No one would have cheered like that for me.
They probably wouldn’t even have noticed I was gone – or that I had come back.
I kept my glum thoughts to myself, tossing the rest of the burger aside on my tray and wiping my mouth with the napkin. The movement only reminded me of the reason why I could have been wiping my mouth if Xavi hadn’t interrupted us – and left me sinking further into a dark mood.
“How was your film?” Keaton called out to him. “Brody said it sucked.”
Ace chuckled. “Yeah, it sucked,” he said, making a mock bow toward Keaton. “I bow to your superior film knowledge. Next time, I’ll just watch whatever you say is supposed to be good.”
Keaton chuckled and clapped him on the back, shifting his chair aside so Ace could sit next to him. They started in on a deep discussion of some of the technical points of the movies they’d seen, and I tried hard to tune them out.
I tried hard to pretend I didn’t notice or didn’t mind when Ace deliberately spent the rest of the day with either Taeho or Keaton.
I tried to tell myself I wasn’t hungry because of the awful food at lunch, not because I felt lonely, when I had to sit between two guys I didn’t know again at dinner.
And I tried to convince myself to tell Ace I wasn’t interested anymore.
But as soon as his eyes met mine over the empty plates at the end of the meal, I knew there wasn’t any point in pretending to myself.
I was his, hook, line, and sinker – and there was nothing I could do about it, no matter how much it hurt.
Ace
I felt like I was carrying an anchor around my neck – or maybe an albatross.
It hung there all day, all through the shopping and the art exhibition we found randomly a block from the mall, and even through dinner. It hung there like a lead weight that prevented me even from fully raising my head.
I knew what it was. It was guilt.
I felt shitty about the look on Brody’s face when he heard me beg Xavi not to tell anyone. I felt shitty about how I’d distanced us and how I’d gone back into the movie instead of taking him back to our room like I should have done.
Most of all, I felt shitty about feeling shitty – because the feeling didn’t make me do anything different. I just carried on ignoring him all day like we didn’t even know each other, just like I’d planned.
By the time the door closed behind us and we were alone in the room, I felt so shitty that I knew I would do just about anything to make it up to him.
“Ace,” he said, his voice strangled, while I still had my back to him after shutting the door. He sounded like he wanted to say something serious. Like he wanted to tell me he didn’t want to do this anymore.
I couldn’t let him finish that thought.
I turned and crossed the room to him, closing the distance between us in such a rush that our hips connected painfully. I took it in stride, using the motion and momentum to hook my arm around his waist and snag his cheek with the other hand, pressing my mouth desperately against his. His skin was warm and smooth under my hand, his lips like fire, a mouth I could kiss forever and never want to stop.
“Ace,” he gasped against my lips, somehow finding a break to get the word out.
It was like a spark on the kindling at the base of my spine.
I couldn’t let him get another word out – not if that word was going to be to tell me this had to stop.
I pushed Brody back across the room, not for a second letting up my attack on his lips, dancing my tongue against his and guiding his hips backward. As soon as he hit the end of the bed I pushed him down, breaking the contact of our lips only for long enough to fall to my knees and grab the button of his jeans – the same button I’d wanted to get past earlier.
I wasn’t going to give him time to rethink this.
I wanted his mind blank – and filled with only me.
Somewhere deep inside I knew this was wrong – that I was doing something wrong. That I was being selfish. That if Brody wanted more, wanted to be open in front of the others or at least the chance of something beyond this weekend, I should back away instead of hurting him.
I didn’t want to hurt him.
But I didn’t want to – didn’t think I could – stop.
