Falling For Casual

Chapter 14

   A sleepover was going to be the death of us. I knew it, and deep down, he had to have known it too. Although he didn't actually know the why behind it all, the fact that I kept making excuses for him not to come over planted something in the depths of his mind. He wouldn't say it out loud. He wasn't like that. But letting it fester inside him was going to hurt us both in the end.

   It's not like I didn't want him in my space. With or without Delaney, though, I knew it would all mean too much. Having him haunt the walls of that apartment, his scent like a phantom even when he wasn't around, would all be too much for me. No matter how much I scrubbed at the walls, the sink, the countertops, his fingerprints would be molded into everything. Like a slow-growing fungus that you couldn't rid yourself of and the only thing left to do was abandon the place entirely. I couldn't do that to myself.

   In all honesty, I wasn't the type to sleepover anyone's house. I didn't like the idea of me being that vulnerable and unaware in someone else's space. Plus, rarely anyone could shut my nervous system down that easily. Even if I was exhausted, my brain would be on high alert.

   Imagining Texas sleeping in my own home made my nervous system rage. I didn't want him anywhere near my bed, my room. It was all too sacred for a guy like him to come and invade. But I wanted him, and so, like I always did, I agreed to something I knew I couldn't provide. A sleepover that would never, ever happen.

   'It'll be like two or three days of uninterrupted us time. You might get sick of me,' I texted him the day after I stopped ghosting him. It was as if nothing happened. Everything was pretty much back to normal.

   'I'm obsessed with you,' he wrote back, and something about seeing that word in my hands made my stomach flip. Obsessed. God, how I loved it so much. The idea of someone needed me so badly that they couldn't think without me, breathe without me. The idea that I was their entire world and they would cease to exist without me in it. It sent a fog through my brain, my thoughts now clouds just like I felt I was on.

   'Three days isn't enough.' And he was right.

   'No amount of time will ever be enough.' I wrote back, meaning every word that my fingers sent.

   So we planned to see each other before this alleged sleepover was supposed to happen. Two more days and I'd be in his apartment, baring myself completely this time for him to consume every part of me. I was ready for this. Finally ready for things to escalate, for him to get his second chance in trying to devour me the way he hadn't the first time. After all the planning and searching, my first guy was right here, ready and waiting for me. And I wasn't afraid anymore.

-

   I pounded down the sidewalk to his place, every surface of my body smooth and prepared for his mouth and hands. My heart was in my throat, but not because I was nervous. My heart wanted him to taste it from the moment he kissed me. And when I saw him there waiting for me on his front steps just like he always had, my heart was completely exposed then. I ran into his arms like I'd done many times before, but there was something special about this one. A significance for each of us even if the other had no idea what it was.

   "Hey," I breathed into his mouth as I tried to come up for air from his kiss.

   "Angel," he smiled. He dipped his head again to claim my lips as his own, something they already were. "How I've missed you."

   We rushed up the steps with excitement, though we both tried our best to hide it. Even when we walked through his front door, the feeling was vibrating through the air like a current. It zapped us all the way to his bedroom. I tried to catch my breath, both from the amount of stairs it took to get up to his room, but also because I had the idea of what was about to happen in the forefront of my mind. This would be something I would never forget.