if only

chapter 13

I stayed at Billie's house for the next two nights before I could drag myself away.

"Dumb," she stated as I got in my car and started it. My window was down and she laid her arms across it, and her chin on top of them.

"I have groceries," I muttered, shaking my head. "And... I don't know. My own stuff? I'm not even wearing underwear, Billie."

"I know," she grinned, and licked her lips. "That's how I like it."

I sighed. "We were supposed to be on friendly terms. I was trying to keep... distance, I don't fuckin' know."

"Fourteen."

I glared at her. That was the combined number of orgasms we'd had in the last few days of being together.

"Bil..."

"You go back to school in a couple weeks and we won't see each other as much. And Fin and I will be working on album stuff, and then award season hits and that's crazy..."

She'd given me that pitch a dozen times. I sighed and turned to her in my seat, taking her face in my hands through the open window.

"I care about you. You told me you don't know what you want and you're too fucked up."

She winced. "I know..."

I pressed my forehead to hers. "You need space to figure it out. If I'm here all the time, how are you gonna do that?"

I kissed her, and she clutched my hands on her face. Then I pulled away and a tiny sound escaped her. "But—"

"Do you wanna be my girlfriend? For real?"

She paused, a deer caught in headlights. I kissed her nose, stroked her cheeks gently.

"That's what I thought... Please trust me when I say I wanna be with you all the time, too. But I want you to figure everything out more. Then we can do this for real. If you even want that."

"Okay," she said, and her voice was small and vulnerable. I thought of how she appeared to me that first night, cocky and self-assured, masculine and feminine and confident with how easily she could seduce me. She had roped me in entirely.

But now she'd lost her footing, and I hated that for her. I still wasn't even sure why, or how I could help, other than doing exactly what I was about to do — give her the space she needed.

I smoothed the wrinkles from her forehead and kissed her again. I lingered for only a few seconds on her sweet, smooth mouth, then gently pulled away.

"I'll miss you," I whispered. "Think, but don't take too long, okay?"

She nodded, and bit her lower lip, tears filling her eyes. She gripped my hands on her face, then pulled them away to kiss each palm. Then she backed up and stood to the side of the driveway, and I drove off, waving.

Ouch.

. . . . .

When I got home, Mags came over. She was becoming a great friend; she was weird and smart and didn't give a shit what other people thought. She was exactly the type of person I needed in my life.

She sat in the middle of my bedroom floor with me, painting my toes.

"Is this necessary?" I asked, wrinkling my nose at the smell.

"No," she shrugged. "But mine are already done, and yours are naked and ugly."

I sighed and leaned back on my hands. "You're not very nice to me, Mags."