What If

Her phone started ringing. Her fucking phone pierced through the room. Her eyes shot open, her hands went to my chest, and she pushed. Briar jumped off the bed and grabbed her jeans, searching every pocket.

I couldn’t believe that happened, right when I was about to kiss her. It took years for me to get that close to knowing the taste of her lips, and I was still going to leave tomorrow not knowing.

“Hello?” Briar answered her phone breathlessly.

She refused to look at me; it felt like a stab right in the gut when her eyes avoided mine. She didn’t want me. She was caught up in our closeness; it was obvious. I freaked her out.

“Mom, I have the car,” she said in a hushed voice.

“Oh come on, it’s not stealing. I’m your daughter,” She sighed.

“Arrow leaves for boot camp tomorrow,” she added.

“That’s why I didn’t ask you,” she said angrily. Her entire body went taut as she listened to whatever her mom said.

“I’m staying the night here,” she said confidently. That’s when she met my glance and mouthed, “Is that okay?” I nodded. I wanted nothing more than to have her with me. She smiled and went back to speaking with her mom, who hated me.

“You can’t come get me if you don’t know where I am,” she answered. “No, I’m not telling you. Yeah, yeah. Bye.” She hung up.

“Wow,” I said. She threw her phone into the chair near the bed. “I take it your mom isn’t happy?”

“That would be a correct assumption. They’ll probably try to ground me until I move out.” Briar didn’t seem to mind though.

“Sorry,” I stated.

“Why? She’s stupid if she thinks I’m not going to say bye to you before you leave. I’m eighteen, Arrow. I’m tired of her thinking she can control everything that I do.”

I thought about pointing out the fact that she did take her mom’s car but decided against it. I wanted Briar to stay the night. Sure, I didn’t want her to be in trouble with her parents, but I liked that she was willing to get into trouble in order to spend one last night with me before I headed out.



It was getting late, and we were both tired. Briar’s eyes were getting heavy, her eyelids struggling to stay open. We lay down after the dramatic call from her mom and watched pointless television. She was still in her underwear, and I still had on my jeans.

“You ready to sleep?” I asked.

She nodded sluggishly.

“Is it going to bother you if I sleep in my boxers? I asked.

She looked over at me. “No, it won’t bother me.” Her cheeks looked a little pink as she watched me strip off my pants. I got under the blankets and turned on my side, allowing me to get a good look at her bare stomach; it caved in whenever she let out her breath. My stare moved over her belly button, her ribs, the hills of her breasts, and then I met her eyes.

“Arrow?” she inquired.

“Yeah?”

“Will you hold me tonight?” She seemed nervous about my answer. Her left hand started picking at the nails on her right.

“You don’t even have to ask. I was planning on it anyway.” We stared at each other with small smiles. I put my arm over her stomach, gripped near her ribcage, and pulled her towards me. Her back fit into my chest perfectly. The curve of her ass fit into my pelvis. Her knees were bent, and mine were bent behind hers. I kept my left arm around her, holding her securely to me. I envisioned going to bed like that every night for the rest of our lives, holding her body against mine, breathing in her natural perfume.

“Goodnight,” she whispered into the pillow.

“Night, Briar,” I said into the crook of her neck. I placed a peck there and fell asleep.





I woke up in a different position than when I fell asleep. Arrow was pinned onto his back; my head rested in the area between his right shoulder and pectoral, my right arm wrapped around his hard midsection, and my right leg bent over his hip and lying on top of a particularly stiff part of Arrow.

I wanted badly to wake him up in a manner he wouldn’t forget easily. But I didn’t have the guts to take it there.

The night before had been intense. I had been restrained to the bed underneath his body. He was awfully careful in making sure his body didn’t actually lie against mine. When his mouth touched my forehead, my breath froze. In a silent prayer, I begged for him to press against me, to push my legs apart and place his body there. His lips made their way down my face to the sides of mouth and almost kissed me. Almost… until my phone went off. It was like a light switch in my mind was flipped on, and I realized quickly that we almost crossed a very dangerous a line - a line that I wasn’t sure he was ready to cross. As soon as I had stood up from the bed and picked up my phone, I wondered if he was only going to kiss me because he was scared about leaving for boot camp tomorrow. I could never understand the nerves he must have been feeling - leaving a place that you’ve been your entire life, leaving your friends and family. That had to be hard. He was most likely searching for comfort in the closest person to him, which was me.

In the moment, my eyes closed, my breathing came out rapidly, and my heart stuttered causing my chest to heave up and down. I wanted that kiss. But it wasn’t meant to be.

Arrow began shifting underneath me; I couldn’t make myself move away from the skin on skin contact. I didn’t know when he’d be back, or how things would be between us, or even what things would be different about Arrow. I heard that boot camp changed people, and war changed them even further. It made sense. Being in a completely different lifestyle where your wants and desires are put in the background, somewhere where the only focus is to protect your new brothers and sisters around you should change you. From what I’ve heard, the country and its people, the people you’re fighting next to, are the things that matter most.

His loud yawn reverberated in his chest making a roaring sound beneath my head. I giggled and squeezed his side. He drew me nearer and, with the arm I was lying on, began to run circles on my bare back.

“Morning,” he said in a low rumble. His sleepy voice was a couple octaves lower than his normal voice, scratchy sounding and… well… yummy. I tried to pinch my thighs together to relieve some of the built up longing from last night and this morning, but my thighs couldn’t touch. Instead I ended up squeezing his hardened cock closer to my cleft.

He groaned against the top of my forehead. I winced and moved my leg a few inches up and away from that erogenous zone.

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“It’s alright,” he chuckled.

I lifted my head up and rested it on my left hand, allowing me to look down at him.

“What time do you have to be downstairs?” I asked, dreading the answer.

Arrow glanced at the alarm and cringed. “In ten minutes. It’s a good thing we woke up when we did because I forgot to set an alarm.”

I dragged my leg away from Arrow and sat up in the bed. As I sat up, the blanket fell down and pooled at my legs. Arrow watched as the multi colored comforter left my body, his eyes becoming intense. I looked down and quickly remembered that I was still in my underwear - only my underwear. My cheeks lit up, but I didn’t want to embarrass myself further by covering myself quickly like a self-conscious teenager - even though that’s exactly what I was. He followed my lead, though, and sat up too. I’d seen his chest multiple times in the years I’d known him, but there was something incredibly distinct in seeing him half naked inside a hotel room. My eyes took in his chest with its light brushing of hair fanning out from one pectoral to the other, then that hair moving down his stomach in a slim line to his belly button and into the waist of his boxers.