Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating(69)

I push the panic into a tiny room in my brain, and narrow that down to a closet and a shoe box and a tiny drop of throbbing light in the background. There’s nothing I can do tonight. I just need to breathe.

His hand makes a slow journey over my breasts and down my navel, drawing little swirls and circles with the soap. I’m so full of emotion that I’m not surprised when a single tear slips down my cheek, lost in the spray from the shower. I take the soap and do the same for him, savoring every second of this until we’re all clean and the water has started to run cold.

“Okay, Haze.” He leans in to kiss me, eyes shining as he shifts away to turn off the taps. “Let’s go to bed.”





TWENTY-THREE


JOSH


In Hazel’s bed, I sleep like a rock. I don’t think I even dream, or if I do, it’s just a series of nebulous flashes of her body, and her laugh, and the unreal heat of her wrapped around me all night.

We wake up to the blast of her alarm, entangled, with the covers kicked to the floor. I’m naked, she’s wearing only underwear, and although I come into consciousness slowly, trapped in a syrupy warmth I’m not quite ready to leave, Hazel sits up after only a few breaths into awareness and looks down at me, eyes blurry. Her eyes stay unfocused for a few seconds before she blinks, clearing them, and bends, kissing me in a soft peck. “You’re still here.”

In a wave of happiness, I wonder whether we’ll move in together … and when.

Hazel pulls back and her attention is snagged over my shoulder. She grimaces at the sheets in the hamper in the corner, the ones we pulled off the bed and replaced before falling onto the mattress in an exhausted heap. As if remembering, she stands, and moves quickly out of the room and to the bathroom, closing the door down the hall with a solid click.

Last night wasn’t the first time I’ve encountered blood during sex, but maybe it was for her? I can hardly imagine that, but it seems to have shaken her more than I would have expected.

Rolling to sit, I perch at the side of the bed, blinking down at Winnie where she stares adoringly up from the floor. “Morning, sweetie.” I rub her head and can tell the restraint it’s taking her to not jump up here and join me, but thankfully she resists. Being naked in bed with Hazel is bliss. Being naked in bed with her dog would be awkward.

In the kitchen, and inside one of Hazel’s Muppet canisters, I find just enough coffee beans to brew a pot. By the time she comes out—still dressed only in her underwear—I’ve got two cups poured, and reach for her sleep-rumpled form, pulling her between my legs.

“You left,” she mumbles into my neck.

Her chest pressed against mine is distracting enough to make her words slow to process. So instead of replying with anything witty, I just suck on her neck and ask, “What time do you have to be at school?”

“Normally seven thirty, and I’d be so late that I’d probably put my clothes on backwards. But I’m going to stop by my doctor’s before I head in. They know I’ll be a little late today.”

Her doctor? I’m not sure how to ask about what happened last night, so I go for vague. “You okay this morning?”

A tiny hesitation, then, “Are you kidding? I’m amazing.”

She is amazing—creamy skin, the maddening freckle on her shoulder, the full swell of her breasts—and the thought that she’s mine, and I’m hers, rolls around in my head. A burst of light cuts through me, a flash of joy, and I reach for her, gripping the back of her neck and pulling closer.

The minute our lips touch, my mind quiets but my body seems to take off, ramping toward that place where I can’t think, can only feel. My fingers graze the exposed curve of her throat down to her collarbones. Her hands come to my waist immediately and I feel her push up onto her toes, closing any distance between us and stretching, eager for one kiss, and another.

It’s chaste, but it’s not simple. Nothing with Hazel ever is.

I tilt her head, kissing her bottom lip, her cheek, her jaw.

I glance over her shoulder to the illuminated clock dial on the front of the stove. It’s 7:18. I take a breath, silencing the need to make up for lost time.

My mouth settles on hers and lingers. She smiles.

“Good morning, Josh Im.”

I kiss her chaotic hair. “I’ll say.”

I let myself savor this, the simple joy of standing in the bright light of her kitchen, arms wrapped around each other, and knowing that I don’t have to hold back now. But it’s the way she’s holding me—the way she clings with her face pressed to my neck—that gives me pause. She’s not playfully gnawing on my shoulder, or threatening to suck giant hickeys into my skin. She’s not asking if I want to go roller-skating to the bagel shop before work. She’s just so quiet.

Of course, it’s okay for Hazel to be quiet sometimes, but this feels different. It feels like a silence that’s full of something—a worry, a question, maybe an uncertainty.

I search my brain for something to say. I want to ask her if she knows about Emily being pregnant. I want to ask her whether she’ll stay at my house tonight, and every night after. I want to ask her to say the words one more time before she leaves for work, the quiet I love you too, you know.

She turns her luminous brown eyes up to my face. “What are you thinking?”