I'm Your Wreck

38- You're It For Me

My bedroom is the Rochester apartment is three times the size of my closet-like tower back at the house by campus. Even sharing it with Banks, our little apartment by the stadium felt like a castle.

"Every burner on the stove works," Banks ogled in the kitchen, still sweaty from heaving the last of our boxes from his truck downstairs. We didn't pack much, since we were only going to be gone for the summer, but enough to make my legs feel wobbly and sore from the multiple trips up two flights of stairs.

"The couch doesn't have any stains or smells," I pointed out from the living room. The place was fully furnished in cheap Ikea furniture, all in much better quality than the ragged hand me down furniture we mangled together at the house.

He peered through the archway from the kitchen to smirk at me. "Not yet anyway."

"The walls are kind of thin," I pointed out, nudging toward the left wall where we could hear the neighbor listening to Judge Judy.

"Nothing can be as bad as sharing walls with the guys back home," he scoffed, and he was totally right. It was bad enough on the second floor when Walker was the only one getting laid, but with Bridgette and Morgan spending a lot of nights there too, it started sounding like a brothel. Banks and I would spend most weekends hidden away in my tower to get away from it.

It was convenient to have the two bedrooms, being able to switch where we slept based on the situation. But this was better. This little apartment that wasn't separated into Banks's space and mine. Everything was ours.

Our bed. Our shower. Our dresser.

It was only for the summer and then we'd be back at the house with all of the guys and all of their madly in love girlfriends. But right now, for these three months, I was tasting the life we'd have together after I finished school.

I could imagine us moving into an apartment like this next year. Merging our furniture, our closets, our lives into one thing that belonged to us. I didn't know where that apartment would be- near Tate or here in New York or maybe in England. It didn't really matter.

"This bed rocks," Banks called from down the hallway. I didn't even realize he'd left the kitchen.

I followed him into the one bedroom where he was now shirtless, splayed out across the queen sized mattress. Of course I was staring, counting all of the tattoos on his chest as if I didn't already know the exact number and their exact placements by heart.

"Better than the one you have at the house?" I asked, leaning against the door frame.

Banks quirked his eyebrow at me. "Come see for yourself."

In a blink, I was across the room, on top of him. I had no idea how the mattress felt, I was too occupied with feeling him. My body still reacted to his body like this was the first time I'd ever touched him.

I'd never get used to it, this electric thing that started in my knees, worked its way up into my chest and then down to my groin.

I don't think I'd ever get used to the way he looked at me, either. Because for the last couple of years, ever since my injury, I'd felt broken and clumsy and wrong. I'd built my entire life around soccer, I used to being The Best, the Rockstar, the Champion. When I lost it, I lost every fragile bit of confidence I had in myself.

But Banks looked at me like I was still The Best. The Champion. He looked at me like I was perfect the way I was. And when somebody like Banks looked at me like that, it was hard not to start believing it myself.

"When we actually move in together, we're getting a California King," he said against my mouth. "I need to spread out and you kick in your sleep."

I liked that he was envisioning us living together for real, like I was. "And a dog," I added, my nose brushing against the stubble on his jaw.