“You like the attention,” I said, finally.
Another laugh.“I like the attention from you, sure.”
I stared at him.“From me,” I parroted.I could hear the confusion in my voice; hoped that he would too, because then he might take pity on me and explain what all this actually meant.
Kai rolled his eyes.“From you, yes.Because you’re cute, Tate.”His tone was one you’d use explaining something to a child slow on the uptake.“I think you’re cute, and I wanted your attention.So yes, I wanted you to look at me.”
Silence, for a moment.
“I didn’t think you were...y’know,” I ventured.
“Really a med student?”he teased.“A real, honest-to-god former swim team member?Of sound body and mind?”
“Gay!”I exclaimed, suddenly exasperated by his avoidance.“I didn’t think you were gay.”
He made a face.“I don’t really like putting names on it like that.”
“So you’re what, bi?”
Kai shook his head, seeming amused.“There you go again, with the names.Some people don’t like labels, Tate.”
I sat back on the lounger with a frustrated grunt.“Some people don’t like second- and third- and fourth-guessing everything because they don’t have a clue whether the person they’re talking to is into them or not.”
A moment of silence at that.Then a sigh from across the deck.
“I suppose that’s a fair criticism, yeah.How about I just say that yes, I’m into you, and you specifically.And we table the rest of the labels until some other time, assuming they’re ever required.”
I thought about it.Not that it really required much thinking.
“I can live with that,” I told him.It was an understatement.
He tilted his head to look at me.While I had permission now, it still felt like I was doing something illicit when I flicked my eyes down his chest.Even relaxed, it was still a very pleasing landscape of muscles.
“You asked me a serious question, and I answered it...kinda,” he said, with a smirk.“So, now I guess I get to ask a serious question too.”
I squinted at him, skeptically.“Go on...”
“Before, when you freaked out in the water, it was because you got hard when I touched you, right?”
“That was your ‘serious question’?”I scoffed.
Kai shrugged, grinning at me.“That’s me, always asking the hard ones,” he joked.“So, are you going to answer?”
I lifted my glass as I considered what to say, only to discover I’d already emptied it.Pushed myself up off the lounger and walked in to where Kai had left the bottle on the kitchen counter.
“Yes, I got hard,” I told him, eventually, speaking louder so that he could hear me.“But I ‘freaked out’ because I wasn’t sure what the hell was going on, and you touching me felt like something I’d interpreted differently to how it was intended.”I watched as the wine sloshed carelessly into the glass, the reflected light from the kitchen’s halogens sparkling.
“And now?”
I stiffened.His voice wasn’t drifting in from the deck, it was from right behind me.Close enough I almost thought I could feel his breath on my shoulders.Part of me wanted to turn around, but my body was frozen.One hand on the wine bottle, the other gripping the edge of the countertop.
“Now...”I started.Swallowed.Still couldn’t bring myself to look around at him.“Now, I’m wondering just what you were actually intending.”
Bare feet on the smooth wood floor, there was no way to hear his movements.The first I knew of what little gap remained between us was the heat of his chest against my back - a gasp, then, startled from the depths of my lungs - and the slow, almost casual slide of his fingers down my arm, until they were tracing my knuckles where they were white with tension.
Instinctively, I felt myself push back slightly; the faintest application of pressure in response to his own.
“Do you always insist on having everything spelled out, mapped?”he murmured.Voice low, lips close to my ear.There was a thickness to his tone, the slightest of rasps that betrayed his attempts at lightness: the casualness that Kai accused me of struggling with.
