I drank in air, realizing I’d been speaking without oxygen for approximately forty-five seconds.
“He kissed you,” Benji repeated, his voice reverent. “Ourhockey player?OurNHL captain?Ourfamous straight guy?Hekissed you.”
“Yes.”
“On the mouth.”
“Where else would he kiss me?”
“Maybe your cheek. Or if he was feeling fatherly, your forehead. In Europe, they kiss cheeks all the time. It’s a whole thing—”
“It wasn’t a European cheek kiss, Benji. It was a real kiss. A . . .” I felt my face heat again. “A lot of real kisses for like two hours.”
Silence.
Finn and Benji exchanged a look that contained an entire conversation I wasn’t privy to.
“Two hours,” Finn said. “Of kissing?”
“And cuddling. On the couch. We didn’t—” I shook my head. “We didn’t do anything else. No clothes came off. We just lay there watchingDances with Wolves.”
“You watchedDances with Wolves?”
“It was on some classic movie channel. We weren’t paying attention to it. Mostly we were . . .” I trailed off, the memory washing over me. Skyler’s head on my chest, my fingers running through his hair, and the soft sounds he made when I kissed the spot behind his ear. “We were just together, being close, talking sometimes, but kissing a lot.”
“Oh my God,” Benji breathed. “That’s the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. That’s movie-level romantic. That’s Nicholas Sparks on steroids.”
“It wasn’t—” My head cocked. “Who’s Nicholas Sparks?”
“Never mind.” Benji waved a hand. “Two hours of cuddling and kissing with a Kevin Costner movie playing in the background while neither of you watches it because you’re too busy being in love? That’s literally the plot of every Hallmark movie ever made, except gay and therefore better and needing a higher rating, both in stars and legal age requirements.”
“We’re not in love,” I said, though the words felt hollow even as I spoke them. “We’re figuring things out. He’s never been with a guy before. I’m prettysure he’s never kissed a guy, I mean, before me and today and shit . . . He’s scared, and I’m scared. Everything is scary.”
“But he kissed you,” Finn said quietly. “He made the first move.”
“Yeah.”
“That’s significant. That’s himchoosingto take a risk.”
“I know.” I leaned against the back counter, exhausted from the emotional whiplash of the last few hours. “I know it’s a big deal, guys. I don’t know what it means yet, any of it. For him or me or . . . for us.”
Finn nodded, his expression softening. “What did you say when you left?”
“That I’d text him after my shift. That we’d figure things out together.” I smiled despite myself. “He asked me to stay. Not to . . . I mean . . . he made it clear he wasn’t ready for anything physical beyond what we’d done, but he didn’t want to be alone. He wanted me to stay.”
“And you had to come to work,” Benji said, his voice laced with tragedy. “While Kevin Costner and his wolf friends were playing in the background and the man of your dreams was asking you to stay, you had to come to work.”
“Someone has to restock the ice.”
“The ice can go to hell, Jacks! This is love! This is fate! This is—”
The front door swung open, letting in a blast of early evening air and the first customer of the night, a regular named Doug who always ordered the same IPA and sat in the same corner seat.
“Hey, Doug.” Benji’s customer-service voice clicked on. “The usual?”
“You know it.”
And just like that, the shift began.
