“My p-pleasure.”
He doesn’t move.
I don’t move.
I need to let go of him. I don’t even know when I gripped him back in this hug, but I’m clinging to him like plastic wrap clings to itself and nothing else. “How are you always so patient and kind?”
“Good role models.”
“Can I trade mine for yours?”
He strokes my hair and presses a soft kiss to my forehead. “Absolutely not.”
I start to laugh again, but it ends in another sob.
This, my heart whispers.
This is what I want.
A home.
Compassion.
Understanding.
Support.
Hugs and forehead kisses.
Laughter.
Love.
Complete with a naked man who’s been my friend that I’m trying to keep at arm’s length because I’m positive he thinks of me as a sister while I?—
While I think about him every morning and every night and every moment in between, wishing he’d look at me with even a quarter as much of the growing reverence and affection and attraction that I feel for him.
“I haven’t been this klutzy since seventh grade,” I whisper. “It’s like—it’s like I don’t know how to use my body anymore, and I don’t know how to fix it.”
He rubs my back. “With help. Time and help.”
“Thank you for—for being my friend right now.”
This time, he doesn’t answer.
Instead, he squeezes me harder.
His heart thumps faster under my ear.
And something pokes me in my belly.
Something hard and unmistakable.
The kind of hard and unmistakable that I haven’t had pressed against me since my last foray onto the dating apps.
It’s morning wood, I tell myself as the rest of him stiffens against me too.He’s not attracted to you. He’s just a real man with a real penis that can be unpredictable.
If I were a man with a penis, I’d be mortified right now.
