by Rae Kennedy
“He was offered his dream job.” She hugs a pillow to her chest, and I hand her another tissue. “But it meant he’d have to move to the city right away.” She blows her nose and takes a steadying breath. “He wasn’t going to take it if there was even a chance of us being together. He said he wouldn’t leave me again.” She wipes the tear that falls to her cheek. “I couldn’t let him. I couldn’t let him give that up for me.”
“Oh Hale.” I put my hand on her shoulder. “You should have called me, and I would have rushed over. You didn’t have to be alone.”
“I don’t mind being alone.” She looks at me and sniffles. “I guess I’m not used to having a friend like you to call.”
I wrap her in a tight hug, and she lets me. Her slender arms wrap around my middle and her head becomes heavy on my shoulder.
She sits up, looking more put together than a second ago. “His job offer is perfect, the type of opportunity that doesn’t come along often. If I’d let him choose me over it, he probably would have ended up resenting me eventually.”
I nod. “Maybe. It was a hard choice you made.”
Her mouth hardens into a line. “I’m mad at him. Mad I had to make the decision for him. He wouldn’t even entertain the idea of doing long distance.” She throws the pillow down. “This is stupid. I should call him and convince him he can take the job and we can still be together. We can handle long distance.”
“Are you planning on moving to the city, too, after graduation?” I ask.
She chews on the inside of her cheek. “I don’t know. There are plenty of options in the city, so maybe. But I don’t know where I’ll end up after school.”
I look at her, wishing I could be more encouraging.
“You don’t think we could make the distance work?”
“I just know long-distance relationships are hard. I’ve done it and I failed.”
She swallows, looking at me with her big eyes, waiting for me to elaborate.
“Wes and I dated all four years of high school. We’d been best friends before that. I’ve known him since third grade. When I came here for school and he stayed home, we didn’t think for one second the distance might separate us. We were unbreakable. And it was only two hours away. Nothing.”
I haven’t talked about this with anyone before. I know my family wondered about our break-up, but they never pried.
“But four hours round-trip is hard to do in one night, so we would just have the weekends. But he works six days a week on the ranch. And I’d have homework, and new friends, and activities and games I wanted to go to.”
I glance at the Chinese food, the neat little boxes still in the take-out bag and wonder when Tuck will be home. For some reason, I don’t want him to walk in on this conversation.
“We started seeing each other less and less—it was harder to make time. When we’d talk on the phone, we had less to talk about. We were excited for the summer to come, but when I was back home, things were different between us. We had changed.”
The words stick in my throat. Guilt seeping up. He hadn’t changed. He was the same, wonderful guy. It was me. All me.
“We broke up before I returned sophomore year.” I broke it off. I look back up at her. This wasn’t supposed to be about me. “I’m not saying long distance can’t work—but it didn’t work for me.”
She looks disappointed. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut.
* * *
Empty cartons are strewn on the living room floor. I am stuffed and my abs hurt every time Tuck makes me laugh. He’s recounting the first time he did the laundry by himself and flooded half the house. The way he tells it, getting so animated, watching him is almost better than the story.
The look of boyish excitement on his face when he walked in and saw me was even better than I thought it would be. Though he might have just been excited about the take-out. He pulled Haley and me both in for a group hug calling us “his girls.”
I don’t know why I liked that so much.
He didn’t even change out of his suit, just unbuttoned his sleeves and loosened his tie then began divvying out the food. Haley ate and joined in on the conversation, but it’s getting late and now she looks exhausted.
Tuck cleans up the mess and Haley stands, stretching.
“I’m going to take a bath then head to bed,” she says.
“Night, sis,” Tuck says.
He gives her a hug and leans down, whispering something in her ear. When she pulls away and looks up at him, her eyes are heartbroken, but she smiles. He smiles back at her with a look of adoration that is so sweet my heart is trying to leap out of my chest.
Haley retreats down the hall with a good night and when the water starts running for her bath, Tuck faces me. He removes his tie and starts to unbutton his blue dress shirt. He’s looking at me, but not saying anything as he undoes one button after the other, revealing the tan skin of his chest.
My pulse quickens. What is he doing?
A small smile tugs at his mouth and as if he’s reading my mind, he says, “I’ve had a long-ass day in this stuffy shirt. And I think I’m going to head to bed myself. That is, if...”
“If?” I ask.
“If you’re joining me.”
I don’t miss how his eyes momentarily flick down my body. Warmth is growing in my stomach, but he is not going to get the satisfaction of making me blush.
“You’re being a little presumptuous.”
“Am I?”
He extends his hand out to me and I’m up and walking toward him before I realize what I’m doing. His hand is warm and wraps around mine completely. He leads me to his room, and it feels like he wants me there for more than sleep.
CHAPTER 10
His back is to me as he undresses. First, his shirt and undershirt go in the hamper, then he unbuckles his belt. He opens a drawer and pulls out a new pair of boxers. As he turns toward the bathroom, he catches me looking at him. Shit, I was totally staring.
“You need a shirt?” he asks.
“Uh, yeah.”
He throws me a shirt from his dresser and proceeds to the bathroom to change and brush his teeth. When I go in after him, he turns as he leaves, making sure not to rub up against me as we pass.
Damn.
When I slide under the covers next to him, he is lying on his back, arm bent over his head and already looks half asleep.
“Goodnight,” I whisper.
“Night,” he says, not opening his eyes.
I roll over.
When he had asked me to join him in bed earlier, I’d thought he was looking at me with desire. Obviously, I was wrong. But this is good. If he had propositioned me once we were alone, that would have complicated things. Especially because I would have said yes.
I’m going to Hell.
His chest is rising and falling in a slow, steady rhythm. His breathing low and drawn out.
I don’t know how he falls asleep so fast.
I could wake him. I could proposition him. I doubt he’d turn me down. I could plant little kisses on his bare shoulder, working my way up his neck to the angle of his jaw, all the while running my fingertips across his chest and down his stomach...
I realize I’ve trailed my hand down my own stomach to where I am already warm and aching. I squeeze my thighs together to stifle the throb.
Why am I so fucking horny?
I won’t wake Tuck. No. I like him too much as a friend.
A friend I think about while masturbating.
Fuck.
I pull Tuck’s large shirt up to my navel and rub my clit over the cotton of my underwear. What if he thinks about me too—when he’s alone? I imagine Tuck pulling his hard cock out of his boxers, fisting himself for me. I pull my panties to the side, finding myself already wet and swollen. It doesn’t take long to find my release.
I can’t make this a habit.
* * *
“You’ve got to take it easy on me,” Tuck says as I set another tequila shot in
front of him.
“Oh yeah, I forget you’re not as young as you used to be.”
His jaw tenses but his eyes are playful. “Are you saying I can’t hold my liquor?”
“I don’t know. Last time we did tequila shots you were the one who ended up passed out on the table.”
He narrows his eyes but smirks at me. “I may not remember that, but if I drank enough to forget you, it was definitely more than most people could handle.”
I toss back my shot, letting the burn in my throat warm me all over. “Are you going to take it or keep making excuses?”
He shoots it quickly then slams the slippery little glass on the table. “Pour another,” he challenges.
“Dude, don’t try to start a drinking contest with her. She always wins,” Nick calls from the living room.
Nick’s showing Haley his extensive playlists so she can select the music for tonight’s party while Gilbert hops playfully at their feet, pouncing on their toes. It won’t be an actual party, just a get together for New Year’s Eve. A couple of friends are coming over and Caleb invited a girl he’s been dating. It will be low key. I think I’m done with hosting huge parties after what happened last time.
I didn’t even have to beg Haley to come over—I just invited her and Tuck, and they said sure. It’s been four days since Cade left and she hasn’t secluded herself away or stopped eating. I suppose it is easier to get past a hard situation when the decision was yours.
“Vodka me!” she says, coming into the kitchen with us, having selected a nineties throwback playlist to blast.
“On it!” Nick skids past us to the fridge and starts making her a vodka-soda.
* * *
Haley is passed out on the couch. She had been determined to have the most fun tonight, and while she did succeed in beating Caleb in a nail-biting game of quarters and convincing Tuck to lip-sync a cheesy boy-band song with her, she only made it to eleven.
On the television, the ball is dropping in Times Square. Caleb is in the corner with his girl, already stealing kisses. Our other friends are also paired up. Nick is sitting on the arm of the couch watching the ball, clearly sulking that Haley is asleep and he has no one to kiss at midnight. Heck, he’d kiss Tuck if he thought he’d be up for it. Even Gilbert is curled up in a little ball on Haley’s hip.
The countdown continues as the ball falls. Five. Four. Tuck is next to me, his presence impossible to ignore. Three. Two.
Is he going to kiss me?
One.
The ball hits, everyone cheers and silver confetti shimmers all over the screen. I turn his direction.
“Happy New Year,” I say.
“Happy New Year,” he returns, leaning down toward me.
I rise on my toes to put my face closer to his, my heart thumping loudly. A small peck for tradition is not a big deal. Right? And his lips look nice. The thought of them touching mine has those butterflies twirling again.
I lift my mouth toward his but figure out too late that he is aiming for my cheek and his lips end up brushing the corner of my mouth instead. His lips are soft and warm. He pulls back, surprised, then tilts his head to the right, realizing I had not been going in for a kiss on the cheek.
* * *
I throw my dress into the hamper and unhook my bra. The fun had died down around one and everyone left. Except for Haley, who is still passed out on the couch, and Tuck, who didn’t want to wake her and wasn’t fit to drive anyhow. He said they’d just stay over and crash in the living room.
I want him to come to bed with me, but I can’t think of a way to do it inconspicuously.
I remove my bra and let it fall to the floor, then turn to find my sleep tank. I think it’s somewhere in my pile of not-exactly-clean-but-not-dirty-either clothes.
The door swings open and Tuck’s eyes lock on me, going wide.
I cross my arms over my bare breasts.
“Shit!” He closes the door quickly. “Sorry,” he says through the door. “I was looking for the bathroom.”
I snatch my bra back off the floor and put it on hastily. I throw my door open and stomp down the hall to the bathroom where I find Tuck.
“Tucker Lee Collison, are you kidding me? You’ve been here before, you’ve not had that much to drink, and you know where the bathroom is!”
He stares at me blankly, mouth open.
“What the fuck?”
He blinks, snapping out of his stupor. “I’m getting the general sense you’re mad at me, but I honestly haven’t heard anything you’ve said. You’re in just your bra and underwear.”
I’m aware. “Oh, come on, it covers as much as a bathing suit. We are adults, aren’t we?”
“Yes, we are very adult.” His eyes dart down my body and my skin begins to prickle. “Our adultness has a lot to do with why this is so distracting.”
I roll my eyes, putting my hand on my hip. “It’s not that big of a deal. Get over it.”
“Your panties are paper-thin,” he says, yanking off his shirt, then dropping his jeans to the floor. “How do you like it? Is this not distracting?”
I take in his tall, muscular form, clad only in tight black boxer briefs.
I turn away and look at the ceiling to keep myself from staring at the painfully obvious bulge in his shorts.
“That is not at all the same.” I try not to smile. I fail. “I don’t have a huge erection.”
“If it’s distracting for you to look at, imagine how it is for me!”
I glance back at his face, trying to hold it together, but my eyes drift back to those black boxers. I look back up to the ceiling, biting my lips together but unable to stop the shaking of my shoulders.
“Are you laughing at it?”
“No.” But the laugh escapes my lips from deep in my belly and I can’t stop it. “Okay, I’m leaving now. Goodnight Tuck,” I say as I close the door.
“Night, darlin,’” he says, a sexy smirk on his face.
* * *
I pad to the kitchen to get a glass of water at three in the morning, still unable to sleep. As I pass the living room, Haley is still sleeping peacefully on the couch, covered by a blanket she has pulled up under her chin. Tuck is on the floor next to her, lying on his back, softly snoring, and shirtless. His blanket only comes up to his hips, and his feet are also uncovered. I should have tried to find him a larger blanket.
I try to be quiet as I fill my glass but when I walk back toward my room, Tuck is sitting up.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Just getting some water.” I hold my glass up for him to see. I don’t want to tell him I haven’t been asleep, or that I was thinking about him in bed again, and his tight black boxers.
The very same boxers he’s wearing as he throws the blanket off and gets up. Standing there in front of me, he seems to take up all the space in the room.
“Let’s go,” he says.
He follows me to my room and I find myself grinning.
When he slips under the covers behind me, his large arm wraps around my middle, pulling me tight to his chest. He’s never tried to sleep like this before. His breath at my cheek still smells like tequila but his body surrounds me in his unique, sweet and musky scent.
The press of his hard length against my backside is unmistakable. I can’t help but push back against it, wanting more. Wanting him.
“Tuck—”
But he doesn’t answer.
I soon feel the subtle heave of his body against mine in time with his inhales and exhales. I relax into his embrace. I might want to sleep like this from now on.
* * *
It’s already light outside when I wake up. The bed feels huge. Tuck’s not here. I put on some yoga pants and a university sweatshirt, throw my hair up in a messy bun and walk out to the living room.
Tuck is laying on the floor, in the exact position as earlier, completely passed out. Did he come back out here while I was asleep or...did I dream the whole thing? Sleeping in his arms felt so real, but n
ow I’m not sure.
Haley is sitting on the couch, wrapped in blankets, looking at her phone. It appears everyone else is still asleep.
“Hey.”
Haley looks up from her phone and smiles.
“Want some cereal or something?” I ask.
“Ohmygod, yes. Just let me finish this up.” She focuses intently on her phone.
“Whatcha doin’?”
After a minute, she puts the phone down and walks to the table where I’m already filling my bowl.
“I was trying to get into a photography class last minute.”
“That sounds fun.”
“Yeah. I got an amazing camera for Christmas. It’s just like my dad’s. Figured I should learn how to use it.” She chooses the box of extra sugary cereal and starts pouring.
I hand her the milk, devouring my bran flakes while they’re still crunchy, but secretly wishing I had gone with the less healthy option.
“Our dad was a photographer. Did you know that?”
I shake my head no, mouth still full.
She smiles at the thought. “He did mostly freelance work for magazines and journals. He’d have to go away on shoots often. He went to Africa a couple of times—his longest trip was to central Asia, but he usually stayed closer to home and wasn’t gone more than a couple days.” She pours the milk but continues. “When he died, I would pretend he was away on one of his trips, and he’d be back home soon.”
She finally eats a spoonful of the cereal—that I’m totally not jealous of—and looks over at Tuck. His hand rests lightly on his stomach, slowly rising and falling. “I sometimes wonder where we’d be if he hadn’t died. How different things would be. Especially for Tuck. He wouldn’t have quit basketball.”
“I thought he couldn’t play because of an injury?”
“He tore his meniscus his freshman year, but he was cleared to play again by the end of the season and the coaches made it clear they wanted him back the next year.”
“So why didn’t he go back?”
“I haven’t outright asked him, but since our dad died, he’s put pressure on himself to take care of me and our mom, provide for us, and make all the right decisions. We never asked him to make sacrifices for us, but after he got hurt, I think he decided his basketball career was impractical and selfish.”