“Sit up here. I can’t take you seriously when you’re near my feet.” He would sometimes grab them and torture me by pretending to tickle them. Then his hands would slow and I’d end up with his mouth on mine, feasting like I was starved.
He shifted, pulling me round on the sofa so my legs straddled his, my feet near his waist. He was wearing sweats and a t-shirt, he hadn’t shaved for a day or so and his six o’clock shadow was looking more like scruff than stubble.
“I know that was tough, sending your dad a present, but it’s a start.”
Callum shook his head. “This isn’t about my dad.”
“Oh.” If it wasn’t about his dad then it was about something else. Us? He’d become my best friend over the last few years and yes, there’d been some fooling around, kisses and a bit of touching which one of us would break and say we shouldn’t be doing it, because we shouldn’t but neither of us really knew why.
“You know I’ve never been in a relationship.” The darkness that sometimes shaded his expression wasn’t there, instead he was pale. Afraid.
“I know. I seem to recall having to explain that to at least three girls in October.”
His smile was forced. “Yeah, well. I never met anyone that I could trust, you know…”
I nodded. I got it. He was afraid of people leaving, of investing in them and them not being there. Abandonment issues, like a lot of us had because they fucked you up your mum and dad. So Callum pushed people away.
“I know. I’m surprised we’ve made it as long as we have.”
Then I saw it as he looked away from me, trying to hide what he wanted to say, keep the words unsaid.
They needed to stay unsaid. I wasn’t ready for this. As much as I loved him as my friend and we’d been fooling about, I didn’t know I could wrap myself up in someone else like I had Jonah.
“Callum…”
He shook his head. “It’s okay. I’m shit at this and should probably not even be sitting here.”
“Cal… I can’t. Fuck.”
He pressed his lips together. “Why?”
“Because.” I closed my eyes. I loved him. He was beautiful. I found him attractive, god I found him attractive. “I can’t fix you.”
“What do you mean?”
“You need someone who can be your glue.” I shrugged, not having a fucking clue how to explain myself. “And promise not to leave you because I don’t know what you’d do if someone else that you loved left.”
“I’m not asking you to marry me. I don’t believe in that shit anyway.”
“I know.” I moved away from him, pulling my knees into my chest and creating distance, distance that we both needed. “But I don’t know myself enough to be able to keep safe what you’re giving to me.”
“But you’d fuck me.”
My mouth opened as if to speak. No words were there. Would I sleep with him? Yes. It had only been a matter of time before we’d ended up in bed and he would’ve been inside me. My second lover. My last?
“You’d fuck me but you wouldn’t want a relationship with me?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“It sounded like it.”
“Cal, I don’t think I’m ready to have that with you right now, not after Jonah.”
“So what have we been doing for the last few weeks? What were we doing when I got you off through your pants last week? Or you made me come in my underwear like a teenager…”
“I didn’t know.”
“Figures. You remember how I never had more than three hook ups with the same girl? And they were never after each other?”
