Page 48 of Everything But Mine

When Amanda calms, she shifts onto her side instead of sitting up. Loose strands, burgundy and chestnut, spill across her cheek, and I can’t help myself. I reach down and brush them back, feeling the thin, silky locks between my knuckles. My fingers graze her temple, lingering even when I’m afraid I’m crossing one of her boundaries. Her eyes flutter closed, and for a second, she doesn’t pull away or move closer. I’m walking on a tightrope. There are possibilities on the other side if I manage the right amount of almost.

The sun filters through the blinds and hits my eyes, blinding me and pulling me back to one of the times I fell off the tightrope.

Back then, it wasn’t warm sunlight, but a fluorescent strobe. Amanda wasn’t in leggings and Crocs, but in heels and a skirt, hand in hand with Daray.

Neon lights pulsed in front of me, the flicker of the sign DRINK UP, SUCKERS blinding my eyes. Leaning on the bar, it wasn’t just the lights making me nauseous. It was their intertwined fingers that I couldn’t tear my gaze away from. The squeeze of his hand on her ass. The cold bow of her head when she saw me.

She’d moved back from Milan two months earlier, just like she said she would, after I lost my shit and fell into the river. She had put me firmly in the best friend zone. Nothing romantic or ambiguous between us. All that went to Daray instead—also, what a stupid fucking name.

“Nothing serious. A girl has needs,” she’d told Diego once. But I could feel it heading somewhere in the way my stomach churned whenever they were around each other.

That night, they walked in together, Amanda and Daray, only for him to dump her and make out with some bimbo shortly after. A friend of a friend of a friend, or some bullshit.

Amanda wasn’t watching them. She’d taken a seat instead, a new drink in hand—her second—next to some other fucking guy near the pool table. I could hear them flirting as I moved closer, still out of her line of sight. If listening in was perverse, watching when she wrapped her arm around the guy’s was worse. Tracking how she slid her arm all the way up his neck was sickening. The way she cocked her head in invitation made me unravel.

I checked on Daray, hoping he’d do something, but he was about to leave with the blonde. Amanda’s eyes flickered to him; their gazes met, and they nodded at each other. Acknowledgment. Permission. Confirmation. They’d agreed to this.

“You’re just gonna let this happen?” I asked Diego, tilting my head toward the scene in front of us. Amanda’s hands wrapped around this random guy’s neck, rising on her toes, her lips moving into his ear.

Diego stared at Amanda. “Sorry to break it to you, but she’s her own boss.”

“This isn’t her. She’s spiraling. She needs someone to stop her before she does something she’ll hate.” He looked at me, puzzled.

“Look, man, Amanda is no stranger to seeing someone she wants and going for it.”

Diego’s point was clear. I needed to get off my high horse and let her do her thing. I knew why, and still… It went in one ear and out the other as I followed them to the back side of the bar, where it was darker.

Sitting on one of the leather couches, away from prying eyes, the guy’s palm stroked up and down her exposed thigh. Her drink had been refilled—the third one. I cleared my throat and, when her eyes snapped to mine, his lips grazed her cheek.

“Can I have a minute with you?” I asked.

“Is he your boyfriend or something?” the guy asked, taking his hand off her. “I don’t want problems.”

Amanda’s expression stayed neutral as she threaded her finger through the side of his hair, taking the time to fan her breath into his ear and whisper something I couldn’t hear. The caress he gave to her thigh before he left, though, made it clear she had made a promise. When he walked away, I deliberately bumped into his shoulder. Some stupid macho display was the only move I had to quench my jealousy.

Once she walked up to me, we were finally face to face, so close that the warmth of her body crept into my soul. What now?

“Why did you follow me?” she asked.

“This isn’t right for you.”

Her brow arched. “You have such a double standard. It’s okay for you to do this, but I can’t?”

“You’re only doing this because of Daray. But you don’t have to be with him. There are better men for you.”

“Are there?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember that you’re not one of them, Eric?”

The air whooshed out of my lungs. “I never was. Just took longer to prove it.”

She laughed. Pain and self-deprecation edged into her voice. “Is that the lie you tell yourself to explain what happened?” She stepped even closer, her palms gracing my arms and her fingers intertwining behind my neck. She rose onto her tiptoes, holding on to me so tightly our chests pressed together. “That’s not right.” It was the same gesture I’d seen her do before, only inviting me this time. “You made a choice not to be a good guy for me.” She was drawing patterns on the back of my neck, a knife carving the consequences of my failures into my skin. “But I don’t always need a good guy. Sometimes, I just need… a man.”

Then, with molten eyes, her lips descended slowly, decadent and deliberate. She kissed me with her eyes open. Aggressive but unhurried, she bit my bottom lip, demanding permission. And I gave it, gasping for her, without negotiation. Her tongue invaded my mouth and took hostage the last pieces of my soul she didn’t already own. I was numb and afraid that any reaction might startle her out of it. She paused, her lips still over mine.

“Kiss me. Show me you’re a man.”