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He pushes all the way in, and I slide up toward his headboard. “You’re perfect,” he says.
I kiss him, and after that, he doesn’t hold anything back. I didn’t know he could go faster, but he does, and I come apart under him, moaning, completely helpless. He knows I’m close, because he puts his big hand between us and rubs me until my vision swims. He moans my name against my lips and comes with me, and then he slows until he’s heavy and slack on top of me. I run my fingers through his hair and let him rest. He kisses my forehead and pulls out.
While he takes care of the condom, I sit up and fix my clothes. My thong is stretched out, and I’m swollen, so it’s uncomfortable. I stand to fix it, look around for my boots, find them, and pick one up.
“What are you doing?” he says.
“Leaving.”
“Why?” He’s standing over me. I look at his shirt, and I know I’ll never forget that he kept it on.
“Because I’m going to my room to sleep.”
“Why?”
I put the boot down, annoyed and confused. “Because I live right there.”
“So?”
I sit on the edge of his bed with one boot in my hand and genuinely don’t know what to say, because that isn’t how this works. I know how this works. He told me over text two weeks ago, when I asked about Jules: fuck buddies. And fuck buddies don’t linger.
“Are you asking me to stay?” I say. “Do your other girls sleep over?”
He licks his lips.
“Your—” I gesture vaguely at the room. “Do they stay?”
“You’re not my other girls,” he says.
An enormous heatwave goes through my chest, and I hold onto my boot.
He walks around and gets into bed. “Come here.”
I look down at the boot, and my head is spinning, and his voice is so easy.
I drop it.
He throws back the blanket, and I climb in next to him, and he gets an arm under me and pulls me in until I’m against his side with my cheek on his chest, still in his T-shirt. His arm comes around my back and settles. His hand moves up and down my spine.
I’ve never hooked up with anyone before. I’ve only ever slept with Evan, so I’m a little giddy that I just had my first hookup. I slept with somebody because I wanted to, for no other reason than that. There’s no next year in it. There’s nobody’s mother in it. Nobody owes anybody anything in the morning.
I’ve spent years hearing people talk about hooking up like it’s something sad. Why would you sleep with somebody you’re not in love with? Why would you wake up next to somebody who isn’t yours? Because it feels like this. Because there’s nothing heavy in it and no history sitting on top of it. It’s just a body that feels good, and a person you can’t stop wanting, and none of it has to become ordinary, because nobody’s asking it to last long enough to get ordinary.
Nash is nearly asleep while my brain overthinks the entire thing. I try not to focus on the part where I’m still here in his bed. It might not mean anything. His breathing has gone long, and his hand has stopped moving on my back and rests flat between my shoulder blades. I think about moving it. I don’t. I shift a little closer instead, because his chest is warm and the room is cold and my arm is going dead. He makes a low sound, and his arm tightens around me.
I lie there in the dark in Nash Kennebeck’s bed and listen to his heartbeat.
26
There Are Worse Problems to Have
Nash
The window is still dark when I open my eyes, and I stay exactly where I am. Kylie is turned away from me with her back against my chest and my arm over her. Her hair is everywhere, some of it on my face, and it smells like soap. Her leg is hooked back between mine, one hand curled under her chin, and she’s out cold, breathing slow, and the whole left side of me is warm from her. She stayed.
I lie there and try to figure out how fucked I am. I’ve done this before: let a girl stay and regretted it in the morning, spent the first hour of the day working out how to get her out. That isn’t happening right now. I close my eyes and breathe in her shampoo and let her keep me warm. I don’t reach for my phone, because I don’t want to wake her. What I want is for her to wake up so I can see her eyes, and it’s so far outside anything I recognize that I lie there with my face in her hair for a while.
This is bad.
