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The screeching sound of lightsabers was at odds with how painfully silent my bedroom was. I was too tired after my shift to do anything but watch a movie and now, even the duel of a lifetime couldn’t cut the tension.
Rin didn’t want to talk about what happened at the club or explain the status of his sexuality. He wanted to hangout. His skillful avoidance of any topic that resembled dancing, music, or romantic partners kept us from having to discuss it at all. He just strolled up to my bedroom, turned on Disney plus, and started playing the first Star Wars movie he could find.
Both of us had our backs against my headboard, our bodies and the glaring light from the TV creating overblown shadows on the floor. Rin had grabbed my least favorite pillow, the one that I couldn’t stand putting my face on for some reason, and clutched it to his chest.
His chin rested gently on the corner of the pillow, dipping every time he recited another line from the film. Watching him like this, I could almost forget what we’d done. It felt so normal to sit here with him, tracking his reactions like he alone was the show. It reminded me of middle school when I first discovered how entertaining Rin’s reactions to action movies could be. I suppose I even loved him back then.
How much trouble could I have avoided if I was a little less dense?
“This is the best part,” he told me, briefly glancing my way to make sure I was paying attention. Which I wasn’t. He made me watch this god damn movie too many times for me to count. Of course I wasn’t paying attention.
I think he put on lip balm before coming over. The corners of his mouth looked a bit shiny when he tilted his head right. Rin had me turn the lights off seconds before he played the movie so we could get the full effect. That just meant I had an easier time watching him in the dark. It’s funny how long I went ignoring the buzzing in my veins that came just from being near him. But the sensation was obvious now.
For years, I thought that compliments from your best friend should always stick with you for days after. I thought that hearing their voice after a long day was always the solution to any of your problems. I thought that everyone put their best friend above anyone else in their lives because that’s what I did with Rin.
The credits started rolling and Rin sighed, staring down at my pillow with a smile.
“They were so ahead of their time,” he chuckled.
“Why are you here?”
Rin’s smile fell, the muscles in his jaw growing taut.
“We avoided each other all day and now you’re here, acting like everything’s normal.”
I hadn’t decided what I would say to him. How I would apologize for crossing the line or how I would fix it. I couldn’t even imagine how he’d react to knowing that I still wanted James and was trying to protect that. But we couldn’t put off talking forever. Rin was now in my bed. We’d run out of time.
“How did you know that you liked guys?”
His face was turned away from me. I couldn’t read his expression.
“I don’t know,” I muttered, heart pounding violently in my chest. “I guess I kissed one.”
A lie. I knew I liked guys because I spent a month trying to get my best friend to break up with his girlfriend. But there’s no way to frame the truth without Rin knowing exactly where my feelings lay.
Rin’s head snapped around, eyes widened in surprise when they met my own. Then, the credits ended. The TV turned off. We were bathed in darkness.
I could vaguely make out the shape of his face and where his eyes were, but when I lifted my hand, its shape was totally lost to me.
With no light and no movie to distract me, Rin’s breathing was painfully clear. The pace was faster than I expected, coming and going in a rushed pattern. Then, the breaths slowed. The air started hitting my cheek. Warmth was brushing my skin.
“Would you kiss me? Just to check?”
I couldn’t believe what had come out of his mouth. Had someone replaced him while I was lost in the dark? There’s no way Rin was asking me to kiss him. There’s no way he was forcing me to be the bigger person and tell him no.
My mind was filled with questions, too many to count. But I knew that none of the answers would stop the pull towards him. It’s hard to explain, but I didn’t have to see Rin to know that he was serious. I heard it in his voice, I smelt it on his skin. He was desperate, maybe more so than me. And the only word I could focus on was yes. The key to finally discovering what his lips tasted like.
“Yeah.”
I flinched when his hand found mine in the dark, pressing it into the duvet as he came in closer. He was moving so slow that I wanted to scream. My heart was beating a mile a minute. The suspense of not knowing when he’d touch me would kill me, I swear!
Then, our mouths touched.
I wasn’t breathing. He kissed me and I held my breath and now I didn’t know how to make my lungs work again. Without oxygen, I fell into him, grappling for his shirt in the dark. His hands grabbed my face before sliding up into my hair, getting tangled in my curls. When he tugged, I gasped, finally breathing again.
Somehow, with barely a flicker of light to work with, he found my lips on his first try. But I didn’t care to know how. I was kissing Rin. Rin was kissing me. Nothing could be more important than making the sensations I now felt in my body last forever.
My bed had never felt as soft as it did when Rin lowered me down onto it, pushing my back against the covers. We could have been there for minutes or hours, feeling one another’s skin in the most primal way. At some point, I pushed my hips up, making him grunt as I flipped him over. Dropping onto Rin, I dragged my palms down his sides and over his clothes until finally, I found the bottom of his shirt.
“I need you to take this off.”
There was a beat of silence. A horrifying gap of time where I didn’t touch him or see him or know what was going on. In those seconds, I had never hated myself more. That was only because if I hadn’t turned off the lights, I would have been able to see his face. Maybe then I would have understood why he hesitated.
“What are you going to do when I’m shirtless?” he asked.
“Hm?”
“I said,” Rin grabbed the back of my neck, his next words falling directly into my ear. “What do you wanna do to me, El?”
My entire body shook, blood rushing down so fast I got dizzy. I had so many ideas. My door was locked. My room was at the end of the hall. I saw all the ways I could make him moan. Make him beg. Make him never want Stephanie again-
“Holy shit!”
Leaping off the mattress, I raced for the wall, tripping over things I don’t remember leaving on the floor. After hitting the ground for the third time, I found the door and only had to smack once before finding the light switch.
Rin was squinting against the bright lights when I turned around. His skin was flushed and damp all over yet it still didn’t reflect how hot it felt to kiss him. There was a blissed out smile on his face and he managed to seem at ease all alone on my bed. I noticed how swollen his lips were. Swollen because of me and only me. My blush burned, warming me from the inside out. But I couldn’t enjoy the feeling of claiming him. I’d claimed someone who wasn’t mine.
“What are we doing here, Rin?” I gasped for air, still reeling from falling so many times in rapid succession. “You have a girlfriend.”
“And you have a boyfriend.”
The reminder didn’t help in the slightest.
“Oh god!” I pressed my palms sharply against my eyes. Maybe I secretly hoped that if I popped my eyeballs out, I wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of kissing him. “Oh god! I thought I could finally not be selfish and do the right thing but I keep making things worse.”
“It wasn’t just you, El. We made this mistake together.”
“Yeah, a-“
Mistake. That’s what it was, wasn’t it? A mistake. We weren’t supposed to kiss when we were dating other people. Even I knew that golden rule of relationships. But hearing it come from Rin’s mouth stung. He didn’t say that we kissed or mention enjoying it all. The things that happened between him and I were mistakes.
I didn’t want to hurt anyone else. Rin didn’t want to lose the person he actually cared about.
It was hard to admit to myself that the biggest reason I dated James was that I couldn’t stand knowing that I was Rin’s number 2. I would never matter more to him than Stephanie did. To the rest of the world, it might look like I have a person who I cared about more than him, but that wasn’t true. That would never be true.
So while I’ve gone and fulfilled my dream by kissing the man I loved, all he’d done was scratch an itch with his best friend.
“You should go.”
I’d shocked him. Rin’s mouth dropped open, his eyes looking back and forth between mine like he was waiting for me to change my mind. But I couldn’t. We couldn’t kiss again. One time was already too many. So, when I just kept my arms crossed and my eyes stone cold, he gave up.
I moved out of the way as he passed but didn’t do it fast enough. As Rin went, his shoulder brushed against me. Rin slipped out the door as quickly as he came but I found it hard to move. Grabbing my left arm, I slid down to the floor. How pathetic of me to hold onto the last place he’d touched me.
How pathetic that I missed him already.
———————————
Short but sweet. Or more specifically, short but sweet until it got bitter.
Who doesn’t love an angsty first kiss? (Don’t worry, I won’t be offended if you comment ‘not me’)
Who expected that to happen when Rin came over? Who thought Elly would be the one to cut their make out session short? Is the boy learning self-restraint?????
Anywho,
Thank you so much for reading this far into the book! I just launched my ko-fi so if you’re able to and would like to support me in a different kind of way, I hope you’ll check it out!
Please vote, comment, share, follow, anything else you can do to support the book and I will see you next week! Bye!
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