Keaton
Olly’s mouth met mine and I was sure I must be dreaming.
His hands were holding me tight but tenderly, like he didn’t want to squeeze too hard in case he broke me. His mouth was warm and sure on mine, pressing close, filling me with heat. At first, I was too startled to do anything at all but sit there and receive his kiss, not responding or moving.
Then something in my head clicked on to automatic mode, some primal instinct, and my lips began to move of their own accord. Kissing him back. My hand slipped up to his neck to hold him in place, my eyes sliding shut all on their own. For a long moment, I was just lost in the feel of his lips on mine, their firmness and insistence, the slight rasp of stubble on his jaw, the heady scent of him that always seemed to be present when we’d sat close by one another: lemon and orange, shampoo and soap, and underneath it the faint tang of a body that was used to working out.
It wasn’t unattractive at all. In fact, that musk of his just made me want him more.
His mouth parted – in anticipation of his tongue sweeping across mine, I was sure – and I groaned lightly in response.
Olly froze and pulled away from me.
“I should go to bed,” he muttered.
“Um,” I said. “Right.”
He cleared his throat and grabbed the crutches that were leaning against the desk. He hopped about four steps across the room until his legs hit his own bed and then stopped, turning around and dropping his crutches on the floor with a clatter. I winced slightly. I watched him as he lay down on the bed, carefully shifted his injured leg around, turned to face the wall, and then pulled the covers right up around his shoulders.
Okay.
Great.
I looked around in a kind of daze. My laptop was still sitting next to me, the movie on pause. The remains of our dinner – and his drinks – were resting on the desk. The lamp was already off; all I had to do was shut my laptop and the room would plunge into darkness.
I hadn’t even got ready for bed yet, but screw it. What was I going to do? Move around, get changed, go down to the toilets and back, without acknowledging what had just happened at all?
Nope. I reached out and closed my laptop, shoving it onto my nightstand on top of everything else to balance precariously. Nope, nope, nope. If he was going to pretend to be asleep, then I was going to do the same thing.
I quickly gathered the covers around myself and then turned to face the wall, the same way that Olly had done.
In the silence and darkness of the room, I reached up and touched my own lips. They were still warm and almost buzzing as if I could still feel him.
Where the hell had that come from?
I ran the whole conversation back in my mind. He’d said he needed me. And he was so happy when he said I would stay.
Crap. What was I going to do now? Could I still stay?
He’d kissed me, and from the way he practically leaped to the other side of the room afterward I figured he regretted it already. Plus, he was drunk in the first place, so even if he had seemed to enjoy it I wouldn’t have trusted him. I’d warned him about mixing his pain meds with beer, but he hadn’t listened. No wonder he’d been acting like he’d been out drinking all night long.
Maybe the best thing to do would be to move out. Then we wouldn’t have to see each other anymore. It wouldn’t have to be awkward.
But I’d already said I would stay. Wasn’t that going to be super awkward, too, when I had to tell him I had changed my mind? Was he going to be upset if I did?
I covered my face with both of my hands, trying hard not to groan out loud. I had kissed him back. And made a noise. He must have known that I was enjoying it. I made it pretty obvious. It was what I had wanted for most of the time we’d been rooming together. I couldn’t deny I had fantasized about him kissing me.
But that was all it was supposed to stay. He was straight. He probably just got swept up in the moment and kissed me because of the pain meds. It wasn’t a real, genuine kiss – he was just happy and his drunk mind thought that was the best way to express it.
AndI had enjoyed it.
Oh, god. Tomorrow was going to be so awkward. We still had to wake up in the same place – and we still had to go to sleep in the same place tomorrow night, too. We had to see each other all the time. And the documentary! I could probably wave goodbye to the documentary. Maybe I had enough content already to patch something together. The footage of him hurting his ankle was pretty dramatic stuff.
Oh, god. His foot.
He still needed my help.
I rolled in bed and looked over at his side of the room. In the darkness, I could only just make out his shape. He hadn’t moved, and his breathing seemed to have evened out a little from what I could hear. He was probably already asleep.
