31. Drew
THIRTY-ONE
DREW
A few days later, I walk into the house after practice and find Jules in the downward dog position in the living room, her ass thrust towards the entrance. She’s wearing dark red shorts and a matching sports bra, clothes which mold to her body and expose her golden skin
My body reacts involuntarily and I force myself to look away. Being around her is painful as it is without getting a boner each time she walks into a room.
The sound of the door closing alerts her to my presence and Jules straightens, turning to look at me.
“Hey! How was practice?” she asks.
Bailey woofs, her tail swishing back and forth as she comes to greet me. Jules reaches for a dark green hoodie, pulling it over her head. It’s a Titans hoodie and it hangs on her body.
It’s my hoodie.
Seeing her snuggled up in my hoodie does something to me. My heart beats hard and fast in my chest. She looks adorable and warm. I want to pull her into me, hold her close.
With a shocking clarity that leaves me breathless, I realize that I’ll probably give up a lot of things if I can spend the rest of my life coming home to her.
It also means I can’t keep coming home to her and pretending everything is fine. That I’m not losing my mind from simply wanting to be close to her and knowing I can’t be.
“Is that my hoodie?” I ask.
Jules looks down. “Oh yeah! It’s so comfy.”
“I’ve been looking for it,” I say. Because it’s the truth. Also because I can’t have her walking around my house in my clothes and stay sane.
“Oh,” Jules says, in a small voice. “I’ll wash it and give it back.”
My heart pangs inside my chest. I’m fucking things up. I promised myself I’ll be her friend, if that’s all I can be. Maybe I’ll have to keep my distance for some time, but I’ll get there eventually.
“You can keep it,” I say, smiling softly. “I can always get more.”
Jules tugs at the hem of the hoodie, looking uncertain. “Do you want to watch a movie after?”
“Sure, let me take a shower and I’ll be right down.”
Her smile is the brightest thing in the room. It’s so easy to make her happy and there’s a part of me that now worries about it. I don’t want anyone taking advantage of her.
“I’ll take Bailey for a walk while you shower,” she says.
I nod in agreement and offer her a tight smile, watching her get Bailey’s leash and kiss her. I watch the two of them walk out of the house and finally breathe a sigh of relief. Though when I inhale, the only thing I smell is Jules’s perfume.
“She’s going to drive me crazy and then she’s going to laugh because she’s succeeded in her mission,” I say to the empty house.
I head upstairs to shower and think how I’m going to ignore her while living in the house, having the same friends and family.
They might not be biologically related, but my family is her family.
Which is just another reason why anything between us has the potential of getting that much more complicated.
I shed my clothes and get in the shower, even though I’ve already showered after practice. The practice facilities shower is never as good as mine.
I turn on the rain shower and my mind immediately drifts to Jules. She’d love this shower. The dark green, almost gray tiles, the perfect pressure, it’s like showering a rainforest and I know her whimsical mind would enjoy every second of it.
Which naturally has me thinking about Jules in the shower.
“Fuck, don’t think about her,” I mutter. “Think of something else.”
I close my eyes, dropping my head down as the water flows over me. Think of practice. Worry about Holden not being able to make any goals. The sweaty stench of the dressing room after practice. Anything but Jules.
Nothing works. All I see behind my closed eyes is soft, golden, wet skin. Water cascading over all her curves. My body reacts by hardening painfully and I reach down, wrapping my hand around my cock.
“You’re going to regret this so much,” I tell myself.
She’s already made me crazy enough that I’m talking to myself.
She doesn’t have to know I’m doing this, I reason with myself. It might even make it easier to be around her. I take a deep breath and I swear I smell her perfume again.
I give my cock a hard stroke. Guilt churns inside me even as I groan with pleasure.
A voice in the back of my mind whispers that I should stop because it’s wrong and it won’t make things easier. I can’t bring myself to care right now.
I stroke my cock again, my imagination running wild, thinking of Jules in the shower with me. Jules licking her lips and reaching for my cock, her cornflower blue eyes aimed at me. Her hand is soft around my cock and I wrap mine over it, teaching her how to stroke me.
“Just like that,” I whisper.
I continue rotating my wrist, thinking of her wet tits. I imagine leaning down and taking the tip of one into my mouth and I get impossibly harder, my balls drawing tight.
“You’re going to be the death of me.”
Her smile flashes in my mind. Yeah, she’d probably enjoy that if I could say it to her. As it is, I have to keep these thoughts to myself. I lean an arm against the shower wall, resting my forehead on it as I squeeze my eyes shut.
I’m built my life around discipline because I didn’t want to fuck things up again. Right now, that discipline is failing me. I can’t stop even if I wanted to, and I realize I don’t really want to.
Water sluices over my body as I imagine Jules coming from walking Bailey. What if she hears me? What if she joins me in the shower? What if she sits down on the bench?
“Open your mouth, baby,” I whisper.
Her red mouth parts and she takes me in, all the way to the back of her throat. The heat of her mouth has my eyes rolling into the back of my head as I groan.
I stroke myself harder and harder, my hand twisting over my shaft.
“Perfect, just like that.”
Instead of my hand, it’s her mouth around my cock, head bobbing up and down, her wet tongue circling the head. My heart beats rapidly, pleasure chasing down my spine.
“Are you going to be a good girl and swallow?”
Her eyes look up at me, shining with challenge, telling me to give her everything I’ve got. I put my hand on the back of her head, guiding her up and down my shaft.
“I’m going to come,” I whisper. “Get ready to swallow every single drop.”
My stomach tightens as my balls draw up and I come with a groan of her name, my spine tingling with pleasure.
My breath is hard and fast, the shower eerily quiet except for the sound of rushing water. I open my eyes and guilt immediately slams into me.
What the fuck did I just do?
I hear a soft whine and barking on the side of the bathroom door. Jules and Bailey are back. I’m not worried that Jules heard me. She doesn’t come into my room.
I am worried that I won’t be able to look her in the eyes.
I turn off the shower and dry off, quickly getting dressed. Bailey is outside the door as I expected and I crouch down to pet her, letting her know that I haven’t abandoned her just because I closed the door to take a shower.
I hear Jules moving around downstairs and I imagine sitting next to her on the couch, feeling the warmth of her body, smelling her perfume, listening to her comments about whatever show or movie we’re going to watch.
I can’t do it.
Straightening up, I grab my phone and send a quick text to Ford.
Drew
Do you have time for a drink?
Ford
Archer’s in 30?
Drew
See you there.
Bailey looks up at me with her wide brown eyes and I see the accusation in them.
“I’m sorry, Bails. I want her to feel safe here,” I whisper. “Maybe a part of me always knew this would happen so I told myself I hate her.”
Heading downstairs, I find Jules in the kitchen making a cup of tea. She’s scrolling on her phone and looks up, frowning when she notices the way I’m dressed.
“Aren’t you a little overdressed? We’re just watching a movie.” She tilts her head, looking at me curiously. “Are you okay? You look a little flushed.”
“Actually, I forgot I promised Ford I’ll get drinks with him. Raincheck on movie night?”
Her smile dims, and guilt pierces me once again. As if masturbating while thinking about her isn’t enough proof that I’m a bad friend.
“Sure, yeah,” she says. “Another night.”
With a nod, I turn and walk away. This is for the best.
“You’re in a cheerful mood,” Ford comments, when he finds me sitting in a corner booth nursing a beer.
“Don’t start with me.”
He slides into the booth and waves down a server to order a beer. I look across the pub toward the back where the dart boards are. There’s a group of college students hovering around the tables. Just a couple of weeks ago, Jules and I were there and she’d looked at me with trust.
“Did Jules reject you or something?” Ford asks. “Why are you moping?”
“I’m not moping,” I defend.
Ford rolls his grey eyes. The server drops off his beer and he accepts it with a murmur of thanks.
“I know you don’t love me enough to want to see me twice in a day,” he says. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Why does anything have to be wrong?” I ask. “Can’t we just sit here in silence and drink our beers?”
“Fine.” He shrugs, picking up his beer and taking a sip.
We sit in silence, drinking our beers and looking around at the people in the bar. Everywhere I look, I see Jules. Jules playing darts, Jules with the girls, Jules teaching Holden, Reese, and Kai how to play pool.
Archer’s is supposed to be our pub. Titans have come here since it was first established and they will continue to come here long after we’ve retired. Jules has completely taken over everything. I can’t go where she’s been and I don’t want to be where she isn’t.
I’m fucked.
If her memories are all I can have, then I will live her through her memories and suffer in silence until one day I won’t miss her as much.
I look across the table at Ford.
“Do you ever wish you could ask Sage out?”
He looks at me, his face blank. “We came here to talk about you and Jules.”
“I never said I wanted to talk about Jules.”
“I prefer the silence,” he says.
I take a sip of my beer and I wave at the server to bring me another. Yes, I’m breaking my rule of not having more than one beer but the season hasn’t officially started yet and I didn’t drive so one more beer is acceptable.
“No,” Ford says.
I raise my eyebrows at him.
He sighs. “I don’t wish I could ask her out.”
“But you want to?”
He tilts his head back and forth. “It’s complicated. Maybe in another lifetime.”
“So you just watch her from afar?”
The server sets down another round of beers for us. Ford leans forward, resting his hands on the table. He watches me with earnest eyes.
“Some relationships are too complicated from the beginning and forcing them only ends up hurting people,” he says. “You and Jules are not that.”
I scoff. “Of course, we’re complicated. We always have been.”
Ford shakes his head vehemently. “No, you’re making it complicated.
You and her have always fought because you claim to hate each other.
Well, there’s a very thin line between love and hate and sometimes you’re so close to it, it all blurs together.
How do you know what you always felt for her was hate? ”
I pause, thinking over a lifetime of Jules and me. Jules’s laughter in the background of every room I walked into, her scent lingering in my house, even while we were growing up. Jules and Lavinia having sleepovers and involving me against my wishes. Working with Jules on homework and assignment.
Fighting with her at every chance I got.
Holding tightly onto a rain bedraggled Jules as she cried over the loss of her aunt and wishing I could do something to take her pain away.
Have I really spent my whole life waiting for her to notice me?
“I would know if that was the case,” I say, though not confidently.
Ford raises an eyebrow, taking a slow sip of his beer. “Would you? Even if you’ve spent your whole life convincing yourself you don’t want her?”
Something has to be said about the power of suggestion. Either I’ve convinced myself that I always hated Jules or Ford is successfully trying to convince me that I’ve lied to myself most of my life.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, shaking my head. “Even if I’ve wanted my whole life, she doesn’t want to date an athlete and I’m not going to try to convince her to do it because I’ve suddenly realized these long buried feelings.”
“How do you know she doesn’t have long buried feelings as well?” Ford asks.
I open my mouth and close it because the truth is, I don’t know. I only know what Jules tells me and I take it at face value because the only person who knows her better than she knows herself is Lavinia. I’m not about to ask my sister if she thinks her best friend might want to date me.
“Unless she realizes them on her own and tells me, I’m not going to do anything,” I say with conviction. “She’s living with me and I’m not going to make my house unsafe for her, physically or emotionally.”
“I didn’t think you would,” Ford says.
“My only option is to continue to ignore her.”
Ford gives me a knowing look. I can’t ignore Jules any more than he can ignore Sage.
“We’ll see how long it lasts,” he says.
Sooner or later she’s going to find a place to live, maybe even a man who actually deserves her. The choice will be out of my hand then and I will have to ignore her. Because one thing is quite clear to me--I can’t see Jules with another man, not in this lifetime, maybe not in any of them.
A part of me already considers her mine.