I can practically hear his mind processing.
And then he almost throws my arm at me as he scrambles to get up first.
I follow suit, kicking off the sheet and jumping out of bed.
We stand facing each other in some sort of spoon standoff.
And that’s when I see it.
His erection.
He must notice my eyes bug at his crotch because he does something with his boxers in a failed attempt to hide it.
I snap my eyes back to his face. “Did we sleep together?” My voice is raised and I’m on the edge of losing it. I cannot have slept with Xander for the second time. That’s against the rules. Rules that are in place for a reason.
“What? No,” Xander says, and the seriousness of his tone combined with him reaching for his pillow to hold it in front of him is almost comical.
I keep my eyes on his face, waiting for the punchline.Psych! We did! Hahaha!I raise my eyebrows and cock my head at his pillow without averting my eyes from his face. My eye contact will burn a hole in his face before I dare to look down there again. “Your penis seems to suggest otherwise.” My voice is loud and shaky.
“That, is mechanical,” he says, one hand rubbing the back of his neck as the other holds the pillow in place. “We didn’t sleep together. We fell asleep together.” He looks up at me from under his curls that are so relaxed on his forehead they’re probably still sleeping.
My immediate reaction is to excitedly shout at him, “OMG, youslept!” But the logical part of my brain, which is currentlywincing at the units of alcohol it’s been forced to deal with, wants to get to the bottom of what happened last night.
The truth is, I know there’s nothing to fess up. I know Xander would never sleep with me drunk. And I hate that I know him this well after seven fucking nights together.
I focus my mind on last night, trying to pull on any thread that’ll give me something, anything to hint at what happened. An unwelcome thought filters through my mind. Okay, we didn’t sleep together, but did I try and kiss him?
An image flutters behind my eyes. Me sitting in Xander’s lap. Lips so close …
The wince on my face must translate into me further questioning his integrity because Xander raises his eyebrows at this. “I’m not one of the assholes from your dating app.”
I scrub my hands down my face and groan at Xander bringing that up.
“Again with that?” I say, almost pleading. I am too hungover to take another trip down memory lane. I mean, I can’t even remember last night.
Another hazy memory surfaces:We’re laughing. At what? No idea. We’re laughing so hard that Xander falls off the bed. A second later he raises his hand, red wine bottle unspilled. I am appalled at the cuteness level of this memory.
“Let’s not forget you were the one spooning me,” he says, snapping me back to the situation at hand. I notice the pillow is no longer required. And he’s put on his jeans. Meanwhile, I’m standing inhissleepwear. I’m losing this battle.
“You were spooning me first,” I say, throwing it back at him, trying to recover some ground.
“What? When?” Xander frowns, no recollection of this.
Another memory of last night makes itself known. Xander, crawling back onto the bed. Me, patting my lap. Him, lying there. Me, stroking his hair. Gross. I am utterly horrified at this. I feel my stomach roil.
“I don’t know, in the middle of the night?” I say, refocusing on Xander and trying my hardest not to projectile vomit at that memory.
“And what’d you do about it?” he says, giving me the full cross-examination. He removes his sleep T-shirt without warning, revealing the hard lines of his stomach and sculpted chest before replacing it with a clean black replica. Turns out there are no tattoos on his torso.
“What?” I say, shaking my head at him in frustration.
“When you realized I was spooning you? What did you do?” he says, articulate as ever, functioning at level 100.I fell back asleep.Still, I don’t say it. I can see a “gotcha” smirk creeping across his face at my silent admission that I did nothing.
“That’s not fair. I was lulled back to sleep,” I say, already realizing I’ve lost.
“You liked it?” he says, embarrassed for the both of us. He shakes his head. “Oh, Ash.”
“I did not,” I say, flailing now.
