by Lacey Dailey
“It’s your turn.”
“I don’t think I ever really went on a date until I was an adult.” He scratched the side of his face. “My first kiss was when I was thirteen. His name was Wayne. He was my neighbor. I had a huge fucking crush on him and practically jumped him in my backyard when we were back there hanging out. Wren went inside to grab some waters and came back out to find me and Wayne swapping spit.”
I choked on air. “You were tonguing people at thirteen?”
“Nah.” He laughed. “It was actually the quickest kiss ever. As soon as it happened, he took off running back to his house.”
“Ouch, man. I’m sorry.”
He waved it off. “No, it was fine. He wasn’t a dick about it or anything. Just took off running. Wren came back outside, I told him what happened, and that was that.”
“Where is Wayne now?”
“No clue. He moved a few months after we kissed. His dad was in the service. Don’t you worry about me though. I got a lot of smooching done before I graduated high school.”
I snorted. I definitely had zero desire to hear about the people Ace was smooching in high school. “My first kiss wasn’t anything to write home about either. I was in eighth grade, we were alone in Mr. Hamilton’s classroom, prepping for Science Olympiad. It just sort of happened.”
“Prepping for Science Olympiad.” He made a noise. “What a nerd you were.”
“Science is cool.”
“Did you just quote Bill Nye The Science Guy?”
“Don’t diss Bill. I dressed up as him for Halloween twice.”
The laughter that wracked his body was enough for me to overlook that it was at my expense. A flush crept up his neck and cheeks while he clutched his gut, and laugh after laugh rolled from somewhere deep in his stomach. The smile that was taking up his face gave me an itch to go find my costume and put it on. A little embarrassment was a small price to pay for the way he looked right now. Carefree. Happy. Completely at ease.
“You kill me, man.” He wiped the corner of his eye. “I can just imagine you and Sage trick or treating. Princess Peach and Bill Nye. What a pair.”
“Now you know why I kissed a total of three girls in high school and the first stopped talking to me.”
“Maybe you were a bad kisser.”
Or maybe he needed to come a little closer and let me prove him wrong. Sure, I didn’t have a lot of experience in high school, but my two years in college woke me up and introduced me to a world of sexy possibilities. And then I met Ace, the sexiest fucking possibility the world could have ever cooked up. And he was my roommate. My best friend. I couldn’t decide if I was the luckiest bastard alive, or the sorriest one.
“Coming from the guy whose first kiss ran away.”
He flipped me off, still wiping at his eyes. “I used to say if I could have a first kiss do-over, I’d choose Orlando Bloom.”
“Orlando Bloom, huh?”
“My crush was pretty intense. And then he had to go and marry a supermodel.”
“What an asshole.”
“Right?” He snuffed a laugh. “What about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“If you could have a first kiss do-over, who would you choose?”
“Hmmm.” I looked up to the sky, wracking my brain for an answer. I thought about some celebrity crushes I succumbed to and went back and forth between giving him a real answer and a dorky one I knew would make him laugh. I rubbed the heel of my hand against the scruff on my chin and decided to go with a dorky answer. I was kind of obsessed with his laugh.
I felt a smirk creeping up my lips when I dipped my head to meet his gaze again. The second our eyes met, all the air he’d given me over the past few months completely escaped my lungs. There was nothing naive about Ace Jackson, but the look he was giving me was filled with innocence. His eyes were wide and waiting, the green in them brighter than I’d ever seen before. He was biting his bottom lip and haphazardly running his fingers through the ends of his hair. He flashed me a small smile and that was it. It was as if he cut me right open. Exposed me. The dorky answer I was going to give him stopped mattering and all I wanted to do was tell him the truth. My hands shook as I took a deep breath. My voice came out raw. “You.”
He blinked, confusion sweeping over his face. “Huh?”
I wiped the back of my neck that was now dotted with spots of nervous sweat. Wishing I had a cold glass of water, I cleared my throat and tried again. “You. If I had to choose a first kiss do-over… I…I would choose you.”
The room went eerily silent. My nerves got the best of me. My stomach churned as I waited, staring at him while he stared at me. He didn’t make a single noise. Didn’t even blink. He was just lying there, upside down with a look on his face I couldn’t decipher. I was sitting there, my knees bobbing while I listened to the hum of the refrigerator and considered throwing myself out of my bedroom window.
When the silence became too much, I leapt to my feet and wiped my sweaty palms down the front of my jeans. “I… that was… I don’t know why…” I closed my eyes, thinking about a few hours ago at Wren’s when we were playing video games and tried to teleport back to that time. Before I put myself out on a ledge of rejection.
“Brett.”
My eyes sprung open just in time to watch his throat bob with a swallow. He made a noise and flipped over backward off the couch, landing in an awkward squat. There was absolutely nothing graceful about his dismount or the grunt he made when his foot smacked the coffee table. The moment had no business infiltrating on my nerves or my enormous desire to kiss him. But that was Ace, and I wouldn’t want him any other way.
He heaved himself to a standing position and took up stance right in front of me. My heart bounced when he took one step toward me and placed a hand on his chest as if he couldn’t understand what was going on in there. “You… said me.”
“I said you.”
“You wanna kiss me?” His voice held disbelief.
I took a step closer. “In high school, my sights were set fully on becoming valedictorian.”
He closed the distance between us, our eyes burning into each other. “And now?”
“And now my sights are one hundred percent set on you.”
He rocked backward so swiftly, I reached forward and wrapped my arms around him, pinning his chest to mine. He dropped his forehead to my shoulder and neither of us said anything. After a beat, I felt his hands running up my back and coming to settle on the nape of my neck.
“Brett.”
“Ace.”
“I didn’t… I had no idea you were…”
“Attracted to guys?” I pressed my face in his hair. “College taught me more than chemistry.”
I felt his laugh against the skin at the base of my neck. “So, your ship is sailing in all directions, huh?”
“No.” I turned my head and ran the tip of my nose down the side of his face, breathing in his familiar scent. “The only direction my ship is sailing is towards you.”
A breathy noise came from between his lips. His grip on my neck tightened and I felt his head turning. I moved with him until our foreheads were pressed together, our heads angled just enough so the tips of our noses were touching. Each breath he took was wafting across my lips. The affect it had on me was profound.
“I want to change my answer.” His thumb snuck between our heads, brushing across my bottom lip as if he was discovering it for the first time. “If I would’ve known you were an option, I would’ve picked you.”
My lips moved just slightly as I pressed a feather kiss to the pad of his thumb. “I want to be an option, Ace.”
I felt his fingers spread wide, his whole hand palming the back of my head. I wasn’t sure I was capable of taking any more breaths until he pressed our lips together. My chest went wild. My heartbeat became erratic. My hands were shaking as I fisted the back of his shirt and pulled him closer. Kissing Ace was like the moment the sun came up. He awakened me. Warmed
me to my very core. For years, I spent my life living in perpetual darkness, believing I was destined to live among stars and whatever lurked in the night. But the moment he kissed me, colors erupted all around me, lighting me up in a fleeting moment I knew changed me forever.
He licked my bottom lip and sighed like I was the best fucking thing he ever tasted in his life. I parted my lips on a groan. His tongue swooped inside, tasting me from all angles. I nearly collapsed. My brain could barely keep up with the fact that we were now moving, shuffling backward with frantic hands and chests glued together with lust.
The back of my legs hit the edge of the loveseat. Planting his palms firmly on my chest, he gave me a shove and I collapsed backward. The whimper I made at the loss of his lips turned into a full out moan when he reached backward and tore his shirt over his head, whipping it somewhere across the room. My hands shook with the need to explore the map he just laid out in front of me.
He bit the bottom of his swollen lip and straddled me. Leaning forward and kissing the corner of my mouth, he uttered two words that just about killed me. “Touch me.”
“I think if I touch you, I’ll go up in flames.”
He folded his lips back over mine again, kissing me so deeply, I wondered just how deep Ace Jackson would take me.
I pressed my palms against his bare chest the exact second he dipped his hand beneath my shirt and ran his fingertips over my treasure trail. He moaned down my throat and we went up in flames together.
9
Ace
The moment wasn’t perfect by any means. We were both covered in a sheen of sweat and reeked of dirty laundry and watered down beer. His mouth was gaped open, his drool running down the side of my bare chest. My hair somehow had gotten wrapped around my neck and was doing a great job of making me feel like I was being suffocated.
There was nothing romantic about it.
But I cherished every second. Even the way the scruff on his face was tickling the hell out of my armpit or the way I had to peel our bodies apart in order to slip from my bed. Our skin sounded like rubber on rubber connected with a coat of sweat, thick enough to be glue. I could only imagine the amount of sweat that was inside my sheets. Even as I slipped from the room and shut the door behind me, cringing at the alcohol I knew was laced in that sweat, I knew myself well enough to know I’d hesitate to wash them.
Disgusting.
I know.
I stumbled down the hall, an unrestrained yawn ripping out of my chest. I grasped at the hair around my neck and peeled it off my hot skin, using the elastic that was always wound around my wrist to tie it into a knot at the top of my head. I fumbled with the coffee pot, filling the basin with water and scooping out more grounds than necessary.
I’d need a double to make it through the day.
There was a loud hiss before the smell of coffee filled the room and I heard drops of liquid hitting the bottom of the pot. I slid into one of the two stools at the small counter and pressed my sticky face against the cool, linoleum countertop.
As I waited for what would get me through the day, I squeezed my eyes shut and worked double time to ignore the memories of last night assaulting my mind. It didn’t matter that I drank last night, or that I was idling somewhere on the hungover scale.
There was no feasible way my mind would forget even a detail of last night and what happened the second he looked at me with eyes full of fear and told me he chose me. For a split second, I didn’t believe it. I’d thought maybe my ears decided to be a couple of assholes and pull some horrendous trick on me. But then he said it again, and I almost broke my foot untangling my body from the couch. It was the way that he looked at me, exposed and raw, taking a step toward bravery and putting everything in honesty that I knew I was a moron. A complete dipshit for ever comparing what I felt towards Orlando Bloom to what I felt towards Brett.
There was nothing superficial about it. It was all real. They were true feelings, ones I couldn’t control or turn off. Whatever I felt for Brett at that moment and all the ones about to proceed, I was so damn positive it was more than just a crush. It was solidified the moment our lips met and fucking sparks went off inside my body. My chest was bursting with lust, desire, feelings, comfort, and finally.
Because, really, who the fuck was Orlando Bloom?
I sat upright, the visions of last night escaping me when the sound of my bedroom door opening fell over me. He stumbled out of my room, stretching his arms above his head and scratching the patch of hair that started at his belly button and dipped below his waistband. The nerves I ignored last night went into overdrive watching him rub his eyes and bring himself to a state considered functional.
I held my breath as he walked down the hall. My muscles locked up, and I sat there with my body hair standing straight up in alarm. What if he changed his mind?
I hadn’t considered it until this exact moment. What if he woke up, completely weirded out he’d spent last night in his best friend’s bed, in a puddle of filthy man sweat? If I went by our interactions since he’d moved in, and the desperate way we were clinging to each other last night, I’d say my face was safe from a punch in the nose. But ultimately, I had no fucking clue how last night’s antics would affect him. I knew what I was hoping for. Knew why my lungs had stopped pumping and my heart was beating erratically.
My knees bounced with anticipation as I pleaded with every God anyone ever believed in for him to wrap me in his arms and tell me last night was the catalyst to everything he ever wanted.
“Hey.” He stopped outside the kitchen and stared at me. I studied his eyes, noting the way he was gazing at me no differently than he did the day he met me. “I just woke up in your bed.”
I managed a noise and a head nod.
He approached me slowly. He swallowed a lump the size of a baseball and cleared his throat. “I was thinking I could do that again sometime.”
I blinked. “Wh… what?”
“Wake up in your bed, I mean.”
Relief flooded my body so intensely, I thought I might drown. “You want to wake up in my bed again?”
He regarded me with nervous eyes and nodded.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I pinched the inside of my thigh to make sure the moment was actually happening.
It was. He was standing in front of me in nothing but a pair of bright red boxer briefs and his lip pulled between his teeth, asking me if he could wake up in my bed again.
“Ace?”
I loved when he said my name.
I swiveled on my stool to face him. “Brett.”
“You haven’t answered. Would that be okay?”
I nodded repeatedly. I was gonna lose my shit. I knew it. Right there, on the kitchen stool, in my damn cartoon underwear. I hadn’t realized how deeply I wanted Brett until I was sitting on a stool alone, getting smacked across the face with the possibility of rejection.
“Hey.” Eyes that had always reminded me of blue moon ice cream regarded me with an expression that melted me. He stepped between my legs and put his hands on my shoulders. “You okay?”
I shook my head. “Fuck no.” I sagged against him, wrapping my arms around his middle and pressing my cheek to his still sweaty chest. “I thought you were gonna wake up and deck me for sticking my wig wong in your mouth.”
“Your wig wong?”
“Dick.”
“Yeah, baby, I got that. Why would–"
I sat up and eyed him. “You called me baby.”
“Yeah.” He yanked me back into an embrace. “I do it all the time in my head. Figured I’d let it out considering all the other stuff I let out last night.”
I huffed a laugh. My brain felt like it was on a never-ending train track, going around and around, waiting for the inevitable crash that put me up in flames. I knew what was happening last night, and I knew we both wanted it, but there wasn’t a lot of time for talking. Our lips were preoccupied and I wasn’t sure what came next. My mouth was dry with the need to
ask. I wet my lips just as he spoke.
“Wait here.” He backed away and rounded the counter. I thought he was going for the coffee but he stopped just short of it and yanked open a drawer we kept a bunch of junk in. I watched with confused eyes as he pulled out a pen and a half-torn envelope. He scribbled something quickly and turned around, sliding the paper across the counter. “Here. This is for you.”
“What is it?”
“A question. You love questions.”
“I love asking them. Not answering them.”
“Answer this one.”
I pulled the paper closer and peered down at his chicken scratch.
Dear Ace,
Will you be my boyfriend? Circle yes or no.
From, Brett.
I threw my head back and howled in laughter. The fear of the unknown lifted off my shoulders as I stared down at his question. The question that told me he wanted everything I did.
I met his smirk when he held out a pen. I slid it from his grasp and positioned it on the paper. The pen made a noise when I circled the word yes and slid it back to him. He lifted it up and stared at it like I’d just given him a check for a million dollars.
“Finally,” he whispered, shining eyes meeting mine just like they always have.
It was that moment it dawned on me. Brett had never looked at me the same way he looked at others. He’d never looked at me like I was just a best friend or a roommate. Since the moment I met him inside an overcrowded airport and placed my hands on his shoulders to help calm him, he peered over his shoulder and gave me the exact look he’s giving me now.
Like I was everything he'd ever need.
“We’re keeping this,” he announced, laying his love question on the counter and smoothing it out.
“Are you going to frame it and hang it in the hall?”
“Nope. I’m going to sleep with it under my pillow.”
“That’s so selfish of you, Brett. It’s my question too. What if I want to sleep with it under my pillow?”