If This Gets Out(23)

He swats my hand away, and our fingers entangle for a second. “Stop lying.”

“I’m not.”

He shuffles in place to get comfortable, and it brings him closer to me. “I’ve seen the guys you think are hot,” he says “They don’t look anything like me.”

My breath catches in my throat. Why, exactly, does he give a shit about which guys I do and don’t think are hot? “What?”

“They’re all, like, buff or whatever. That’s how I know you’re lying to make me feel better.”

Oh. That makes more sense. For the wildest moment I thought he meant … something else.

“Zach,” I say, as clearly as I can. “You’re beautiful. Like, actually beautiful.”

We sit in a long silence, too long to be comfortable, and my skin starts prickling with anxiety. I can’t see the expression on his face, but I’m suddenly worried I pushed it too far.

“Get some sleep,” I say when he doesn’t reply. “We have to be up in five hours.” My head’s spinning, and I’m already dreading the alarm. Tomorrow’s going to suck. But it was worth it, I guess, for a night of letting loose for once.

“Right,” he says, and he sounds weird, and I’m pretty sure I’ve made it uncomfortable, but my brain’s too foggy to form a plan to return the vibe to normal. My brain’s just starting to adjust to my eyes being closed when I get the feeling I’m being watched. “Zach?” I whisper.

“Yeah?” his breath falls on me when he speaks. That didn’t happen the last time he spoke. He’s moved in even closer. I’m sure of it.

Suddenly it’s hard to breathe, because it’s clicked. Something’s happening right now, and I’d missed it, because I wasn’t looking for it. Like an idiot. But something’s happening.

He’s so close to me that if I shifted just an inch, I’d be touching him. Legs, stomach, chest, lips.

I freeze, because I can’t be reading this right. I just can’t. And if I move, I’ll destroy everything.

Why isn’t he backing away? We’re too close.

He lets out a heavy breath, and it’s shaky. He’s shaking. It feels like my whole body clenches at once.

He’s shaking.

So, I shift in place. As though it’s casual, an accident. But of course it can’t be, and it’s a stupid farce, because the “accident” brings our knees hard together, and our noses almost touching, and I leave it like that.

And he leaves it like that.

My shift was a question, and his unwillingness to pull back is the answer. And I’m still trying to talk myself into believing I’m seeing something that’s not there when he breathes out again and presses his lips against mine, and his hands to my chest.

It’s a barely there kiss, closed lips and gentle. Like air.

And I don’t kiss him back. I let him kiss me, and I let him pull away. I let him sit in a beat of silence, and regret it. I don’t pull him into a deeper kiss he doesn’t want, can’t want.

“I’m sorry,” he breathes. There it is. There’s the realization. A part of me dies, but another part of me is so, so grateful I didn’t let him think I wanted it. “I thought…”

“It’s fine. You’re drunk.”

“I’m sorry. I misread that. I’m sorry.”

Now I’m confused, scrambling to keep up. “Wait, did you … want to?”

It takes so long for him to answer, I wonder if he means to at all. Then, his voice achingly soft, he breathes, “Yeah.”

My brain, which is admittedly lagging far behind, tries to put the pieces together, because this is all entirely out of nowhere, and there was no sign, not a single sign, but there must have been a sign. It’s all a bit much to process, though, and he’s still so close to me, and I can still taste him when I run my tongue over my lips, and he sounds hopeful. Hopeful, for god’s sake.

So, I cup the back of his neck. His chest is against mine, and I think I can feel his heart pounding. Or maybe it’s mine.

When I kiss him, a small sound catches in his throat, and I think I might pass out. I open my mouth and kiss him harder, and I’m breathing in his exhale like it’s my oxygen.

Kissing him is a key change colliding with a crescendo.

His leg goes between mine as he props himself up to hover over me, and the heat of it all, the softness of his bare skin, his tongue sliding gently against mine, is too much. I’m disintegrating, melting into the mattress beneath me, and the weight of him on top of me is the only thing anchoring me to the earth. He’s pressing his hips down, and he’s rock hard, and that makes no sense, because it’s Zach, and he’s straight, and he can’t want me like this, but it’s happening anyway, sense or no sense.

“Fuck, Zach,” I manage to get out, and he kisses the words from me. My hands are on either side of my head and his are over them, interlacing our fingers, pressing down to hold himself up. I’m pinned into place by it. I want to rise up, to wrap myself around him, but I also want to lie flat beneath him until I die.

I’ve always wanted Zach to kiss me, I think. But I never thought he would. So, I kept it locked in a chest in the back of my mind. The place I hid things I knew would only hurt me.

I never meant to unlock it.