Stupid Love (Stumbling into Love 1)

“No.”

“And you gotta baby me too, because you beat me up. I’m gonna hold this over your head for a long time, I hope you know that.”

I rolled my eyes. “I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

He pulled away and grabbed the remote. A light-purple splotch was already forming on his jaw. I’d hit him hard.

“Lie down,” I said, without letting myself think about it too much.

His forehead wrinkled in confusion, but he did it. He was on his back, and I slid in behind him, let my arm rest on his chest as I put the ice pack back on his jaw, on the side of his face that was away from me.

“I can do that, ya know? Hold it for myself.”

“I know,” I replied, looking at the TV.

He let out a deep breath, one that felt like he’d been holding in for years. “I don’t know how to do this, E, whatever it is we’re doing. I don’t know how to let someone in again.”

Again. Which meant he had before. I was pretty sure I wanted to be the one he took a risk on.

“We’ll figure it out,” I replied.

Then we lay there and watched the movie.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Shaw

I was fucked.

No two ways about it. I’d spent the whole night trying to talk some sense into myself, trying to find a way for anything to be going on rather than what was, but all I could think about was how much I’d wanted to kiss Eli. And I didn’t mean the kiss that precedes a good lay—I meant kiss. I wanted to know how his tongue would move with mine, what kinds of noises he made, how passionate he would be, what the skin of his neck and behind his ear and over his Adam’s apple tasted like.

An innocent crush was one thing, but I’d felt nervous lying there with him, afraid I would do something wrong. I’d wanted to pull him closer and hold him and laugh with him and taste his laugh too because it was one of my favorite sounds, so maybe it would be one of my favorite flavors.

But I didn’t know how to be what he would need, or if I wanted to. I didn’t know how to let him in. My example had been my parents, and then the one person I’d trusted, who I’d let in, had used my feelings against me. Had hurt me.

All that even before adding Danny into the mix, whom I didn’t want to fucking consider. Eli said he’d felt different when they hung out, but that didn’t mean anything. If Danny decided he wanted him, they had so much damn history, no way could I compete with that.

I wanted to, though.

Which led me straight back to the whole being-fucked thing.

We’d lain there together, him on his side, arm over me, ice pack against my face until the ice began to melt. Elijah had thrown it away, but then there was that awkward moment where he hadn’t needed to cuddle me anymore—ugh, I couldn’t believe I’d liked cuddling with him.

He’d stared at me, and my stomach had started flip-flopping, so I sat up, and he sat down, and a few minutes later when the movie was over, we’d had an awkward goodbye.

The first thing I did this morning was go to the gym. I tried to run away from what was inside me, but the funny thing about it coming from within was that you couldn’t outrun it. No matter how long I was on the treadmill, it was always there.

Now it was late afternoon, and I was avoiding my own apartment, which was the second time for me when it came to Elijah. He really was fucking with me.

I looked at the empty coffee cup on my table at Midtown Roast and wondered if I’d die of caffeine overdose if I had another one. My heart was already going a little crazy, so I decided not to risk it.

Instead, I turned my attention to the laptop in front of me. I had an open document pulled up, but I had no idea why. There was nothing I needed to write. When I was a kid, I used to journal. Stuff about my parents or when I realized I was bi. I’d talk about sleepovers with Richie, and trouble we used to get into, and how much it helped to sneak out and go to his house next door when my parents would fight. How much my childhood best friend had been there for me, and later, how I started to notice things about him that weren’t platonic, but then everything had blown to shit between us, and I’d stopped journaling.

I groaned, rubbed a hand over my face, and winced. My jaw was still sore. It wasn’t every day you almost kissed someone and they kneed you in the face. It wasn’t real good for the ego.