20
JOSS
I sleep in Kai’s bed now. That’s it. It’s where I sleep. I don’t know how it happened—liar—but what started as a wild night—more than one—becomes our normal. Days go by, then weeks, and I’m still laying my head on his earthy pillow every night with no fucking thought for the consequences.
For how the heated, trembling moments we share before we sleep are hooking me in so deep to this dude, I don’t know how I’ll ever stop.
We don’t fuck, though. And I cling to that as if it makes a blind bit of difference to how I feel.
It doesn’t. I want to fuck him, and I know he wants it too. But Ican’t. The earth moves every time we kiss. If we have sex, I’m scared of a seismic shift. That what happens next will consume the easy friendship that blooms beneath theirresistibleattraction we share.
Still, I dream about fucking him. Of him fucking me. I dream about it all, and I wake up sweating and reaching for him, even on Monday morning, when he’s long gone and for the first time in more than a week, I have nowhere to be.
It’s my day off. Kai is working. I know that even as I open my eyes, but the empty space beside me is still a shock. And a relief as I’m carving a hole in his mattress with my dick, and I have no right to, seeing as he wore it out with his sinfully sweet mouth last night.
Sinfully sweet.It’s a contradiction, but those two words are so fucking Kai. He’s the nicest bloke I’ve ever met, but when the lights go down…Jesusfuckingchrist. I can’t even. He’s so fucking hot. It makes no sense to me that he’s never done this with a dude before. At least, it shouldn’t make sense. On paper. And in the tiny, narrowed realms of how most people think.
But I’m not most people.
And, god, neither is he.
Get up. The command comes from the sensible part of my brain. An ADHD day of nothing to do is dangerous. Unmotivated, I could lie here all day and forget the entire world, even the good parts, and tired as I am, I don’t want that.
I want to live.
Yawning and very, very naked, I roll out of Kai’s bed. He’s picked up my sweatpants and folded them onto the chest of drawers. I leave them there and drift to the shower, already on edge, skin itchy with the lack of structure to my day.
I wash up. Burn eggs in a pan. Then I take my meds and prowl around the apartment, missing him, wanting him. As if I never had a life before him.
Not healthy.
Nopety nope. And not true. But despite knowing there’s a thousand things I can do to think my way out of this hole, I’m paralyzed by the most suffocating brain fart I’ve had for a while.
It leads me to take my wet-haired self to the living room to lie on the floor, twirling my fallen branch over my prone body. I haven’t used it for a while. I leave it lying around for Kai, and I never find it in the same place. Maybe I should get another and leave this one for him, but an evil voice in my head tells me there’s no point foraging for another fallen tree when I probably only have a month left in this place before I move on.
A month. I feel sick. Or maybe it’s the meds on an empty stomach—my charred breakfast is in the bin.
Yup. That’s definitely it. The thought manifests, and I spring to my feet, dashing to the bathroom.
The lonely pill in my stomach comes straight back up.
I take another one and return to the crime scene that is the mess I left the kitchen in. I start to tidy before I remember Ineedto eat. And because I’m dense as fuck, only now do I notice the breakfast bagel Kai left for me ona plateon the countertop.
Genius, absolute genius.
Frustration ripples through me, unchecked and untamed. I grip the plate and fight an urge to throw it that isn’t entirely a tic.Take a fucking breath.I do, and it helps, but the message that beeps through to my phone helps more.
Kai:mornin’ x
That’s it. One word and a kiss, but it’s all I need. I relax, ignoring the reality that how Kai makes me feel is part of the problem, and text him back.
Joss:morning pretty boy
I have more to say, but a knock at the door pulls me away. Abandoning my phone, I drift to the hallway and open up, half my mind still in the kitchen, the rest of it on Kai and the breakfast he left me that I need to eat before my second attempt at adulting comes hurtling back up.
“Mate, you look hungover as fuck.”
I blink.
