It didn’t.
Because somehow? The way his fingers crushed the hair at the back of my head? The way his mouth pressed against mine? His chest expelling all the air out of my lungs as my leg rose to curl around his thigh?
It turned me on.
And my hand squeezed his buttock and his mouth kept moving and for a small, insignificant second?
A thought process flashed before my eyes, sharp and clear, like everything in that moment made perfect sense.
A momentary illusion of everything this could be. If we only let it.
I hadn’t expected that.
But it was exactly what it was.
George
He turned up almost three hours later, the traffic having held him prisoner for what he described asages.
I didn’t mind. Because he’d been talking to me almost the entire way, enough that my phone battery had died, and now I was confined to the kitchen floor, which was where the charger was. I didn’t dare move it in case the connection dropped.
I really needed to stretch my legs.
“I knew, earlier, that you had finally done it,” he said, like it wasn’t monumental. It still felt like it.
“How?” I questioned, allowing myself to wipe the sweat from my forehead with my sleeve. I was still in my work gear, and this horrible flat was sticky and hot. I needed to open some windows.
“Because you looked happy. Your whole face had changed, from being so very, very stressed and low to being…back to you. The way you should be.”
“I know,” I said carefully.
“And when I get to you, I’m going to give you everything. Everything you want and need.”
“And what isthat?” I grinned.
“I’ll give you me. All of me. We both need it. We need to make this proper. Good and proper.”
His choice of words still made me gasp. Perhaps in fake mockery of him. Of everything that he was. This posh schoolboy who’d turned up at college and made me blush before he’d even opened his mouth. Just sunshine and smiles. Quiet peace. How he had been the constant. Always silent and steady to my frazzled nerves, from that very first day when he’d taken a seat next to me.
“I like your glasses,” he’d said. “Cute.”
Everything a terrified gay boy needed to hear. Then he’d filled me with years of laughter. Of angsty feelings. Of knowing he would let me…just be me, however that looked on the day.
He’d loved me. Fiercely and protectively even when I hadn’t had the sense to love him back.
I hadn’t dared to. I was so over that version of me. The one who’d taken this adulthood thing far too seriously.
“I’m never going to do this again,” I promised him, like he could read my thoughts.
“I know you won’t. I won’t let you. You need to be happy.”
“You make me happy.”
He might as well have gifted me the universe the way those words felt on the inside. The way tiny sparkles of happiness trickled down my fingers.
“Go have a shower,” he said, letting his eyes twinkle the way he did.
Mine,my chest shouted.
