by J. Saman
“Hey,” I say, coming to stand next to him, but positioned so that I’m not blocking his view.
“Hey.” His head tilts at the sound of my voice and his eyes sweep up my body until they reach my cheek. Not my eyes. My phone rings in my hand and I glance down at it with a frown on my face. “That Aubrey?”
“No. Brandon.”
“Did you two work everything out?”
I snort shaking my head. “He’s got some nerve calling me considering the state I found him in when I got there.”
“And what state was that?” he asks with a bored tone. Xander doesn’t sit up or move, his eyes go back to watching the television like this conversation bores him.
I want to smack him upside the head and tell him to get over himself. But I laugh instead. “Balls deep in some poor girl who was faking her orgasm.”
“What?” His head snaps up off the pillow, angling up towards mine. That gets a reaction out of him. “Are you serious?”
“Yup.” I pop the p. “It doesn’t matter, though. I was going over there to end it with him anyway, so . . .” I trail off with a shrug.
We fall silent for a few moments, watching Uma Thurman punch and crawl her way out of a grave. I’m not really sure what to say at this point.
I’m not gonna lie, it’s getting awkward fast.
“Why are you standing there like that?”
“Huh?” I turn to face him. “Move and I’ll sit down.” I jest, looking down at his body taking up the whole couch. His hand reaches up, grasping my forearm and tugging me down to him. I fall onto the couch with a bounce and an “oomph” and a giggle. He adjusts his position so that his back is against the cushions and I’m on the edge of the couch, facing the television with his arm resting on my hip, my back to his front.
“That’s better.”
I’m lying on the couch and Xander is holding me.
How did that happen? And why? But more importantly, what does this mean? Are we friends and this is just a friendly thing to do, or is this the start of something more?
I choose not to say or ask anything. I’ll just wait this out and see where it leads.
But it leads nowhere other than what we’re doing. We’re watching a movie, Xander propped up behind me so that he can see the screen and that’s it. His hand is still firmly placed on my hip and hasn’t moved once.
I think I have my answer, right? I mean, maybe he really didn’t want to move from his sprawled out position so the only other option was to have me lie with him. While this may be platonic and all that, someone really should tell that to my heart, which hasn’t stopped pounding in my chest. And while they’re filling in my heart, they should extend the same courtesy to the knots and flutters in my stomach.
Maybe it’s the anticipation, or the confusion, or the not knowing what comes next.
The movie credits roll and we’re bathed in black and white flickers as Uma Thurman drives her car to music that is playing quietly and I don’t know what to do. Do I get up?
“Did you fall asleep on me?” he asks softly, moving his hand from my hip up to my hair, playing with a few strands.
“No. I’m awake.”
“I haven’t had a chance to ask how you’re feeling.”
I smile at that, knowing he can’t see me. “Better overall. Still not a hundred percent.”
My phone rings on the coffee table and a groan passes my lips as I see that it’s Brandon. Again. I don’t want to talk to him and I can’t imagine why he’s calling me. There really is nothing left to be said. I reach out and press ignore on my phone and leave it at that.
I’m about to get up and head to my room, when Xander’s hand stops me, pulling me back down onto the couch and then over so that I’m on my back, facing up at him. He is smiling down at me, examining my shadowed face feature by feature.
“There. Much better.” He’s looking deeply into my eyes only a few inches from my face. The flickering light from the television dances along the side of his face. “So, you and Brandon are done?” He nods his head in the direction of my now silent phone.
“Done. Over. Finished.”
Something shifts in his expression. “I know you don’t remember anything, but I have to tell you, I lied to you that night.”
“Oh?” I feel the skin tightening around my eyes. He shifts us, so that we’re both laying on our sides, facing each other.
“Yes.” Reaching up, he brushes a hair out of my face, tucking it behind my ear. “I told you that I was falling for you too and that wasn’t true.”
“Oh.” I’m trying really hard to keep my tone and expression neutral, but that hurts, especially with the uneasy look he’s giving me. His sweet breath brushes across my face and I start to pull back, but his hand on my hip holds me in place.
“In truth, I was already well past the falling stage.” He smiles, watching me like he’s seeing me for the first time. Or maybe he’s just allowing himself to really look for the first time. It has been years. “I was so very much in love with you by the time you crawled into my bed that night.”
I gasp. I can’t help it. And then my heart starts to sprint into a symphony of its own, making my cheeks warm and my stomach flutter. But then he continues and I find myself hanging on his every word. Hoping it only gets better from here.
“I knew the first time I saw you in my dorm room, on the very first day of school, when you called Aubrey a pussy for bringing his blanky rag thingy to school with him, that I was in trouble. You remarked that your room was bigger, and then you turned around and my breath died in my chest. It wasn’t your big, gorgeous, green eyes that everyone seems to focus on, despite the way they haunt my dreams. It wasn’t your long, incredible, red hair, either.” He pauses, but I can’t seem to find my voice to ask him what it was. I’m staring into his eyes, so completely transfixed by this man and what he’s saying. “It was your bright, dazzling smile.” Like his words are a magnet, he pulls a smile out of me that he returns. “When you turned around and I saw you for the first time, you were smiling, and I knew I was a goner.”
I laugh lightly at the memory. He introduced himself to me with a stutter to his name and the tips of his ears turned red. “I thought that you were the cutest thing I’d ever seen. You were so nervous as you shook my hand.” I chuckle again. “Your hand was trembling.”
“It was,” he confirms. “I had never been nervous around women before, but you wrecked my cool with one smile.”
“You made me nervous too.”
He leans in and kisses the tip of my nose, his thumb sweeping across my cheek. “I didn’t fall in love with you for sure until about two months later.”
“When was that?” I whisper, my voice thick with emotion.
“The night of the Halloween party.”
I remember that night. It was the night I fell in love with him too.
“I was sick and wasn’t going to go to the party with everyone else, and instead of going, you came to my room with soup for me.”
I laugh. “I made you watch Better Off Dead, because it’s what I always watch when I’m sick.”
“Yeah.” He smiles, pleased that I remember that night. As if I could forget. “I watched the movie with my head in your lap as you gently stroked my hair with your fingers.” I remember watching him more than I watched the movie. “I wished for the movie to never end so that we could stay like that forever. I fell so hard for you that night, Abby.” He brushes his fingertips along my cheek, up and down in soft strokes. “That was the best night of my life. Just watching that movie with you like that.”
“Mine too. I was so glad I didn’t go to that stupid party.”
He leans in and I think he’s going to finally kiss me on the lips, but he doesn’t, he goes right for my cheek.
Then his eyes change, a mixture of darkness and light. The television casting strange shadows over us. “So that night, a couple of months later, when you came into my room and crawled into my bed with me, at first I thought it
was a dream. But then you wrapped your arms around me and whispered in my ear, ‘I’m falling for you, Xander.’” He shakes his head again, a slight smile pulling at the corner of his mouth, before it falls completely. “I was so fucking happy. So. Fucking. Happy.” He reaches out to touch my cheek. “I had wanted you for so long and you were finally there with me.”
I nod once, but my heart is so damn heavy. I swallow. Hard.
“I’m sorry for the way I’ve treated you since then. I was incredibly hurt and I just didn’t know how to be around you without you seeing through me. So I was a total dick. I thought if I ignored you or acted indifferent, eventually it wouldn’t hurt so much.” His hand cups my cheek, rubbing his thumb up and down again. “But it never stopped, Abby. No matter how hard I tried—and I did try—I couldn’t make myself hate you. I couldn’t make myself not love you.”
I smile. Big. My heart is about to explode out of my chest. Adjusting my position, I move my hand from resting casually between us, to the back of his head where my fingers thread through his hair. I’ve wanted to touch him like this forever. It feels soft yet prickly against my fingers, the back of his hair is cut so short.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t know.” I shake my head. “I just didn’t know. I would never have pretended you weren’t everything to me.”
He leans forward, brushing his lips against my forehead this time. “And that’s why I went to beat the shit out of Chris today. I was so angry for all that he’s taken from us. All of the wasted perfection that you and I could have had.” His hand cups my cheek, holding me in place so that I have nowhere else to look other than his dark blue eyes. “Because that’s exactly what we would have had. Perfection. It wouldn’t have faded or changed. It would have only gotten stronger, because that’s exactly what my feelings for you have done over the years despite my pathetic attempt to squash them.
“Oh God, Xander.” I bury my head into his chest. My body shaking. My arms wrapping themselves around him, holding on so tight. There is no more space between us. There never can be again. He reaches down, pulling my face back up to look into his eyes.
“I know you’ve already heard one profession of love today, but that doesn’t really matter to me. Because there is no way that guy could ever love you more than I love you. His words don’t mean a tenth of what mine do. There is nothing in this world that I love more than you.” His thumb brushes away tears that I didn’t even realize were falling, but a sob escapes my lips all the same. “You are my reason for everything, and I will never be cold or callous where you’re concerned again.
“What about Aubrey?” I ask suddenly as the ever present hurdle still lies between us.
“Yeah. Aubrey,” he sighs, a little defeated. “We’ll figure that out later. Aubrey can play it off, but I know for a fact that he won’t be surprised.”
“Okay.” I smile, sniffling in a very unladylike manner, wiping my nose with the back of my hand.
“I’m sorry I ran out on you the other night after you told me about the drugging. It was like everything got flipped upside-down on me and I just needed some time and space to figure it out. I couldn’t do that with you around me. I hope you weren’t pissed or worried or anything.”
I might have been both.
“Are we okay then?”
“Yeah,” I laugh. “We’re okay.”
“Good. If you’re up for it, I’d like to spend the day with you tomorrow.”
“Sure. I’d like that.”
Xander plants another kiss on my cheek, before shutting off the television, locking us into blackness. “Shit, I can’t see anything,” he mutters.
I laugh. “You’re blind then. It’s really not all that dark.”
“How the hell can you see anything?”
“How can you not?” I laugh harder. It’s not exactly pitch black. There is some ambient light coming from various places including the moon that is filtering through the window.
“Come here,” he whispers, pulling on my arm until my body is flush against his on my side. His mouth hovering over mine. “I want to kiss you,” he laughs. “And I want to do a lot more than just kiss you, but I’m thinking that’s all we should do for now.”
“Why?” The word flies out my mouth before I can stop it and then I giggle at just how desperate I sound.
He laughs too, leaning in until his forehead is pressed to mine. “Because you’re not something I want to rush. You just broke up with Brandon today. Your brother is my best friend and has specifically warned me on more than one occasion that he doesn’t want us to be together.”
“I know all of that, and you’re right, we should wait. But that doesn’t mean I want to and that doesn’t mean that laying here with you doesn’t feel like it’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“Abby,” he breathes, “we live together.”
“We do?” I can’t help the sarcasm.
He smirks, but that’s about all I can see of his face. His eyes are in a shroud of dark shadows. “Don’t be a brat.”
I laugh, leaning into him a little more.
“I was thinking that if you want, if you feel things are too serious too fast, that I would move out.”
“What?” I draw back searching his face to see if that’s what he wants, but I can’t see much of it. “No.” I shake my head, clasping onto his hand that is affixed to my waist. “I want you to stay.”
“Are you sure? Neither of us will have any space or distance and Aubrey might have a lot to say about that too.”
“I don’t care. I don’t want distance or space from you. Aubrey is a different story and I’m sure he will have a lot to say, but we’ll deal with that then. Don’t move out on my account.”
“Good,” he laughs. “I really fucking hate moving and wasn’t looking forward to that.”
“Do you know what I hate?” I ask, pulling my hands out of his and pushing back against his chest so that he has to lean back and look at me. His dark eyes follow my every move as I climb on top of him, straddling his thighs and wrapping my arms around his neck, our chests pressed together.
“What?” he breathes.
“That I don’t remember our first kiss.” My fingers glide along his hair at the back of his neck and I can feel chills erupting on his skin. He shudders, his breathing becoming heavier, faster.
“Would you like me to show you how it went?”
I nod once. “I would,” I whisper, moving my face closer to his but not bridging the gap completely.
“Then come on.”
CHAPTER 27
XANDER’S HANDS SLIDE FROM MY hips down over my ass until they reach the tops of my thighs. My breath catches with anticipation, but he doesn’t kiss me. Instead, he picks me up in one effortless motion, even though we’re sitting on the couch. My legs wrap around his waist instinctively as he moves us out of the living room, past the kitchen and dining area and down the hall.
He stops equal distance between our two bedroom doors. Releasing his hold on my thighs, I slide down him only to have his arms wrap around my body, hands pressed into my lower back.
“Abby,” he whispers, my face turning up to his as he gazes down on me. My eyes have adjusted to the dark, but it’s still too dark to see him the way I’d like to. “I’m really falling for you.” One of his hands comes up to brush my cheek.
I just stare at him for a moment and blink, because didn’t he just say, telling you I was falling for you was a lie?
He leans down, a soft smile on his full lips, the small cut from his fight with Chris present in the center of his lower one. “You’re supposed to say, I’m falling for you too, Xander.” He raises back up to his full height, which is a good six or seven inches taller than me, at least.
And now I giggle because I see what he’s doing. He’s reenacting our first kiss the way I asked him to. I realize in this moment, right now, just how much I really love this man. A playful Xander is a rarity, definitely not something to be squandered or ignored.<
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“I’m falling for you too, Xander.” I smile, despite trying to be serious.
“I’m going to come back tomorrow morning, but I want you to know that if it was up to me, I’d keep you in my bed with me all night and never let you leave.” My heart is racing and my breath hitches.
“I like that idea.” I run my hands through his hair and then down the back of his neck that’s not covered by his shirt.
He laughs, tilting his head to me. “I thought you said you didn’t remember?”
I laugh too. “Is that actually what I said?” I scrunch my nose.
“Pretty damn close.”
“Huh.” That’s sort of weird, but I don’t care enough about that to comment further.
His other hand slides up my body, away from my back until both of his hands are cradling my face. Leaning down slowly, his eyes on mine the entire time until they close just before our lips touch.
At first that’s all it is.
The pressing of our lips together, and I don’t do anything to further it along.
He’s showing me something here and I intend to experience it fully, in its entirety.
Xander pulls back slowly, licking the seam of his lips before dipping back down and pressing them against mine again. His hands find their way into my hair, up by my scalp. It’s not painful, but it allows him to maneuver me however he wants.
And I know I said moments ago that I’d wait this out, and that we were going to take this slow, but I’m losing that battle quickly.
His smell, his touch, the way he’s breathing me in, it’s all too much, and we haven’t even done anything yet other than kiss with our mouths closed.
His mouth parts as his tongue sweeps out against my bottom lip. “Open for me, baby. I want to taste you.” I moan into his mouth, his tongue taking full advantage. I have no idea if those words are old or new, but none of that matters anymore.
As far as I’m concerned, this is our first kiss.
My hands trail from his hair, over his shoulders and down the hard lines of his chest.