That wasn’t nemesis talk. I could handle that.
I checked my reflection in the bathroom mirror for the tenth time. My hair was doing its thing, unruly but passing as intentional. The stubble on my cheeks was at that sweet spot between “forgot to shave” and “ruggedly handsome.” And my eyes were . . .
Fucking terrified.
That, I couldn’t fix.
My phone said 6:22, thirty-eight minutes until Jacks arrived, and my apartment looked like a crime scene of indecision. I’d rearranged the living room twice, moved throw pillows from the couch to the chair and back again, lit a candle, then blown it out because it seemed too romantic, relit it because theapartment smelled like hockey gear and anxiety, then blown it out again because what kind of grown-ass man lit candles for another grown man?
The kind who was having a full-blown identity crisis, apparently.
I relit the candle.
The food situation was handled, at least. I’d ordered from a Thai place Jacks had mentioned in passing weeks ago—the one near Barbacks that he said had the bestpad see ewin Tampa. I still didn’t know whatpad see ewwas, but Jacks seemed to like it, so I’d ordered two large servings of the stuff. The delivery was scheduled for 7:15, giving us time to settle in before the food arrived. I set out plates and silverware, ready for the transfer-from-container-to-plate operation that would constitute my version of “gourmet cooking.”
Everything was under control.
Everything except the Category 5 hurricane tearing through my central nervous system.
I sat down on the couch.
Stood up.
Sat down again.
Picked up the remote, turned on the TV, turned it off.
Picked up my phone, opened Instagram, closed it without lookingat anything.
Twenty-four hours ago, I’d kissed a man.
Not any man. I’d kissed Jacks.
I’d walked across my kitchen, backed him into a wall, and pressed my lips to his like it was the only thing in the world that mattered.
And it had been.
It still was.
In that moment, with his breath on my face and his eyes wide and his back against the wall, nothing else had existed. There was no hockey, no career, no carefully constructed identity I’d built over twenty-seven years of being Skyler Shaw, All-American Straight Guy.
There was only him.
Only us.
Only the terrifying, exhilarating free fall of letting myself want what I wanted.
I’d spent the last twenty-four hours expecting the regret to slam into me like waves against rocks. I kept waiting for the panic, the shame, and the oh-God-what-have-I-done spiral that seemed inevitable.
But it hadn’t come.
Why hadn’t it come?
That was, perhaps, the most confounding part of all this.
Instead, I’d woken up this morning with my faceburied in the couch cushion that still smelled like Jacks’s shampoo. My first conscious thought had been:When can I see him again?
That was either the best sign in the world or the worst.
