37. Jordan
Jordan
Idon’t know what day it is, but I do know that I woke up in Orion’s bed this morning, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to go fall asleep in it tonight.
It’s the best feeling ever. The past few days have been a blur.
We’ve been going to class when we can drag ourselves out, but we’ve definitely been home a lot more than usual.
Out in the real world, things are ticking over like always, but when the front door clicks shut, and it’s just me and Orion alone together, clothes go flying.
Every time is the same. All-consuming. Goodness that bends my mind and leaves me flat on my back, gasping for air and seeing stars.
Afterward, when we’ve made each other come until we can’t anymore, we revert to something resembling normal for us.
We talk about what we want to eat for dinner and kick back on the sofa and watch hockey.
I yell at the TV, and Orion yells at me not to.
We laugh like we always do and take the piss out of each other.
It’s just that now, when it happens, a current flows between us that wasn’t there before.
That’s not to say it’s been plain sailing. Since I started overthinking things, I haven’t been able to stop. When I’m not buried inside him, or close enough to him that I could reach out and touch him, my mind takes off at a canter and races to dark places.
The way things are between us now is incredible, but they’re unspoken.
I have the biggest crush ever on Orion, my best friend in all the world, and I haven’t told him.
I want to. I need to. But I’m afraid. I know I’m probably catastrophizing, but at the same time, if this is casual for him and he wants to see other people or anything like that, I definitely won’t be okay.
I’ve been messaging my sisters incessantly about it.
All of them, individually, for maximum benefit.
Unfortunately for me, they’re very close and talk to each other all the time.
Yesterday, they realized I was rehashing the same things about Orion to each of them in turn, so Kirst created a group chat to rein me in.
She named it We All Think You Should Tell Orion How You Feel About Him.
Now none of them will reply if I message them about him outside the chat.
It’s the worst because no matter how I try to explain it, none of them seem to be able to understand how hot Orion is, or how much I’ll die if he doesn’t feel the same way I do.
I’ve never felt like this. I feel like I’m floating when I see his face, like tiny bubbles are popping in my brain when he smiles at me.
When we touch, we create something beautiful that exists between us, and us only.
It’s a connection so pure and singular that when I close my eyes, I can almost see it.
A warm, tingling pathway that stretches out from his heart to mine.
His hands to my hands.
His lips to mine.
I honestly can’t imagine what all these feelings could be if they aren’t love, but at the same time, I recently asked O if he’d ever had a crush on me, and he said, “For, like, a minute.”
He was referring to when we first met. And that was years ago.
I open the We All Think You Should Tell Orion How You Feel About Him group chat and fire off a quick message.
How bad is it when someone says they had a crush on you for ‘like a minute’ six years ago?
Kirst:
Love you, Jordy.
Keeley:
Proud of you, little brother.
Fuck! My sisters are the worst.
Oh God. There he is. All sleepy, with a crease ironed into his cheek by his pillow.
His hair is standing up at the back, probably from what I did to him in the middle of the night, and it’s only making him look hotter.
He turns to get milk out of the fridge for his coffee, and great, just great, there’s his perfect ass. Attached to him, like always.
It’s too much.
I can’t handle it.
“You were up early. Where’d you go?” he asks.
“I went to my economics class.”
It’s a nightmare class. Boring as hell, and first thing on a Friday morning.
I would have skipped it, except that I received an email from my professor the other day, strenuously recommending that I not skip any more classes this semester or I risk losing my credit.
I dragged myself out despite a strong objection from my dick.
Leaving Orion in bed alone was a very unpleasant sort of torment.
Orion’s brows rise fractionally at the news. “I didn’t hear you leave.”
“I tried to be quiet,” I say.
I watched you sleep for as long as I could, I think, using all my focus to try to establish a telepathic link with him so he’ll know what I’m thinking in the absence of me having the balls to tell him. You’re so beautiful. I could have watched you for hours.
His expression softens, eyes turning to dark molten chocolate. “Have you eaten yet?”
“Yeah, I had cereal.”
He cocks his head at me accusingly. “Did you put the milk in first?”
I consider lying to rile him up, but the milk thing is part of an apology I made to him, and I take that kind of thing seriously. “Nope, cereal first.”
The admission does things to his face that make my knees weak. His head bows and his cheeks color. The little line near the corner of his lips deepens.
I’ll put the cereal in first for the rest of my life if it makes you look at me like that.
The telepathic link doesn’t seem to work because I don’t hear anything back.
Instead, Orion turns his back on me again, and my dick jumps to attention.
I move to him without consciously deciding to.
My hands are on him one second, and the next, I’ve manhandled him to the nearest wall and have him pressed against it.
His hands are up near his face, palms flat, and he has his face turned to the side so I can see just enough of it to know that I want to kiss him badly.
I paw at him, groping his ass cheeks, leaving pink marks on pale skin. I get my hands in his pants, one in the front, one in the back, and sigh. His skin is sublime. Velvety smooth and warm. So good, so intoxicating that I can’t stand the thought of anything coming between us anymore.
I whisper things to that effect in his ear before thinking them through. “I’m going to the clinic this afternoon,” I tell him. “Going to get tested so I can fuck you raw.”
Orion goes still and then lifts his head from the wall. “You want to come in me?”
The question turns me on in ways that make me feel more feral than human.
“Yes, O,” I growl into his ear. “I want to come in you. I want to come in you, over and over and over. I want to come in you so much and so often that your DNA recognizes mine and alters.”
His eyelids close hard and open quickly.
“Um.” Shit. That was too much too soon. “Uh, Jordan, if we do that, then you can’t…
If it’s like that between us…” His expression is hard to read.
Kind of firm. Almost as though he’s laying down the law in a way he isn’t sure I’ll like.
“Then, then you can’t be with anyone else. ”
Anyone else?
Anyone else?
Do people other than Orion still exist?
I guess theoretically they do, but not for me. Definitely not for me.
“That’s what I want, Orion,” I reply, speaking fast.
He turns around, leaning back against the wall and facing me head-on. He studies my eyes, the left one and then the right, a clear question in his gaze, letting me know that he isn’t sure what to expect from the conversation we’re having.
To set him at ease, I spell it out to him. “Just you and me. That’s what I want. You and me, only. I don’t want anyone else, and I…I, well, I very specifically don’t want you to be with anyone else either.”
His eyes crease at the corners and he pins his bottom lip with his teeth, releasing it slowly. “Very specifically, huh?”
“Yes. Very specifically.”
His gaze falls briefly to my lips and flits up to my eyes again. “Can I ask you something?”
“You know you can, O. Anything.”
“Have you been, like, jealous or whatever, since I came out?”
I drop my head and look down at my feet as unpleasantness pools in my belly.
Jealousy isn’t an emotion I’m proud of, and I’m not exactly proud of a lot of my recent behavior either.
I tap my foot lightly against his to establish contact and shuffle to get a little closer to him.
I let my temple rest against his and turn my head away from him slightly because I don’t feel like I can face him.
“You know I’m jealous,” I say quietly.
He wraps an arm loosely around me, gaining a little space from me, and reaches up to raise my chin, forcing me to look at him. A soft, heated gaze meets mine and smooths down rough edges.
It makes me feel safe enough to be honest. “I told you a long time ago that I was.”
“Yeah, but that was different.”
“It was different, but I’m the same.” I raise both shoulders in an apologetic shrug. “I’m still jealous when it comes to you.”
His expression turns faraway and wistful. “A jealous guy. That’s what you said. That’s what you called yourself.”
I nod to acknowledge that I remember. It was something I said the day we met. A throwaway comment that turned out to have serious weight behind it. Orion tightens his grip on me and buries his face in my neck. It’s a sudden embrace that feels close and needy in a way Orion usually isn’t.
Soft lips caress sensitive skin when he speaks. “Are you…are you my Jealous Guy, Jordy?”
My heart latches onto the last word he said, lurching and starting to beat as if it has wings.
“Jordy,” I croak, so scared, so helpless, so hopeful that I can’t make my voice work.
My heart slams furiously, a pulsing, bloody organ that’s beating out of my chest. I take a breath to steady myself in case the conversation doesn’t play out how I want it to.
“Been a while since I got a Jordy out of you.”
His breathing is shallow, his heart beating as fast as mine is. “It doesn’t mean…” His voice trails off, fading to nothing.
It wasn’t a question, but it sounded like one.
“It means something to me, Orion.” I wind my arms around him, knotting my fingers in the back of his T-shirt as I transfer the bulk of my weight to his body and cling to him.
I’m nervous. Terrified. Excited. I know my sisters are right.
I have to tell him how I feel. I have to, and this, right here, right now, is the time to do it.
“It means everything to me because I love you.” My voice cracks and my eyes begin to water.
“I’m in love with you. So please, say my name again, the way I like it, but only if it means the same thing to you. ”
A tremor passes through me, and I realize with a jolt that it isn’t mine. The tremor is Orion’s. It comes from him. He’s trembling from head to toe.
His lips move tentatively against the base of my neck.
When he speaks, it’s little more than a breath on my skin.
A faint echo of the word I’m aching to hear.
“Jordy.” The next time is louder, and so is the time after that.
Each time he says it, his voice gets stronger and he holds me tighter. “Jordy. Jordy. Jordy.”
Rampant joy flows through me, coursing through my veins and rushing up my body. I wrap my arms around him as tightly as I can, squeezing him so hard that I hear his ribcage adjust. Good things go straight to my head and flow out of me freely as victorious laughter rumbles out of me.
“I love you, Orion,” I babble, losing any semblance of composure.
“I love you. Like, seriously, I’m so in love with you it isn’t funny.
I’ve been dying to tell you. It’s been killing me to keep it in.
I’ve been driving my sisters crazy talking to them about you nonstop.
They created a group chat to deal with me and everything. ”
“A group chat?” Orion’s eyes widen as he pulls away enough to get a good look at me. There it is: the face I love more than any other. My friend’s face. My best friend. My favorite person. A beautiful man I’m crazy about. “I’m going to want to take a look at that.”
“What?” I laugh again, this time because if I’d had the opportunity to predict what his reaction to hearing about the group chat would have been, his response is exactly what I’d have expected.
Damn. Falling in love with a friend is the best thing ever.
“No way. That shit’s embarrassing, bud. I’ve been out of control. ”
Orion’s lips curl, a slow, gentle movement that’s unlike any of the thousands of smiles he’s given me before. A simmering, burning expression of things that go way beyond friendship. “Turns out, I like you out of control.”