I'm Your Wreck

27- You've Got It Bad

"I'm dying," I said to Quinn as I fell onto her bed one week into winter break.

She glanced up at me from her work laptop. It was comical, watching my sister perform scientific calculations from the same white desk she used to recite Apollo Four fanfic like it was scripture when she was a teenager. "Is there a cure for your sudden terminal illness?"

"Yes, but it's in North Carolina," I mumbled, pressing my palms against my eye sockets. Only a third of the way through break and I was already going crazy without seeing Banks every day. Sure, we were texting constantly but I needed to see him. To touch him.

After my show of convincing him just how attracted I was to him, we hardly spent a second without our bodies somehow touching. Even when we were just studying for finals, I had my legs over his lap or his hand rested on my thigh. We were so tangled up for those two weeks that I could rarely tell where my limbs ended and his began.

Now, with a sudden lack of Banks in my physical presence, I was going through a lethal amount of withdraw.

Quinn only laughed at my devastating predicament. "When's the last time you FaceTimed?"

I checked my phone. "An hour ago. Maybe I should call again?"

She laughed again. "My poor, sweet baby brother. You've got it bad, huh? Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?"

"No," I said quickly. "I mean, we're not like dating or anything. We're just..."

What were we doing, exactly? We'd never talked about it. Technically, we were just hooking up but it felt like more than that. It had to be more than that... didn't it?

"You don't have to finish that sentence. I don't want to know," she grimaced. "You're clearly really into him, you should probably figure that out."

"I mean, how could I even tell them, if there's no official label?" I asked her, sitting up and kicking my legs off the side of her twin sized mattress. "Hey Mom and Dad, just wanted to let you know that I'm screwing my roommate. Actually, no, we're not even screwing, we've just done the other stuff, so-"

"Liam," she stopped me from finishing that sentence. "I just said I don't want to hear it. Gross."

"Sorry," I muttered apologetically. "So you get why I can't tell them."

"But I don't get why you haven't locked this thing down when you're clearly so head over heels?" she asked me, her dark eyebrows raised in the way they do when she thinks I'm being a dumbass.

"I don't know if that's something he would want," I admitted. He seemed to enjoy my presence, but he never mentioned anything about having romantic feelings for me. He even expressly stated that he didn't have those feelings the night of the drag show. Sure, things have changed since then so maybe so have his feelings? But what if I brought it up and then it freaked him out that I was getting too attached and wanted to end things?

Quinn rolled her eyes. "He's been into you since the beginning of the semester. I could tell when I went shopping with you guys, it was so obvious."

"No, he told me that he wasn't into me a couple weeks after that."

She laughed. "He was lying, idiot."

My phone pinged with a text and I nearly snapped my wrist from grabbing it so quickly.

Banks: Christmas Eve tradition: parents arguing over which movie we should watch. Home Alone vs Elf

Liam: Always the same movies?

Banks: Always. Home Alone wins this year, it's on a three year winning streak

Liam: We always watch Polar Express. I always want to watch Grinch but Quinn is a tyrant.