Our Last Sleepover (Best friends to lovers MM FIRST TIME #17)

Chapter 1

The house looks smaller than I remember.

I kill the engine and sit there, hands on the wheel.

The house looks the same. The porch paint is the same blue it’s always been.

The screen door still hangs a little crooked.

The maple tree in the backyard towers over everything, its leaves just starting to turn at the edges.

But I’m not the same. I don’t know when that happened.

Maybe it happened slowly, over the eight months since I last saw him.

Maybe it happened all at once, the second I turned onto this street and realized I was nervous.

Dominic is already there.

Sitting on the front steps, elbows on his knees, phone in his hand. When he sees my car, he grins. The grin that got him elected class president senior year, the one that made half the girls in our graduating class fall for him. Faded t-shirt, jeans, his hair longer than the last time I saw him.

Eight months. That’s how long since we’ve been in the same place. Work, distance, life. The usual excuses.

I get out, and he’s already crossing the driveway.

The hug is warm and familiar, his chin hooking over my neck.

His arms lock around me. For a second I forget to breathe.

He smells like soap and sunscreen and the coffee he probably grabbed on the drive up.

The same way he’s always smelled. But I notice it differently now.

I notice the solid warmth of him. The way his fingers curl into the back of my shirt.

I let the thought go before it finishes forming.

“Missed you, man,” he says into my shoulder.

“Missed you too.”

The hug lasts a beat too long. Not weird. Just long enough that I notice the solid warmth of him, his fingers curling into the back of my shirt. I let the thought go before it finishes forming.

We’re back for Sarah’s wedding. The friend who somehow talked us both into making the trip. My parents are somewhere in Ohio in their RV, so the house is ours for the weekend. Dominic’s parents sold their place last year, which is why he’s staying here too. It’s always made sense with us.

We grab our bags. The screen door creaks the same way it always has. The house smells like lemon polish and old wood and the ghost of my mother’s candles.

“Your room still the same?” Dominic asks.

“Let’s find out.”

The fourth stair groans under my weight, same as always. I push open my old door. There it is. The twin beds. The band posters. The window facing the maple tree.

“We’re sharing?” He laughs. “Like old times.”

My stomach twists. Just a little. “Like old times.”

The words taste different in my mouth now. When we were kids, “like old times” meant sleeping bags and video games and staying up too late. Now it means this. Two grown men. One room. Two beds. Three feet of carpet that feels like it’s been waiting for us.

The beds sit close enough that I could reach across from mine and touch the edge of his if I wanted to. I don’t want to. Of course I don’t want to. I shove my bag onto the floor and tell myself the tightness in my chest is just nostalgia.

We unpack. I shove clothes into a dresser I haven’t used since high school. Dominic hangs his shirts in the closet, unhurried, comfortable the way he’s always been comfortable in any space. I watch the way his shoulders move under his t-shirt. Then I make myself stop watching.

Evening comes fast. Pizza in the living room, feet on the coffee table, the way we used to do it before football games. Dominic talks about his divorce. Alicia, two years gone, no bitterness in the way he says it.

“She wanted kids,” he says. “I thought I did too. Turns out I just wanted to want them.”

I nod. I don’t know what to say. My last relationship ended six months ago because I “wasn’t present enough.” Her words. I still don’t know what they meant.

We talk about high school. College. Friday nights on the football field, talking about nothing and everything. Climbing the maple tree after curfew until our legs went numb.

“Remember when you fell out of that tree?”

“I didn’t fall. I was pushed.”

“You slipped.”

“You pushed me.”

He laughs, and it fills the room, easy and familiar enough that something in my chest loosens. I’ve missed this. I’ve missed him.

Night falls. We brush our teeth side by side in the cramped bathroom, elbows bumping. He spits, rinses, grins at me in the mirror. I look away.

“Window or wall?” he asks.

“Window.”

“Good. I wanted the wall.”

We climb into our separate beds. The sheets are cool, the pillow lumpy. Only light in the room is the orange streetlamp glow through the window. I lie on my back, staring at the ceiling, the band posters just shapes in the dark.

Dominic’s breathing evens out in minutes. He’s always been able to sleep anywhere, cars, planes, the floor of a dorm room. I’ve always been the one still awake, listening to the house settle.

The gap between the beds is three feet. It feels like an ocean. It feels like nothing at all.

I close my eyes. My body’s tired from the drive, but my mind keeps circling back to the driveway, his arms, the way he said “missed you, man” like he meant it more than he was letting on.

I roll onto my side, facing the wall. A dog barks somewhere. The house creaks.

This is fine. Two old friends sharing a childhood bedroom for a weekend. Nothing’s changed.

Three feet. I could reach across and touch him if I wanted to. I don’t want to. Of course I don’t want to.

The maple tree rustles. Dominic breathes.

I don’t know why I can’t stop thinking about the gap. I lie on my back, staring at the same ceiling I stared at as a kid. The band posters are just shapes in the dark. The maple tree taps against the glass. And three feet away, Dominic breathes. Slow. Even. Like nothing’s changed.

But everything’s changed. I just don’t know when it started.