He pulled me toward him, and I kind of draped my legs over his until we were sitting the way I’d sat as a child on the swings with Janie, each of us facing in opposite directions, one of us always moving backward while the other moved forward.
Will looked at me with soft eyes. “I like a lot of things about you,” he said. “I’d be saying things an awful lot if I always commented on them.”
“Yeah?” I grinned at him, and he rolled his eyes at me. I couldn’t help myself. “Okay, will you tell me just one?”
Will searched my face and ran a finger over my eyebrow as he started to say something.
“Wait, wait, but make it a really good one,” I interrupted. “I mean, if it’s just gonna be one.”
“I was about to say some flattering romantic shit to you, and you interrupt me to tell me how to do it?”
“Well we’ve already established you don’t know how to do it right.” I grinned at him.
“Oh yeah, good thing you told me because I guess what I was going to say wasn’t actually that good.”
“Aw, no, wait, but now you have to tell me.”
Will pursed his lips and shook his head. “Nah, you clearly didn’t want to hear.”
I pouted at him, and he smiled, but his finger went back to my eyebrow again.
“Your eyebrows do this thing,” he said, slowly pressing his fingertip to the inside of my eyebrow, “when you feel something really intensely. And sometimes all I have to do when you’re talking, or when you’re looking at something, or when I’m touching you, is look right here—” He tapped the spot. “—and I can tell if you’re kidding, or if you’re upset, or if you’re about to come. The whole rest of your face can lie sometimes. But this never does.
“And the night that you came over and I was with that guy?”
I bit my lip and Will smoothed my eyebrow.
“All I had to do was look right here, and I knew I’d fucked up in this major way I couldn’t take back. Not because I did anything wrong,” he said quickly when I started to protest that again. “But because I’d hurt you in this deep way that I never intended.”
Will gritted his teeth. His eyes were a little wild, and he squeezed my hands.
“Look, you have to understand, okay. I don’t discount the effects my behavior has. I’m not… I’m not oblivious either. And I’m not my sister. I can control what I do. I’m just so fucking scared that if I do this—if we do this… I have to know that we’re both being honest about what’s okay. Not like before.”
Shame washed over me for how much I’d hurt Will by trying to give him what I thought he’d wanted. I nodded silently.
“I can try not sleeping with other people,” he went on, “but I don’t know if I can promise it forever. I don’t know what will happen in the future. And I can’t fucking take it if you leave me again because you were making us something in your head that we aren’t.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yeah, I’m fucking serious. I wasn’t okay when you told me to fuck off. I was….” He sighed. “I wasn’t good. At all.”
I had actually meant was he serious that he’d try not sleeping with other people, but I’d be damned if I was going to make him regret admitting he’d been a mess without me.
“And you’d… you’d want to try. With me? With just me? For now?”
“Yeah, I’ll try.” Then a strange look came over his face. “I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t mean it would be a hardship to only have sex with you. That’s—that’s not what I meant. It’s not about sex between us at all. It’s… it’s separate, you know. It’s about me. I… we’re great at sex.”
“We are?”
He rolled his eyes. “Quit fishing, I just said so, didn’t I?”
“’Kay.” I smiled at him and he smiled grudgingly back.
“I still don’t think that I’m the only person you’ll ever want to sleep with,” he said, like he couldn’t stand to let us just be happy for a minute.
“I think we’ve already covered the we’re-not-sure-what-the-future-holds bit.”
“Fine,” he said.
“Fine.” I glared down at Will, whose face was set in a defiant sneer. It was the arms-crossed-over-the-chest of facial expressions, and I did the only thing I could think to do with that stupid sneer. I kissed it. Just a peck in the corner of his stupid mouth, but his arms came around me, and as always, the taste of him drew me in.
“Soooo,” I said a minute later, pulling away. “What does this mean?”
“This—” He pressed his hips up so his hard cock ground against mine. “—means shut the hell up and fuck me.”