60. Indy
SIXTY
INDY
Nick buzzes me up, and I jog up the stairs like I’ve been doing for weeks and weeks and weeks now. So many nights at his place that every step has become familiar.
He’s waiting for me at the door, leaning against the frame, and my heart jumps in my chest because he’s waiting for me.
I stop in front of him. His eyes take me in, roaming up and down and up and down, and then his gaze gets stuck on mine, and he just looks at me for a long time until I send him a curious smile.
“Hi?” I say with a laugh. “You okay?”
He doesn’t exactly smile back. There’s something in his eyes. A look I can’t explain. Some kind of searching seriousness that makes his gaze settle on me with the kind of heaviness I can feel in my bones.
He blinks and nods. “Yeah. Sorry.” He shakes his head. “Long day.”
He grabs my hand and pulls me into the apartment.
This is how it usually goes: clothes fly off, the rest is history. But the kiss that lands on my mouth is… subdued. Nothing we’ve ever done can be called subdued.
“Umm,” I say when it becomes clear that that subdued kiss isn’t an intro to a decidedly not-subdued kiss. I glance toward his bed.
“I’m going to feed you,” he says.
“Your cock?” I ask hopefully.
He sucks in a breath and makes a pained face as he quickly adjusts himself. I pointedly look at the floor. I can be on my knees for him in point five seconds. Probably quicker.
“Food,” he says. “Dinner. I’m making you dinner.”
That takes me off guard. “Okay?” I say slowly.
He snorts out a laugh at whatever he sees on my face. “Are you in a hurry?”
Not technically, but this evening is headed in a direction I didn’t expect, so now it feels like I’m being ambushed with something, and it’s a change, and change doesn’t feel safe right now because what we have is already so precarious that I’m not sure it can handle change.
Instead of saying all that, I shake my head. “No. No plans.”
“Good,” he says. I get another kiss. A less subdued one.
It still ends too soon, and then I’m trailing him to the kitchen, where I find myself seated at the island with a wineglass in front of me while Nick makes dinner and asks me about my day, and it’s only when we’re in bed later, naked bodies intertwined, his soft, hot breaths against my neck that I fully freak out because what the hell is this?
The reason I almost hyperventilate in the quiet night eludes me for a bit, until I realize what makes it so goddamn scary.
It felt like home.
It felt like something that, in another life, could have been a reality.
My ears ring and my heart hammers in my chest.
In the end, I quietly slide out of bed, get dressed, and sneak out.
If this was a glimpse into what could’ve been, I’d rather not know.
It gets progressively worse over the course of the next few days. It’s all small things, but noticing them makes my anxiety spike.
He starts texting me. A mix of making plans, random thoughts, photos, and jokes. Memories, too. Texts that start with remember, followed by something from way back when.
Remember that roasted garlic pesto they served at that diner that time? How good was that?
Remember when you swore you could swim across the bay to the lighthouse?
Remember how we missed that party because we were hanging out in the parking lot and forgot?
Remember that night after the bonfire?
I find my favorite snacks in his cabinets.
He charges my phone when I fall asleep on the couch after a long day.
The spare toothbrush he gave me is suddenly next to his in the cup on the counter, instead of in the drawer under the sink.
The granola bars I used to like are in the glove compartment of his car, Tylenol in his first aid kit, even though I know for a fact that he’s allergic to acetaminophen.
He always leaves me the left side of the bed.
And he kisses me when he passes by while I’m on my laptop on the couch.
He packs my effing lunch, and oh my fucking God, what the fuck is happening and how do I stop this? Because I don’t know if he even realizes he’s doing all those things, and I for fucking sure can’t get used to them because… because… because what if it ends?
I don’t know if I can survive breaking a second time.