Just as her wall so she doesn’t fall out of bed again, I tell myself.
Drunk Laney is a mess.
And I like it. Because the Laney I grew up with, the Laney I’ve always known, she’s so put together it makes everyone else feel inferior.
Drunk Laney? Messy Laney?
Less-than-perfect Laney?
Coming-apart-at-the-seams Laney?
It’s not that I enjoy her suffering.
It’s that I’ve been let behind the curtain.
Trusted to see the cracks.
Asked to help.
Me. The guy who would’ve been voted least likely toeverhave a chance with Laney Kingston in high school.
She wanted to come to my room instead of staying with Sabrina.
I know it was for the kittens.
But as soon as she flings an arm across my stomach and mushes her cheek up against my shoulder, she stops mumbling in her sleep.
She gives that heavy, contented sigh once more, and then the only sound in the room is her slow, deep, rhythmic breathing.
I tell myself this doesn’t mean she needs me. Doesn’t mean she evenwantsme.
I’m just the closest warm body to make her feel like she’s not alone.
And isn’t that what we all want? To not feel alone?
Fuck knows I’ve felt alone too much in my life. I assume most people have at some point. Some more often than others.
But Laney always seemed above problems. Her biggest issues in school were getting too close to that line between an A and a B. Which dress to wear to prom. Which college to choose among the fourteen that accepted her. If she’d start running her parents’ company before she was thirty, or if she’d be forty before they retired.
If she liked a guy, she’d date him. When she got tired of him, she’d dump him. If he dumped her first, he was shunned and she was loved.
She was first on the list for special programs that got her excused from school, but still had the perfect attendance award, which was the dumbest award in the history of dumb awards.
And now we’re all pushing thirty, and she’s the one cracking up at fart jokes at Chandler’s Aunt Brenda’s expense and riding me in a convertible while a wild pig attacks it and snuggling me in the moonlight coming through the open window so that she can sleep.
I want to stroke her hair.
I want to wrap my arms around her and hold her closer, no matter how hot it makes me.
I want to climb into the shower with her and wash her hair and kiss her until I can’t breathe and fuck her against the wall.
And all I can do is lie here in the dark being a wall so she doesn’t hurt herself, knowing all too well she’ll regret me in the morning.
I fall asleep with a hard-on to hallucinations of Laney waking me up with kisses, stripping off her shirt to let me see her breasts, and riding me into oblivion.
It’s so real that when a shriek and a moan pull me back to full consciousness in a bedroom flooded with morning light, the first thing I do is check to see if I’m still in my shorts.
“Oh, god, turn the light off,” Laney groans.
