I’d tried to talk her out of the song because I thought it was a bad idea. I thought it would bring up memories of Bliss, but it didn’t. In fact, singing it hadn’t made me think of Bliss at all. I could only think about Max, and that caused an entirely different problem than the one I’d expected.
I kept my eyes focused forward when she returned because I didn’t trust myself not to touch her again. She pulled one of her knees up onto the couch, and slid closer to me. Her knee pressed against my thigh, and all I wanted to do was grab her other leg and lift her over onto my lap.
I searched for something, anything, to distract me, but there was nothing in this apartment to look at. There was only us and the electrifying heat that filled the space between us.
Her fingers touched my chin, and she turned my face toward her. She was staring at a wound on my forehead, so I had a few seconds to drink her in without getting caught. Her cheeks were flushed, probably from the pain, and her lips pulled down into a frown as she surveyed my injury. And her eyes were the kind of light blue that you only see on wild, untouched beaches.
“I should have taken care of you first. You’re still bleeding a little.”
I was? It didn’t even hurt anymore. There were too many other things on my mind.
Her fingers shifted on my chin, brushing across the stubble that I hadn’t bothered to shave this morning. Her eyes met mine for a flicker of a second before she pulled away and began dipping the washcloth in the water.
I watched her small hands and delicate fingers as they wrung out the rag, and then folded it into a small rectangle. She slid even closer when she turned back to me, so that her knee was almost resting on top of my leg. I was already facing her, but her hand found my jaw anyway. She cleaned the area around the wound first, and then started dabbing at the cut just along my hairline.
She used the hand on my jaw to tilt my head down slightly to give her a better look. It pointed my eyes straight to the delicate architecture of her collarbone, which had been the last place I’d kissed her.
I was dying to pick back up again where I left off.
That must not have been enough to give her a good look because she shifted, and rose up on her knees next to me. Her chest was level with my gaze, and her body swayed toward mine.
I closed my eyes and thought about multiplication tables and recited lines from plays that I’d been in over the years. Her breath fanned across my forehead, and I could feel the warmth of her skin only inches away from mine. She stopped dabbing and just pressed the cloth to my forehead, probably to stop the bleeding.
Her voice was low and warm when she said, “You wrote that song for a girl?”
“Is this you implying that I’m gay again?”
She laughed, and I wanted to sweep her into my arms, lay her down on this couch, and map out every bit of her skin with my mouth. I wanted to taste every tattoo, and know what they meant to her. I wanted to unlock the secrets that lay behind her guarded expression.
“No, I just mean . . . was she a girlfriend?”
I shook my head. “No, she wasn’t. By the time I decided to do something about it, she was already with someone else.”
“So you gave up?”
This was not what I wanted to talk about, but I guess if it kept my mind off of kissing her, it worked.
“There was no point,” I said. “I couldn’t compete.”
“Bullshit.” She pressed down a little harder, and jerked my face a little closer to her own. “You’re Golden Boy. You’re good at everything. You’re sweet, gorgeous, and probably stop to help little old ladies cross the street. If you can’t compete, the rest of us are completely fucked.”
I smiled. Hearing her say I was gorgeous was a pretty good consolation prize.
“The other guy is British.”
She tossed her head back and laughed, and my eyes caught on the smooth line of her neck.
“Yeah, you’re shit out of luck, Golden Boy.”
It felt good to be able to laugh about this with someone. I hadn’t even been able to do that with Milo or any of my friends back home. This morning losing Bliss had seemed like a weight shackled to my feet, and now it felt like what it was—a memory.
She was still smiling when she lifted the cloth from my forehead.
She hummed and said, “Looks good.”
She sat back, and the hand on my face dropped to my thigh. She used it to brace herself as she reached for the gauze. Sweet Jesus.
I searched for something, anything to say. “It’s been an . . . interesting day.”
Considering I’d only met her this morning, and I was ten miles past fascinated into obsessed territory, yeah. I’d say the day had been pretty damn interesting.
“Tomorrow will make today look like a cakewalk,” she said.
She cut a piece of gauze, and raised back up on her knees to place it on my head.
“Why do you hate the holidays so much? Do your parents go way overboard?”
She pressed tape to the edges of the bandage and started smoothing it down, and her other hand rested on my shoulder for balance.
“It’s hard to explain.”