Chapter 5
Dinner is quiet.
Not the avoidant kind. We’re past that. This is two people turning the same thing over in their heads, trying to find its shape. Every time I reach for the salt, Dominic’s hand is already there. Every time he passes me a plate, his fingers brush mine and stay a beat too long.
We eat pasta straight from the pot because we can’t find a colander. Ridiculous. Domestic. The most normal thing we’ve done since the parking lot, which somehow makes it the strangest. I keep glancing at him. He keeps catching me. Each glance is a confession I’m not ready to make out loud.
We wash dishes side by side, elbows knocking. Neither of us apologizes. My stomach is a knot of want and fear and something I don’t have a name for.
Back in the room, the twin beds feel closer than last night. I sit on the edge of my mattress. Dominic stands at the window, his back to me, last light outlining his shoulders.
“What are we doing?”
Raw, scraped from somewhere deep. He doesn’t turn right away. I watch his reflection in the dark glass, the slow drop of his head, the rise and fall of his shoulders.
“I don’t know.” Quiet, but it carries. “But I don’t want to stop.”
I don’t want to stop either. That’s the terrifying part. I should want to rewind. The parking lot, the bar, the years of easy friendship before this. But all I see is his mouth on mine, his hand around me in the bleachers, the way he said he’d wanted it for longer than he knew.
I cross the space between the beds. Three steps. That’s all it takes. I used to think the gap between us was an ocean. Now I know it was just three feet of carpet I was too scared to cross.
I kneel on his mattress. The old springs groan under my weight. He looks up at me, his eyes dark and unreadable, and I take his face in my hands like I’ve been wanting to do my whole life.
The kiss is slow. Deliberate. I take my time, tasting him, learning the shape of his mouth.
His lips part under mine, and his hands come up to grip my wrists, not stopping me, just holding on.
The heat of him bleeds through his shirt.
I can feel his pulse hammering under my thumbs where they rest against his jaw.
I push him back against the pillows. He goes willingly, his body sinking into the thin mattress, his legs falling open to make room for me. I settle between his thighs, and the position is so intimate, so impossibly natural, that my breath catches in my chest.
My hand finds the waistband of his sweatpants.
The fabric is soft, worn, warm from his skin.
I slip my fingers beneath it, and he inhales sharply, his stomach tensing.
I’ve touched him before. In the dark, under the covers, when neither of us had to see what we were doing.
But this is different. This is deliberate.
This is me, on my knees between his legs, reaching for his cock with no shadows to hide in.
He’s already hard. The heat of him, the weight of him, fills my palm. He gasps when my fingers close around his shaft, and the sound goes straight through me, settling low in my own groin. I’m hard too, pressing against the inside of my jeans, but I ignore it. This isn’t about me.
I stroke him. Slow at first, learning the rhythm that makes his hips lift off the mattress. His foreskin slides under my thumb, slick with the moisture beading at the tip. I twist my wrist on the upstroke, and he makes a sound, half moan, half curse, that I feel in my teeth.
“Like that?” I ask.
“Keep going.” His voice is wrecked already. “Don’t stop.”
I don’t. I lean over him, my forehead dropping to his.
We’re mouth to mouth, sharing breath, the heat of him rising up to meet the heat of me.
The wet sound of my hand on his cock fills the small room.
The bed creaks beneath us. Somewhere outside, the maple tree taps against the window, a branch moved by a wind I can’t feel.
“You’re all I think about,” I whisper. The words fall out of me before I can catch them. “You’ve always been all I think about.”
His eyes open. They’re glassy, dark, fixed on mine with an intensity that makes my chest hurt. His hand comes up to cup the back of my neck, pulling me closer until our lips brush with every word.
“Marcus.” My name is a broken thing on his tongue.
I watch his face. The way his eyes flutter closed. The way his lips part on a breath he doesn’t seem to know he’s holding. I’ve known him for years. I’ve never seen him like this. Unraveled. Mine.
I stroke him faster. His hips buck into my grip, his breath coming in short, ragged gasps.
The tension in his body coils tighter, his thighs tensing around my hips.
I feel the moment it breaks. He comes in hot pulses over my knuckles, spilling onto his stomach, and I don’t stop.
I work him through it, my hand slick and steady, until he’s shaking and spent and whispering my name like a prayer.
I press kisses to his temple, his jaw, the corner of his mouth.
He tastes like salt and sweat and the faint sweetness of the cheap wine we had with dinner.
I don’t want to stop. I don’t think I ever could.
His body goes boneless beneath me, his chest rising and falling, his hand still tangled in my hair.
After, we try to fit on one twin bed.
It’s impossible. My elbow digs into the wall. Dominic’s leg hangs off the edge. A spring pokes into my hip through the thin mattress. The sheets are twisted, the pillow wedged between headboard and wall at an angle that could not be less comfortable.
Dominic laughs, low, exhausted, and I feel it vibrate through his chest where he’s pressed against my side. “We don’t fit.”
I look at the ceiling. Same bare plaster. Same glow-in-the-dark stars, faded and peeling. The same room that held every version of me, every version of him, all the years that made us too big for these beds.
“We’ll make it work,” I say.
His head settles on my chest. His arm drapes across my waist. The mattress creaks under every shift of weight. I feel the thud of his heartbeat against my ribs, or maybe it’s mine.
I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know what this makes us. But his hand is warm on my skin, and his breath is slowing, and the three feet of floor between the beds doesn’t exist anymore. We closed it. Maybe we’ve been closing it our whole lives without knowing.
Our heartbeats slow together, two rhythms finding the same pace in the dark.