Autoboyography
Page 33

I ease down next to him on the bed, and not only can I feel how much I’m shaking, but I can see it. I clamp my hands between my knees to keep them from flapping across the mattress.
I’m around six foot three. He’s probably five foot ten, but right now his emanating calm seems to loom over me like the shade of the big willow tree out back. He twists, planting his right fist at my hip, and his left hand comes up to my chest, pressing gently until I realize he’s urging me to lie back. Having lost all voluntary muscle control, I essentially collapse onto the mattress, and he hovers over me, looking down.
He got a haircut this morning, I realize. The sides are cut close to his scalp again, and the top is soft and floppy. His dancing lake-in-the-sun eyes stare down at me, and I’m possessed by heat, and need to feel, and feel, and feel.
“Thanks for coming to dinner last night,” he says, and his gaze is doing a full circuit of my face. Over my forehead and down my cheeks, hovering near my mouth.
His eyes flicker down, watching me swallow before I say, “Your family is nice.”
“Yeah.”
“They probably thought I was a lunatic?”
He grins. “Only a little.”
“You got a haircut.”
His eyes go unfocused, staring at my mouth. “Yeah.”
I bite my lip, wanting to roar because of how he’s looking at me. “I like it. A lot.”
“Yeah? Good.”
God, enough small talk. I pull him to me, my hand on the back of his neck, and he comes down immediately, mouth over mine, weight partially on me, breath leaving his lips in a relieved gust. It starts so slow, this relieved, leisurely kissing. First through self-conscious smiles and then with the confidence that this—us—is so good it aches.
And it ramps up from there, like a plane at takeoff, and we’re infected at the same time with something wilder and more desperate. I don’t want to think that we’re hungry like this because there is a ticking clock. I am unwilling to play the chess game too many moves ahead. Instead, I think we’re hungry like this because we feel something deeper. Something like love.
His chest rests on mine and his hands are in my hair and he makes these small, deep sounds that slowly unravel me until the only word I can think, over and over, is yes.
Everything feels yes.
His mouth is yes, and his hands are yes, and over me, on top of me now, he’s moving and yes, yes, yes.
I run my hands down his back and under his shirt to the warm skin of his torso. Yes. There’s no time to appreciate that I’ve answered my own garment question because then his shirt is off, yes, and mine comes off; skin to skin is
Y
E
S
and I’ve never been on bottom like this, never wrapped my leg around someone’s hip, never felt this kind of shifting and friction, and he tells me he thinks about me every second
yes
and tells me he’s never felt this way, he likes to suck on my bottom lip, he wants to pause time so we can kiss for hours
yes
and I tell him truthfully that nothing ever felt as good as this does, and he laughs into my mouth again because I’m sure it’s obvious how into this I am. I am a monster beneath him, with arching hips, an octopus with hands everywhere at once. I don’t think anything in the history of time has felt this good.
“I want to know everything about you,” he says into me, frantic now, his mouth moving over my jaw, stubble scraping my neck.
“I’ll tell you anything.”
“Are you my boyfriend?” he asks, and then sucks my bottom lip before laughing at himself, as if this isn’t the most amazing thing anyone has ever said to me in the history of my life.
“Um, yes.”
Boyfriend. Yes.
“Even if I’m your boyfriend now, I won’t tell anyone about this,” I whisper.
“I know.”
His hand comes over me, between us—oh my God—and through my track pants it seems so innocent and so dirty at the same time, but the dirty is washed away when I look up and realize he’s watching my face, awestruck.
And I get it. I’ve never done that either.
In a daze, I reach down too. His eyes roll back before they fall closed.
It doesn’t feel real. How can this be real?
He moves forward once, and again, and this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever done—
I don’t even hear the footsteps or the door before I hear my dad’s mortified “Oh!” and the door slam shut.
Sebastian vaults off me, turning to face the wall, his hands pressed to his face. In the ringing silence, I’m not sure what’s just happened.
I mean, I know what happened, but it went so fast that for a few pounding heartbeats I think I can pretend that he and I just shared the same hallucination.
This is so bad on so many levels. No longer do I get to play the We’re just friends! angle with the grown-ups downstairs. Now we’re in it, and I’m going to get an earful from one or both of my parents.
But without a doubt, this is so much more humiliating for Sebastian.
“Hey,” I say.
“This is bad,” he whispers. He doesn’t drop his hands, doesn’t turn back to me. His back is bare, and a map of muscle. I’m drowning in dueling reactions: giddy that I have a hot boyfriend now, and terrified that this one moment has ruined everything.
“Hey,” I say again. “He’s not going to call your parents.”
“This is so bad.”
“Just come here, okay?”
Turning slowly, he walks back over, lowering himself onto the bed without looking at me.
He groans. “Your dad walked in on us.”
I take a beat to find the best response, settling on, “Yeah, but he’s probably more mortified than we are.”
“I highly doubt that.”
I knew he wouldn’t go for that line of reasoning, but it was worth a try. “Look at me.”
After about ten seconds, he does. I see how he softens, and the relief of that makes me want to stand up and pound my chest. “It’s okay,” I whisper. “He isn’t going to tell anyone. He’s probably just going to talk to me later.”
As in, he will for sure talk to me later.
With a defeated exhale, Sebastian closes his eyes. “Okay.”
I lean forward, and I think he senses my proximity even if he doesn’t open his eyes because his mouth twitches in a suppressed smile. Pressing my lips to his, I offer up my bottom lip, the one he likes to suck, and wait for him to respond. Slowly, he does. It’s nothing like the heat of before, but it’s real.
He pulls away, standing and reaching for his shirt. “I’m going to head home.”
“I’m going to stay right here.”
Sebastian fights another grin at the implication of this, and then I watch as the mask slowly slips into place. His forehead relaxes, and a vibrant light comes into his eyes. The easy smile I’m learning to distrust spreads across his face. “Walk me out?”
• • •
It takes Dad only fifteen minutes after Sebastian has left to come to my room. His knock is tentative, almost apologetic.
“Come in.”
He steps in, shutting the door carefully behind him.
I’m not sure whether I should be angry or remorseful, and the combination sends prickly static across my skin.
Dad walks to my desk chair and takes a seat. “First, I should apologize for not knocking the first time.”
I place my open book facedown on my chest, looking over at him from where I’m lying on the bed. “Agreed.”