Ella
There’s a hand on my boob.
I come slowly to wakefulness, feeling warm and squeezed all over. I realize there is a human hand on my boob.
There’s also the weight of an arm across my waist and a wall of heat pressed against my back, solid. Firm.
I notice the faint rhythm of someone breathing against the top of my spine.
I hold my breath, assessing.
The arm around me tightens, pulling me closer, and a low sound rumbles from behind me—half groan, half exhale—directly into the curve of my neck. My entire nervous system lights up like a trauma bay.
Bernard is in bed with me. I can smell beer and garlic, and underneath it, that same body wash from his bathroom, the one that hung in the damp air when I first walked in here yesterday.
Bernard Houser is wrapped around me like I'm a body pillow, and his peen is unmistakably, aggressively hard against my backside.
I should elbow him in the ribs and launch myself out of this bed.
I should do literally anything other than what I'm doing, which is lying perfectly still with my heart hammering while Bernard shifts in his sleep and presses closer, his fingers splaying across my stomach through my thin sleep shirt.
His hand is enormous. It covers the entirety of my breast and, oh my lord, he’s stroking my nipple. He makes that sound again—God, a low moan that vibrates through my bones. I feel something pull tight and hot between my hips.
Nobody has ever held me like this. Not because I'm unwantable.
I've been told I'm pretty. I've been asked out.
But every one of those would-be boyfriends was either trying to get close to my famous brother or scared off by him.
Jason literally beat up the guy who asked me to prom, and then I went to the same university where he was even more famous.
So no. Nobody has held me like this. Like I'm something to pull closer.
I press my lips together and stare at the wall, trying to steady my breathing. My pulse is doing something medically inadvisable. Bernard mumbles, releases my boob, his thumb tracing a slow, tantalizing arc across my stomach, and I make a noise I will deny to my grave.
I need to get out of this bed. I need to wake him up. But my body is a traitor, and every time I try to shift away, his arm tightens, or he hums against my neck, or his hips press forward, and the cycle of absolute insanity repeats itself.
Fine. Enough.
I grab his wrist and lift his arm, scooting forward on the mattress. The movement does what my internal screaming could not—Bernard goes rigid behind me. There's a beat of silence so absolute I can hear the barges on the river outside.
Then: "Oh, fuck."
The mattress lurches. Bernard throws himself backward so hard the headboard cracks against the wall, and something crashes off the nightstand—a glass of water, maybe, or his phone.
I roll over in time to see him standing at the foot of the bed in black boxer briefs, chest heaving, eyes wild in the dim light, and even in the chaos of this moment, I cannot help but notice that Bernard Houser's body is a medical marvel.
He’s massive, built like a damn Viking. He has a broad chest, dense shoulders, and a solid slab of an abdomen. My gaze slides down, and I cannot look away from the protrusion at his crotch.
"Ella." His voice is wrecked. "I am so sorry. I forgot…I didn't…I was at Gianna's, and we lost the game, and I had too much to drink, and I forgot you were—fuck. I am so sorry."
He drags both hands through his curls, pacing two steps in the small space between the bed and the bathroom.
He's tripping over his own suit pants, crumpled on the floor alongside a dress shirt that appears to have brown sauce on it.
I see it now. The guys lost, went out for gross food, and he probably drank an entire pitcher or three of alcohol.
He scrubs his face with both hands. "I owe you, Ella. I'm so sorry."
He lingers in the doorway, outlined by the faint light from the living room windows. I can see the mortification radiating off him. He opens his mouth, closes it, and then says again, "I owe you," before disappearing into the bathroom.
I hear the lock click. The fan turns on. The shower starts.
I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and try to convince myself that my heart rate is elevated purely from the adrenaline of being startled awake. This is a normal physiological response to an unexpected stimulus. Tachycardia. Vasocongestion. Elevated cortisol.
Completely standard.
Except my hand drifts to my stomach, to the place where his palm was, and I can still feel the phantom weight of it. I can still feel the press of him against my back. The sound he made.
I roll onto my side and curl my knees up, pressing my thighs together.
The shower runs. I think about Bernard in there, and then I try very hard not to think about Bernard in there, and then I think about him anyway.
I can imagine the water sluicing over those shoulders, those hands braced against the tile. I wonder if he’s thinking about what just happened, whether he’s—
I press my face into the pillow.
Which smells like him. This whole room smells like him, like soap and something woodsy and, now, beer and garlic and regret.
I owe you, Ella.
The words sit in the dark room like an offering. I know it’s a learned response to my brother’s absurd transactional friendship requirements. Bernard doesn’t owe me a thing after offering me the use of his bed and room and simply forgetting about it one night.
My brain spirals through yesterday's events. My first shift at Mercy was twelve hours of controlled panic. I wrestled new systems, new faces, a charge nurse who looked at my badge and said "Oh, Rookie's sister?" before I'd even clocked in.
I was assigned to a senior nurse named Susan, who talks too fast, calls everyone "honey," and told me I'd "figure it out" when I asked where the supply closet was.
I stood in the hallway of the ER holding a blood draw kit and feeling like a complete fraud while an attending yelled at someone behind curtain three.
And then I came back here, exhausted and wired and questioning my life choices. I managed to study like three flashcards for my boards before I passed out. I didn’t even wake up when Bernard slumped in here. I have about five more minutes before my alarm and my second shift at Mercy.
I lie in the dark listening to my brother's best friend shower, and I feel more alive in my body than I have in months.
The water turns off and I squeeze my eyes shut as he leaves the bathroom.
I hear him move down the hall. The couch creaks. Silence.
I owe you, Ella.
Here is the thing about being a twenty-three-year-old virgin: it's not a badge of honor, and it's not a source of shame.
It's just a logistical reality, like not having a driver's license until you got to college because your parents were too busy driving your brother to practice to take you to the DMV.
It's a thing that didn't happen because there was never space for it.
But I'm almost a real adult now. I have a job—provisional, terrifying, but mine.
I spent two weeks filling out paperwork and watching videos about regulatory details I immediately forgot.
I have a test to pass that will determine the entire trajectory of my professional life.
I have roughly ten thousand problems stacked on top of each other, and somewhere near the bottom of that pile, beneath the NCLEX and the apartment search and the question of whether I'll ever feel like a real nurse, is the matter of my persistent, inconvenient virginity.
I can't exactly swipe through dating apps while crashing at my brother’s place, the hockey player. I can't bring anyone home. I don't know anyone in this city except my brother and his teammates, so my options are limited to approximately zero.
Except.
Bernard is not dreadful to look at. This fact has been abundantly clear to me over the past forty-eight hours.
Bernard, given the party-boy reputation that precedes him and the approximately nine hundred women I've seen tagged in his social media over the years, is probably very skilled at sex.
Bernard, as of three minutes ago, owes me a favor.
This is a terrible idea. I know that asking my brother's roommate to take my virginity is the kind of decision that belongs in a cautionary tale, not a life plan.
But I'm lying here in his bed, in his sheets, and I can still feel his hand on my nipple, and I think: what if I just got it over with?
What if I claimed this one thing for myself?
One less obstacle between me and being a fully formed adult who doesn't flinch when someone touches her because the sensation is so foreign it short-circuits her brain?
I owe you, Ella.
I let the idea sit in the dark, testing its weight, the way you press a bruise to gauge how much it hurts.
I'll ask him. Not now, obviously, with him reeking of beer and regret. But soon.
In the meantime, I have to get back to the hospital. I’ve got to be standing by Susan by seven on the dot to usher in gunshot wounds and burn victims galore.
I slide out of bed and gather my scrubs from the neat pile by my suitcase, pulling them on in the dark. I brush my teeth, lace up my shoes, grab my badge, and my bag.
I slip out the front door without a sound. The hallway is quiet. The elevator hums.
I step into the cold Pittsburgh pre-dawn and walk toward the bus stop, feeling the ghost of Bernard's erection with every step.