Only Ever Best Friends

✩ 16 ✩

{Grayson's POV}

I don't have a right to be surprised or upset that she doesn't want to kiss me again. What did I expect? Her to suddenly like me or something? For everything to just change? How pathetic. I paid for dinner - it was literally the least I could do after completely fucking everything up.

We left the restaurant and I stayed silent the whole walk back. I tried to keep myself focused on anything else but her. But, unfortunately, I found myself thinking about one thing and one thing only:
how badly I wanted to kiss her again.
How am I gonna get past this?

• • •

{Ellie's POV}

Walking back was awkward. Gray didn't speak one word, even though I could tell there was something on his mind.
There was something on mine too and I regretted thinking about it: even though I had just told him not to put them on me ever again, I missed his lips. And as slab by slab of sidewalk between us and the room passed under my feet, I was wondering if he'd listen to my request - in which case I'll never taste them again - or, if maybe...

• • •

We got back to the motel around 7:15 and I unlocked the door to the room. He stepped inside and I followed, then turned to close it.

"So we should probably start logging data and recording observations from the samples if we want to..."

I trailed off because I could tell he was still standing behind me, so I turned back around to face him. He had a wild look on his face. One I'd never seen before.

What is running through
this boy's head right now?

"I can't." He finally says, shaking his head.

"You can't what?"

No more than three seconds later, he pushed me against the wall and mashed his lips against mine, kissing me desperately. For the first time in my life, I didn't mind that someone directly disregarded something I'd asked of them; I was hoping that he wouldn't listen.

But why didn't he?

I let him continue for about two more seconds before forcefully pushing him away.

"Why?" I whisper.

The look on his face is as if me breaking the kiss physically hurt him.

"Because.....bec- because I....," he stammers, "I..... I don't know. Ellie, I don't wanna forget... I just..."

He seemed like he didn't know how to articulate what he wanted to say, but I could tell by the vulnerability in his beautiful amber eyes that he was pleading with me... pleading that I felt the same as he did. It didn't yet have a name, but whatever that enigmatic feeling was, I felt it too. And it was only getting stronger.

"Look, I get it if you're mad, I shouldn't
have—"

"—shut up," I cut him off and grabbed onto his waist, pulling him against me and firmly reconnecting my lips to his.

My eyes flickered closed.

Shockingly... everything felt okay.
And the more I kiss him, the closer I get to something I haven't ever felt with another person: HOME.

I felt almost like I belonged here.

• • •

It became evident that neither one of us had any intention of stopping, and that the
'no-touching' rule had completely gone out the window.
Again.

He lifted my shirt off and threw it across the room, and I followed by fumbling with his jeans, unbuttoning and unzipping them.

Okay WAIT.

He finished taking them off and I pulled off my shorts. His shirt was still on but we were otherwise now rendered in our underwear.
I backed him up to the bed and he shoved my bag onto the floor, pulling me onto his lap. He continued to kiss me and I began subtly rocking against him.

It was euphoric.

A few more seconds pass by and underneath where I was sitting slowly became stiffened. His breathing picked up and he began gasping against my lips.

I realized what was going on with him and I knew that there were only two ways to deal with it:
the first was to stop everything right now and wait for it to go away, which I knew would be extremely painful, and the second was where we were headed.

I shift my weight slightly and it gets worse.

He pulls away suddenly.

"Ellie, if you don't want to... then we have to stop... right now."

If we had stopped then, we might've been able to write it off as a brief lapse in judgment. In the morning it would be laughable even.

We should've stopped.

But we didn't.

• • •