“I’m not yet. I know I should. By the time I do, I’ll probably only have leftover remote job opportunities.”
“Jesus, Rory.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t need to say anything else. I know he doesn’t have a lot of respect for the training program that has chewed me up, and he doesn’t understand my stubbornness about my career path. It’s hard to explain even to myself, which is why I’m stuck in this spot.
“You can’t use me for sex to avoid life,” he finally says.
I choke on a sad laugh. “Yeah, I know. Which is a real shame, because whew, that works like nothing else.”
“Yeah?” He turns his head.
It feels good to have him looking at me again.
I nod. “It’s like horny arguing flips a switch that shuts my brain up.”
He makes a sound that could be a laugh or a groan. “That checks out.”
Then he shifts, the mattress dipping between us, and I feel the pull. It would be easy to roll into him.
Pick a fight as he gathers me in his arms, as he tugs my hair and guides my mouth anywhere but his. He’d let me bite him sooner than kiss him.
We could exhaust ourselves with fucking and go to sleep in a messy tangle.
But we’d wake up tomorrow in exactly the same place—Garrett not happy because I’m not happy, and me…confused. Unable to find my way out of the tangle.
“I don’t want that anymore.”
Silence.
Then…
“Okay,” he says, like it’s easy.
That hurts. But I did it to myself.
“I liked that we didn’t fight tonight,” I whisper after a long quiet.
“Me, too.” His hand is still between us, but he turns it and grips the edge of his pillow. “It felt like we were on the same side.”
It really did. “We should do that more often. Maybe try being friends.”
“Roar,” he says, and I hear the smile in it, but I also feel the ache. “We’ve always been friends.”
I slide my hand out from the covers.
I shouldn’t hook my pinky finger through his, the only one not tightly wound around the edge of his pillow. That’s blurring the line of tentative friendship, I’m sure.
I do it anyway.
It’s ridiculous how much my body unclenches at such a tiny point of contact. He’s always been an anchor, and I’ve been using him for months.
The darkness of the room, the lateness of the night, slowly settles around us.
“I’m going to try to be a good friend,” I say, the promise more to myself than to him.
“Same.” Through the dim, I see the corner of his mouth quirk up. “First friend up in the morning makes coffee?”
