in seconds.
I want to wind my arms around him and kiss him until time stops and this horrible, stark reality we live in fades completely.
“Sure,” I say reasonably. “Why not?”
His embrace is as exuberant as always. Maybe a little more so. He throws his arms around me and lifts me clean off my feet. I can’t decide if it would be more normal for me to struggle or go with it, so I basically flop around limply until he puts me back on my feet.
“Are you okay?” he asks when there’s enough space between us that we can both see each other clearly.
It’s a mistake to ask this type of question, obviously. The best thing to do in a situation like this is to pretend everything’s fine. Everyone knows that. But this is Jordan we’re talking about, and he’s always ignored common-sense rules as though they pose a personal affront to him.
I dip my mouth at the corners, raise my eyebrows, and nod and shrug at the same time. It’s a slightly more complex expression than is ideal, but thankfully, it goes over Jordan’s head. “I’m good, thanks. You?”
He ignores my attempt to shift the conversation to something more neutral, looking into my eyes in a way that feels way too much for eight a.m. “You sore?”
The part of my body he’s talking about reacts as if he addressed my asshole by its government name. My cheeks quiver and tense and a tender, heady, bruised ache swims through my veins.
I can feel where he was with every breath I take. Every step. Every movement. Every shift I think of making.
“No.” It’s the truth. What I feel is a lot. A visceral reminder. A primal memento. But it isn’t pain. At least, not the bad kind. Not the kind he’s worried about.
His lips crack open, disarming me with a brilliant line of white. “Told you I was good, didn’t I?”
I don’t want to give him a bigger head than he already has, but some things can’t be denied. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re a good lay, Jordan. I admit it. Are you happy now?”
From the glee rewriting his features, he definitely is. He’s something else too. Something kind of hopeful or eager to please. I see it and can’t find it in myself to avoid acknowledging the minefield that now exists between us. “You did me a solid. Thanks, bud.”
I head to my room to get ready for the day with his response ringing in my ears on repeat.
He didn’t mean it like that. He only said it because it’s the standard reply to being thanked for something. It’s a habit. A cultural norm.
“Anytime.”