Middle of Somewhere Series Box Set

by Roan Parrish

  I’d been so sleepy a minute before, but now I was wide-awake.

  And intensely nervous.

  I stood there for a minute, trying to figure out how this was going to go. Should I kiss Will? Would he—

  “Leo, get in the bed and go to sleep.”

  “Oh, but I—um, are we—”

  “No.”

  “You don’t even know what I was gonna say,” I grumbled.

  He snorted. “We’re not having sex, just come the hell to bed. I’m so tired.”

  “What time did you leave this morning, anyway?” I slid into bed next to him.

  “Like six.”

  “Is everything okay at work? Why’d you go in so early? You don’t usually go that early, do you? No, you don’t. I—”

  The pillow hit my face and Will pulled the covers up over it, encasing me in a cocoon of Will-smelling warmth. He held the pillow there for a minute. I mean, I could still breathe and everything, he was just making a point. When I relaxed into the bed, he took his pillow back and shoved it under his head, turning onto his stomach.

  “What kind of sheets are these?” I asked. “They’re so comfy.”

  Will groaned. “Leo!”

  “But I’m suddenly not tired anymore,” I said.

  “Yes, you are. You just forgot about it momentarily because penises don’t run on the same clock as the rest of us.”

  “You mean like a dessert stomach? A cock clock?” I started giggling. Then I laughed some more. Then I turned over to tell Will something terribly important, but I couldn’t possibly because I was so very, very asleep.

  I finally decided on the direct approach.

  “I want us to have sex,” I said as we did the dishes the next night. “Okay?”

  Honestly, I’d kind of expected surprise at my boldness or… something. But Will just snorted dismissively and said, “You’re nineteen. You want to have sex with everything.”

  “That’s not true!” I insisted. “Besides, I’m more mature than you. You’re a child basically, only with, like, dicks instead of toys.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that. I take mine, and I go home as soon as I’m sick of playing.” He waggled an eyebrow at me as he dried the final dish, then walked to his desk and starting preparing things for work the next day.

  “Will, I’m serious.”

  He sighed and his shoulders slumped. “Yeah, I know.”

  Well that was… not encouraging.

  “So then… what? Am I really that bad?”

  “No, of course not,” Will said.

  “Then I don’t get it. You’ll sleep with all those strangers—with guys you don’t even like—with guys you kinda hate, but not with me?”

  Will cut his eyes to me sharply, though his voice was only a mild warning. “Careful, Leo.”

  “Sorry, sorry, just….” My stomach turned over. “You must really not want me at all, I guess?”

  Will opened his mouth and an expression I’d never seen before crossed his face. It was heavy and complicated. I got irritation and curiosity and… maybe fear? I’d never seen Will look afraid before so I couldn’t be sure.

  “You’re sure that’s what you want?”

  “Well, jeez, don’t sound too excited.”

  Now I just felt stupid, like I was talking him into something he really didn’t want. But Will was still looking at me like he expected an answer. Which was ridiculous because I was pretty sure the fact that I wanted Will was up there with “global warming is real” on the list of stuff that is obvious.

  “Yeah. Yes, of course I do.”

  For just a second I imagined that what I saw in Will’s expression was… disappointment. Which didn’t make any sense, so I must have been wrong. And then whatever it was vanished, the cool mask I recognized from outside the walls of his apartment firmly in place.

  “Okay, then,” he said, and grabbed my hand, pulling me toward the bedroom.

  “Wait, what? Really? Uh, wait, right now?”

  At the bed, Will stripped with economy and gestured at me to do the same.

  He was perfect, pale velvet skin over long muscles, gleaming with fine golden hairs like he was a marble statue that the sculptor had dusted with gilt. But he looked like he could have been changing in a gym locker room for all the enthusiasm he was showing.

  “Umm. This wasn’t quite the way I… thought this would go.”

  “What, you want me to seduce you? You were the one negotiating this like a business transaction not five minutes ago.”

  “Yeah, but I just thought….”

  “You thought it’d be romantic? That you’d stay here for a month and we’d fall in love and be boyfriends and soul mates and get married and artificially inseminate your lesbian BFF and have a kid called Mint? That’s not me, Leo. And the sooner you realize that you don’t actually want me like that the better.”

  “But I do want you. I—”

  “Look, I’m not saying this to be cute. I’m not doing some ‘Oh god, I’m awful, you don’t want me, rending my garments in the rain, tortured and riddled with feelings of unworthiness because my little brother drowned while I was supposed to be watching him and I don’t deserve love’ thing. I’m being honest. You wanna fuck? Let’s fuck. But don’t have the expectation that then we’ll be boyfriends because you’ll be disappointed. And if you do it anyway and you get your feelings hurt, I want you to think back to this moment right here, where I’m telling you it’s a bad idea, so that you don’t blame that shit on me.”

  I gaped at him, something shaking loose and jangling around inside my chest, my stomach hollow. He had said all this in a tone that was completely sincere. Genuine. Like he could’ve been giving me advice about someone else.

  I wasn’t sure how to tell him that, yes, I wanted him. But not the way he thought. Not in the anonymous, impersonal way that he slept with strangers. I didn’t know how to say that and not prove him right about what else I wanted from him, though. About all those things he said he didn’t want to give.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Will said before I could find the words, and started pulling his clothes back on.

  Something made me say, “Wait.” Because part of me didn’t believe it could be true. After everything we’d shared, how close we’d gotten, I couldn’t quite believe that sex would mean nothing to him. How could it?

  Sure, maybe this was all I could get from Will for now. But… after we’d slept together, how could Will not realize how good we could be? Realize how it could be different with me than it was with those other guys?

  “I still want to,” I said. Will froze, pants half on.

  “You do?”

  I nodded. He looked uncertain. He had pitched a hardball, fully expecting me to walk away, and I’d taken a swing and hit it squarely. He narrowed his eyes at me.

  “I heard you,” I said. “And I accept the limitations of your offer. Just sex, we’re not boyfriends. I get it. I swear.” I sounded at least marginally nonchalant, even if my heart was about to pound out of my chest.

  Will crossed his arms. “Okaaaay….”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. So we’re doing this?”

  “Yeah, just… um, just know that I’ve never… exactly… I mean, I have done stuff—but I’ve. Yeah.”

  “Duly noted,” Will said, back in control. He walked over to me and started pulling my clothes off, smirking. “I’ve got no problem whatsoever telling you exactly how I want you to fuck me.”

  My knees practically buckled, because, shit, that was hot. “Oh Jesus. Okay. You want me to—right, sure, no problem.”

  “Get on the bed, Leo.”

  I scrambled to the bed, so distracted by what was about to happen that I almost forgot to store away the image of Will, naked and pale as ice, prowling toward me, thighs tightening and releasing, the perfect cut of muscle at his hips almost ridiculous in its definition.

  “Do you have a personal trainer or something?” He just smirked and shook his
head, crawling over me in the bed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “It won’t hurt too much.” Then he leered and grabbed my dick.

  I already felt ridiculously exposed, and that didn’t help.

  “Oh my god, can you at least pretend that you’re taking me a little bit seriously?”

  “I take this”—he stroked my erection—“very seriously, Leo.”

  I groaned, my head falling back. “’Kay, kiss now, please.”

  Will kissed me and I forgot that he was basically doing me a favor. That this was just sex to him—maybe even pity sex. I forgot everything except that his mouth felt like heaven and his body against mine was intoxicating. I was immediately at about an eight out of ten on the imaginary arousal scale that I’d just created. What would you measure arousal in, anyway? Well, I was at eight out of ten of them, in any case.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” I chanted, pulling away and praying that Will would see how close I was and ease off just a little.

  He reached into the bedside table and pulled out a condom.

  “You know how to do this?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I said, starting to rip it open with my teeth like I’d seen people do in the movies.

  “Oh dear god, give me that, I’ll do it.” He snatched the condom and rolled it over my erection. I bit my lip, and he smirked at me.

  “Can I, um.”

  “Spit it out.”

  “I want to… can we switch places?”

  “Oh, you want to be on top of me?”

  I nodded.

  “You going to fuck me hard, Leo?” His comment was half flirtatious and half mocking, but somehow I thought he was a little excited at the idea. And my dick definitely was.

  “Lie down,” I said, and he did. Spread out beneath me, Will looked different. Accessible in one way, but more remote in another. Like he was giving me a part of himself, but if I took it, another part would recede.

  Gone was the man I’d made out with over pancakes, or cuddled with on the couch, binge watching Orphan Black. Gone was the man I’d listened to as he ranted about typography on book spines, and the one who’d eaten chicken tikka masala off my plate and grinned when he got caught, sauce in his teeth.

  The one in his place was sexy, experienced, in control. Distant. But I had said I wanted this and I wasn’t sure I’d get another chance to prove to him what we could be.

  I thought back on all the porn I’d watched, but couldn’t actually remember what happened before the actual fucking part. Maybe they edited that out? Was I supposed to, like….

  “It’s on the condom already.”

  “Huh?”

  “Lube. If that’s what you’re waiting for.”

  “Oh, okay. Um, so should I like… do something?”

  “Yeah, you might consider fucking me. That or get me something to read in the meantime.”

  “No, I meant, um, like in terms of preparation or—”

  “I know what you meant.”

  “Okay, then I’ll just, uh….”

  But my hands were shaking and my knees were shaking and really this did not feel like I wanted it to. And I know Will made fun of me for having these grand romantic notions—“capital-R romantic,” Professor Ginsberg would probably say—and maybe he was right, but….

  I dropped my chin to my chest.

  “Hey, can we not do it like this?” I said, my voice small.

  “You’re the one who wanted to switch places!”

  “No, I mean…. Will, come on. Please. I know it’s maybe a joke to you, but I really haven’t ever done this before, and you’re kind of making me feel like shit.”

  I opened my eyes a crack and looked at Will. He looked away.

  “Like, I want you you, not sex you.”

  “Sex me,” he repeated.

  “Yeah, with the whole ‘I’ve slept with a ton of people, and this is just one more notch on my bedpost, I’m beautiful and confident and not terrified I’m about to totally fuck it up’ thing.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You’re not gonna fuck it up.”

  “I might,” I whispered.

  This had been a huge mistake. Will was looking at me like I was a stranger he’d offered a favor to who was now making the favor much more work than he’d anticipated. I’d had warmer, more intimate exchanges checking out library books. This was nothing like what I wanted with him. Nothing at all.

  8

  Chapter 8

  January

  I clambered off Will and rolled out of the bed in a mortification of clumsiness, running into the living room and tugging on my pants as I went, in a futile attempt to feel less exposed.

  God, what the hell just happened?

  Images of Will, sublimely beautiful in his nakedness, got all jumbled up with the expression on his face: a neutrality so blank I may as well have been a stranger. A pathetic, overly eager, horny stranger. I dropped my head forward to clunk against the kitchen wall. Fuck my life.

  “I didn’t quite live up to the fantasy, I guess?” Will’s voice was ice.

  “Can you… can you please not be mean to me right now?” My voice was muffled by the wall.

  “I’m not being mean to you. I’m serious. You had a vision of what it’d be like to fuck me, and I didn’t fulfill it. Like college, or Christmas.”

  I turned around, wrapping my arms around myself against the chill. Will’s jaw was tensed, his eyebrows drawn together, and the pale skin of his chest mottled with a flush. He’d put his pants on again too.

  “Wait, are you… are you mad at me?” I asked.

  Will gave an uncertain shrug, a gesture so at odds with his usual surety that it distracted me.

  “Why are you mad?”

  He shook his head in irritation but said nothing, just moved around the kitchen, picking things up and putting them back down again.

  “Will.” I put a hand on his shoulder, and he shrugged it off. “Will, come on.”

  “Fine! What do you want me to say, Leo? I thought you were different, okay? I didn’t think you saw me that way. The way everyone else does.”

  Was I imagining it, or did his mouth tremble slightly?

  “What do you mean? How does everyone see you?”

  Will glared at me. “You know how—you’ve seen them. Like I’m… like they just care about how I look. They just want to… to fuck me.” He spat the word out, making sex sound filthy for the first time since I’d met him.

  “Uh, okay, I know what you mean, but the idea that you would lump me in with those people is… it’s fucked-up, man.”

  He set his jaw. “Is it?”

  “Will.” I put my hand on his arm and this time he didn’t shrug me off. “You’re totally beautiful. You are.” His eyes flew to mine, narrowed, and angry. “Hang on. Jesus. Yeah, you’re super hot. But… like, a lot of people are. Give me a little credit for not being some mindless… sex zombie or something, would you? I’m not like totally powerless in the face of your beauty.”

  This was almost completely true. Will’s looks did still take me by surprise sometimes, his beauty rendered something separate from him. A thing he possessed rather than a thing he was. But it definitely wasn’t the moment for that shade of distinction to be meaningful to Will.

  “Especially not now that I know you.”

  Will snorted at this though I hadn’t actually meant it as an insult. Then he lifted himself up to sit on the counter, leaned back against the cabinet, and stared moodily out the window.

  “You seriously think that I just want to… to fuck you because you’re pretty and that’s all? How could you possibly think that?”

  He shook his head, and his expression was confused, like he honestly couldn’t quite figure out if I meant what I said.

  “I just get tired of not knowing.” Will’s voice had a darkness to it that was completely different from his pissed-off tone of a minute before. But he shook his head and crossed his arms over his chest. “Never mind.”

  “What?” I followed h
im with my body, standing between his knees and putting my hands on his thighs.

  “Would you even have liked me when we first met if you hadn’t thought I was hot? You totally wouldn’t have. I was just some asshole your friend’s boyfriend used to date. I made fun of you, gave you shit. Why would you have wanted to spend time with me if you didn’t want to fuck me?”

  His intonation was flat, like these weren’t even questions, but stories he’d told himself for so long he already believed they were true.

  And I wasn’t sure what to say. Because the truth was that, sure, the first thing I’d noticed about Will was how he looked. And could I honestly separate that from who he was? Not with any certainty.

  “Well, okay,” I said. “But, attraction’s… mysterious, right? At some level that happens whenever people are attracted to each other. Like, someone says something that would one hundred percent annoy you if someone else had said it, but because it’s that person it’s charming or funny or whatever. And in case you forgot, we aren’t fucking, and I basically want to hang out with you all the time.”

  “Yeah, but you want to. Wanted to.”

  “So… I was supposed to—what?—prove that I was different, that I care about you, by not being attracted to you? Now who’s being the romantic?” I squeezed his knee to soften my words. “Besides, you wanted to, too, right? At least a little bit?”

  He shrugged. And even though I didn’t exactly think he meant it, it cut kind of deep.

  “Seriously? You have no interest in sleeping with me, but you said okay totally out of pity? Damn, Will, that’s kinda cold.”

  “No, no, fine, yes, I want to, I guess.”

  “Wow, that’s so incredibly flattering.”

  Will grabbed my chin so I had to look up at him. He looked intense, but he was biting his lip in this maddening way that made him look kind of lost at the same time.

  “You’re probably my best friend,” he said. “And I’ve been honest with you about not wanting a relationship. So I can’t help but wonder.”

  My brain had short-circuited somewhere back around the words “best friend,” and now I was struggling to keep up with Will’s logic, which, at its most clear was often inconceivable to me.