Page 7 of Big Man on Campus

“Kids are getting fancy these days. I bet they cried when you left.” He takes a bite out of his sandwich and I watch him, listen to the crunch, see the ecstasy on his face, the complete absorption in his enjoyment of such a simple thing. He picks up my sandwich and pushes it to my mouth, trying to shove it in.

“Hey.” I giggle because he doesn’t relent and I know he won’t until I open my mouth and take a bite, so I do.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” He finishes his sandwich in under thirty seconds then picks up half of mine and starts eating it.

“Hey!” I laugh with my mouth full and try and take my half sandwich back, but it’s lost to the human food vacuum that is Kace Jennings’s mouth.

“Snooze you lose,” he says. “You can have the pickle.”

I roll my eyes. “Thanks.” He doesn’t like pickles.

“Some things haven’t changed at all. You still eat like you’ve been starving all your life.”

“Minimum of three thousand calories a day.” He grins and I roll my eyes again, suppressing a smile unsuccessfully.

“You should marry a cook,” I say automatically without thinking, the same line I’d said in our past dozens of times. My smile stiffens, fades. I hold his eyes. He leans across the island, holding onto me when I try to pull back. His face is inches from mine and I can taste and smell the ketchup and chips on his breath. It smells like heaven.

“You should learn to cook.” It’s the answering line. The one he used to say. And I would always promise to do it. But I can’t bring myself to utter the words now, don’t feel like I have a right. I’m not convinced my penance is over yet. Besides, we’re not those two teenagers anymore. After a few beats, his eyes flicker and he straightens. “Or maybe not.”

“I’m sorry, Kace. I don’t know where we are. This is all so disorienting.”

“I get it.” He comes around the island. “It’s been a while. A lot of water under the bridge, as my grandma would say.”

We lean against the island, looking at each other and not knowing what to say or where to go next. But there’s attraction, that sensual pull, or at least I feel it as his heat penetrates my misgivings. He eyes me, then he reaches out to toy with a curl, pressing it between his fingers like my hair is a precious thing.

“So soft. The way I remember it. You’re the way I remember you, Glory, except now you’re sad.”

“And guilty. Don’t forget that.”

“And skinnier.”

I laugh. He moves his hand to cup my cheek and pull me in for a kiss, a soft test of my lips, small nibbles and then a lick. I open my mouth, and it feels like my entire soul opens up as he deepens the kiss and I respond, my body, thank god, taking over. Taking my mind away to let me escape into feeling him, his rough hands on my face, his hot tongue in my mouth, his full lips matching mine and his hard body pressing against me, bigger and stronger than before. The want in me doesn’t give the sorrow and guilt a chance, commanding all my energy and attention.

His breathing gets heavier and he bites my lip then licks it as he lets my mouth go.

“Let’s go up to my room, Glory.”

I nod and he sweeps me into his arms to the back stairs.

We go up to his room, somehow getting past Sky’s bedroom door. My heart pounds in anticipation of being in his room, in his bed, naked in his arms.

We make love in his old bedroom the same way we used to since we were younger, since I gave him my virginity for his sixteenth birthday. Right here in this bed.

His muscles are bigger and harder now and I trace a finger across his pecs, the sheen of sweat, letting the rise and fall of his chest blend with mine as I get sleepy.

“Glory?”

“Kace.”

I feel his chest rumble with a low chuckle and I smile in the darkness.

“You’re still the one.” His words stab me with unexpected hope, the kind I have a hard time trusting.

“I want to be.”

“But?”

“But I’m crazy and I shouldn’t be talking you out of picking up where we left off.”