Should I pull her into me to keep her protected from the scary television show or keep my distance to keep her protected from me?
Distance, asshole. Get up and move if you have to.
This whole situation stemmed from me trying to rescue her from the inappropriate advances of Kyle and that jackass at the bar. Now what? I was going to step in and do the same thing. Where was my fucking head at?
I made a plan and I was sticking with it. We could continue to watch the show. Finish out the season, but the fact was at the end of the week, she was going. She had school. I had school. There was no use starting up something as complicated as Tori and me.
Starting up? What was I even thinking? Nothing was going to start up because there was nothing to start up. She was Jim’s little sister. The girl who used to sit in the backroom unnoticed and never said a word. She was a kid who I was just watching out for.
“I’m pausing it. You look scared.” I clicked the button on the remote. I think I was getting jealous of the pillow and wanted her to drop it.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m such a wimp.” She unclutched the pillow. “I don’t mean to keep jumping. I’m probably ruining the whole show for you.”
“Did you start packing?” I asked, looking for any excuse to start up a conversation.
“Yes and no. I thought I was almost all packed, but my new roommate keeps freaking me out and telling me all these things I need. She seems a bit high maintenance. I don’t think I’m going to be able to keep up with her.” Tori sighed and her eyebrows creased. “She’s beautiful.”
“You met her?”
“No, I just saw pictures, but trust me, she’s gorgeous.” She shook away a frown and smiled. “The good news is I’ll probably get the dorm to myself most nights while she’s out having a fabulous time.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Well, she’ll have dates and parties and,” she shrugged uncomfortably, “that’s not my thing.”
“It’s not really my thing either,” I agreed.
She dropped her head and picked at her nails. “Dating isn’t your thing?”
“Uh, no, I like dating,” I gulped, struggling to correct myself, “I was talking more about partying.”
“I figured that’s what you meant.” She played with a piece of hair nervously. “I’m sure you probably date a lot of girls.”
Why? Why did I pause this show? How had this conversation gone from packing to dating?
“I’m going to put the show back on and get a water. Do you want a water?” I stood up and pushed play.
“No thank you.” She shook her head and reached back for the pillow, zeroing in on the screen.
I went into my kitchen area and grabbed a water from the fridge. One more show and the season was over. I could last through one more show. I chugged down the entire bottle and returned to the couch. I sat down next to her, closer than we had been before. The last episode of season one started. It was a chilling finale. She grasped her pillow tighter, and at one point, the pillow and her face came crashing into my chest. Her arms prickled up in tiny goose bumps from the show, mine did for a completely different reason.
The show ended. Season two popped on the screen, episode one all ready to go. One push of a button. That was all it would take. You couldn’t not watch. Netflix was screwing me.
“I guess we can’t watch season one and not watch season two. What do you say? You got a few more nights to spare? Should we keep watching?”
She hesitated. It made me realize how badly I wanted her to say yes.
“Yeah, I could sneak over a few more nights.”
“Sneak? You don’t tell your family where you’re going when you come here?” I’d been wondering if she was she telling her parents and if they were they telling Jim. I was relieved to find out they didn’t know.
“My parents go to bed early. It’s easier to just kind of leave without telling them where I’m going.” She took a confident breath, something I seldom saw her do. “You’re my friend now too. If I try explaining that to them, they’ll tell Jim and it’s none of his business that we’re hanging out watching TV.”
She was sneaking out. We were watching TV as friends. No one knew about it.
“So, if I talk to Jim, I shouldn’t mention it?” I scratched my head.
“You can tell him if you want,” she said, studying her nails. “I talked to him today and I was going to tell him, but I wasn’t sure if I should.”
“Okay, that’s cool. Yeah. We can just keep our friendship a secret,” I answered, pulling on my collar. A secret? Is that what I had just said? I pushed play to make season two start and to make me shut the hell up.
Tori excused herself to use the bathroom. When she came back, she sat on the far end of the couch. I refused to let myself be disappointed. First, that she didn’t want to sit closer to me and next, that she didn’t mention hanging out with me to Jim or her family.
We ended on season two, episode three. I walked Tori to her car, fought the urge to kiss her and watched her drive away. Once she was gone, I picked up the phone and called my sister.
“It’s like midnight. Why are you calling me?” my sister mumbled into the phone.
The time never even dawned on me; that was how screwed up my head was.
“Oh, sorry. I didn’t even realize it. We can talk tomorrow.”
“No, wait, is everything okay? Is it Mom and Dad?”
“Everything’s fine. Mom and Dad are fine. I guess they’re fine,” I chuckled. “I haven’t seen them in a few days. Maybe they’re not. Maybe they’re up there struggling for help, calling out to me to rescue them and I can’t hear them because I’m locked all the way down here.”
“Grant, are you drunk?”
“No.”
“Are you having a stroke?”
“No, I just wanted someone to talk to. It’s been a weird few days and I…forget it. I’m sorry I called so late. Go back to bed. We’ll talk soon”
“Don’t you dare hang up. I’m up now. Tell me what’s going on?” Julie yawned but her voice perked up.
“I’ve been hanging out with someone the last few days and it’s throwing me off a little bit. I don’t know why.”
“A girl?”
“Yes, Julie, a girl. I like girls.”
“Relax. I was just making sure.” She sighed. “So, what’s throwing you off? You like her and now you’re going away to school? That whole distance thing?”
“Yeah, amongst about a million other things,” I said frustrated.
“Okay, first of all, who is this girl? Do I know her?”
“That’s one of the problems. It’s Jim’s little sister.”
“The one we saw in the bar the other night? Grant, you told me she was a teenager. That’s not good. And Jim’s sister, that’s no good either.”
“She’s turning nineteen soon,” I defended.
“So you like her?”
“I…I mean, yeah, I like her, but I’m not sure if I like her.” That sounded stupid even to me. “I didn’t plan to start hanging out with her. It just happened.”
“Who is this? This is not my brother. My brother doesn’t do complicated and unplanned.”
“I know. This is stupid, just hearing myself say all of this out loud to you is clearing my head. Tori is too young. She’s my best friend’s sister and we’re both about to leave for college. I’ll see her the next few nights and then that’s it. I’ll say goodbye and it’s over.”
“Why do you have to see her again? Why not just be done now?”
“We started watching Netflix and…”
“Say no more,” Julie cut me off. “Once you start watching shows on Netflix, that shit is addicting, you got to see it through.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Season two ended. It was over.
“I know it must have sucked having all your friends go back and getting stuck with me, but I had a great time. Funny, right? Please don’t make fun of me, but I’m g
onna miss you.” Tori’s breathing was ragged. Every breath came out in an exaggerated needy way. She wanted to be kissed goodbye. That could not happen.
“I’ll miss you too.” I struggled to say.
“I’ll be careful at school. I promise.”
She was staring at my lips, urging them over. My heart thundered in my chest watching her pull her bottom lip in and nibble at it.
“Good. I’m glad. You’ll need to be very careful. Don’t make a mistake.” I covered my mouth and banged my head into the frame of the door to break the eye contact. “No matter how much you want to, you can’t. The timing, the age thing, the history, it’s wrong. You can’t.”
The intensity between us kept growing. No matter what I said to her, myself, it was all getting lost. I needed a simple way to end this.
I leaned forward and tipped her head to the side so I could get the quick feel of her skin against my lips. Her skin was so soft and I felt her body quiver from the touch. I couldn’t pull away. Without warning, she turned her head and our lips met. Her hands trailed my arms up to my shoulders. My lips began to open trying to part hers. My body tensed and I pulled back. I had to. If it went one second longer, I’d have lifted her off her feet and taken her back into my house.
She dropped down from her toes and pulled her lips in frowning.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized, backing away from me. “I didn’t mean to.”
“No, that was my fault. I’m the one who needs to apologize.” I followed her but wouldn’t allow myself to get too close to her again. “That was stupid of me. I wanted to say goodbye and I didn’t mean for it to turn into anything more than it should have been. That was wrong.”
She squeezed her eyes shut and winced like she was afraid. “Was it me? I know it was only two seconds, but did I do it wrong?”
“Wrong? You mean the kiss? Was that…” My fists clenched and I paced the driveway. That was her first kiss. Shit. “No. No. No. I did not mean to do that.”
“It’s okay. It wasn’t even a kiss. It was just a peck. And it was me who moved my head. So, really, it was all my fault.”
She was blaming herself for something that was my fault. No…not her fault…mine…need to tell her. I couldn’t get my brain to work until her door slammed and the engine started. I needed to stop her; it couldn’t end like this. I knocked on her window. It got her to stop before pulling away. She rolled down the window, but she wouldn’t look at me. I needed to fix this, set it straight before she left.
“This isn’t how I want you to go. Everything that happened in these last two minutes has been my fault. We’re friends and I don’t want to confuse that.” My hands grasped onto her car so tightly I thought I might dent it.
“Okay,” she said in a small voice.
“You, the kiss, it was great. You did everything perfectly. I didn’t mean to act like an ass.”
“Okay,” she said again.
I had no idea if she was she hurt, embarrassed, or possibly regretful. My own feelings for her were so jumbled; I couldn’t even begin to imagine hers.
“When you come home for Thanksgiving, maybe I’ll see you again.”
“Thanksgiving. Okay. Good luck in school.” She smiled up at me. I was hoping she would have offered her number to keep in touch. She didn’t.
I wished I had more time with her to figure this all out. I wished I had her number. I wished I could open the door to her car and pull her out so I could kiss her the way I really wanted to.
“Tori, I really wish,” I paused, shaking my head at the ground.
“What do you wish, Grant?”
I didn’t have the balls to say any of the things I was feeling, so I said, “I wish…I wish there was a season three.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and stayed in the driveway until her car was completely out of sight.
That was the end of us. Which was fine. We’d done nothing wrong. As bad as I wanted to, I managed to keep it on a friend level. If that quick peck kiss at the end was the only blip, then I think it was okay.
She asked if she’d done it wrong. Um, no she hadn’t. I rubbed my temples. Somehow, I had a feeling that two-second kiss was going to be one of the most memorable of my life. The soft innocence of her lips burned into my memory.
Needing to regroup, I walked inside and stood in front of the propeller picture, my favorite photograph of the bunch hanging on my wall. School, planes, flying…aeronautics that was my main focus. It took me three years to figure all that shit out.
Maybe a few years from now if I got another chance with Tori, it wouldn’t be such a bad idea, or if I had started hanging out with her a few years ago when I had time, we could’ve gotten to know each other better and…eh fuck, a few years ago she was only fifteen.
Thank God, she was gone.
Chapter Thirty
I opened the door to apartment seven. It was a shithole, but at least it wasn’t a dorm. I may have been a sophomore, but I was also twenty-two. Dorm life was not an option for me. My own rules, not the college’s.
Thanks to Mom and Dad’s money, I didn’t have a roommate either. The entire dump was mine. I threw my bags down on the worn carpet and explored my new place. Two seconds later, I was done. It had a bathroom and the room I was standing in was my bedroom, kitchen and living area all in one.
Someone knocked on the front door and I opened it to a tall blond with scattered touches of blue highlights.
“Hi, I’m Charles. Please call me Charley and that’s with a y.” He stepped past me into my apartment. “Well, this place sucks even more than mine. What’s your name, handsome?”
“I’m Grant,” I said to the guy appraising my space, kicking my bags with the top of his foot, trying to peek inside of them.
Charley turned back around and clutched his chin. It was my turn to be appraised. He squinted and took me in. I clasped my hands behind my back so he could get a good look.
“Yuck, you’re straight.” His lip curled. “And the way you’re reacting to me, you’re all PC and cool with the gay thing, so I can’t even have fun and taunt you with it.”
“Sorry, would you prefer I was a dick about it?”
“No, I just wish you were more uncomfortable with it. But, oh well, the times are progressing. I guess we can just be normal friends who don’t have awkward run-ins in the hallway that make you squirm and question your sexuality.” Charley rolled his eyes. “Bor-ing, but I can work with it.”
“You got a thousand guys on this campus, I’m sure you’ll find an uncomfortable squirmer somewhere around here.” I looked at my bare surroundings. “I just got here so I have nothing to offer you to drink.”
“Of course you don’t. Come across the hall to my place. We can have a beer and you can fill me in on your life and bore me. Then I’ll entertain you telling you all about mine.”
“Beer?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Oh, look at that, you do have a little labeling thing going on.” Charley tipped his chin. “You thought I was going to offer you something fruity, perhaps an apple-tini or a big pink Cosmo.”
“No, I was surprised you had a chance to stock your fridge. That’s all,” I answered, thinking quickly. I, one hundred percent, expected him to offer me a fruity cocktail over a beer. Labels, stereotypes, I’d need to watch myself with those things. Deep down, we all had them.
Charley led me across the hall to his furnished apartment that had no resemblance to mine. I took a seat in a soft leather recliner. It was black. His couch was white. The place was spotless.
He handed me a beer. “Okay, start, home life, age, where you from, parents, siblings? Go.”
“Uh, twenty-two, New Jersey, Mom, Dad, older sister. We’re normal, I guess. It took me a long time to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. My parents weren’t too happy about that, but what can you do?” I sipped. “What about you?”
“Virginia. Twenty. Only child. Mom’s okay with the gay thing. Dad’s not, but he pretends to be. I do
n’t have a boyfriend, but I do like to date. Try not to get chummy with any of the guys I bring home; they usually aren’t around too long.” He sunk back on the white couch. “What’s your love life?”
I uncrossed my legs and sat forward. “Nonexistent. I’m single and that’s a good thing. It makes my life a lot easier.”
“Okay, so there is someone, but what I’m picking up from your body language and weak dialogue is there’s a problem.” He leaned his elbow onto his knee and rested his chin. “You want to tell me all about it? I’m a good listener. I give good advice too.”
“No, thank you. I’m starving and I have to unpack.” I stood and finished off the beer.
“Oh, me too, I’m famished. Go do the whole settling in thing and I’ll go get us something to eat. I’m thinking rotissisere chicken.”
“That’s okay. I’ll just order a pizza.”
“Pizza? A little advice, you start eating pizza all the time and by Christmas, you’ll be going back home to whoever you’re not in a relationship with sporting a gut bigger than Santa’s.”
I reached down and patted my flat stomach. I wanted to keep it that way. “Yeah, chicken is fine. We can get chicken.”
“All right I’ll give you an hour, then you come back here and we’ll have dinner. We’ll chant.”
“Chant?”
“Yes, I decided that would be our thing. Charley plus Grant. Chant. Adorable. I told you I’d be able to work with it. Strikingly gorgeous gay man with the handsome straight best friend—people will love us. Gay guys with ‘girl best friends’ has been done to death. This is the new thing. Trust me.” He pushed me toward the door. “Now go. One hour. Goodbye.”
I stumbled into the hall and the door shut behind me. That was odd and unexpected. I had been at school less than an hour and I had a new best friend. We were going to have rotisserie chicken and “chant”. My sister would freaking love this.
I unpacked what I could, putting some dishes and utensils into the cupboards. Unfolding my bedding to make up the foldaway bed, I wondered how Tori was adjusting to her new school. Was her roommate as bad as she expected? She’d pulled a picture up of the girl on her phone and showed me. The way Tori went on about her, I expected some super model; instead, all I saw was some made-up blonde. Tori, was much prettier, but still I knew she’d never see it that way. I wasn’t sure why she was always hung up on being different from everybody else. Yes, she stood out, but in a good way.
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