Page 54 of Be Mine, Sweetheart (Something Borrowed 3)

Should he let her rest and sneak out the door? Or would she take that badly?

“Do you have to get home to Fungi?” she asked.

So, she was awake. “He’s okay for a while.”

“Then get in here and hold me.”

Chris lifted the blanket with a laugh, and slid in until he was next to her. He wrapped his arm under her head and the other rested on her waist. She was tracing his chest with the tip of her finger over his skin and hair.

“Do you regret it?” she whispered.

He brought her hand up to his mouth and kissed it. “No. You?”

She shook her head. “I was afraid it would be awkward or terrible.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“But it was amazing, and I don’t…I don’t know what it means.”

He kissed her forehead and then her nose, followed closely by her lips. He wasn’t sure where they went from here either, but he didn’t want to say that. There was so much to think about, so many ways this could go badly. Kelly was the most important person to him after his family, and he didn’t want to think about what his life would look like without her in it.

“We don’t have to decide today what we are to each other. Let’s just be best friends.”

“Who have seen each other naked?”

“Exactly.”

She laughed, and snuggled closer. Within a few minutes, she melted into him and he knew she’d fallen asleep. He traced the curve of her hip with his hand, growing drowsy with her warm body pressed against his and the sweet smell of her hair drifting up to him.

Chris walked down the hallway of El Dorado High School, wondering what in the hell he was doing there. The white halls were lined with blue lockers and although he remembered it as a loud, bustling environment, there was nobody there but him. It had been fourteen years since he’d graduated, and the place looked the same.

“Hey Chris,” someone called.

He turned searching the empty corridor.

“Yo, in here.”

Chris headed toward the voice, which was coming from a classroom to his left. He went through the doorway of to find the room empty.

It wasn’t really empty though. At the front, behind the teacher’s desk, sat Ray with his feet up on the flat wood. His hair was in a short ‘fro, the way he’d styled it at the beginning of their senior year. His even white teeth flashed into a welcoming smile and his dark eyes twinkled.

“What’s up, man? It’s been a while. Although, I prefer this to your circus prom dream. That was just freaky.”

Chris froze, shaking his head. “Are you real?.”

Ray got up and came around to him. He was wearing the Raiders jacket Chris had bought him for his seventeenth birthday, even though Chris was a diehard 49ers fan. Ray gave him a one-armed hug, pounding him on the back and it felt so real, so good.

“Does this feel real?”

Chris tightened his hold on him. “Yeah.”

Ray tried to end the hug, but Chris held on. “Whoa, what’s up with you?” Ray pulled away, eyeing him with confusion. “You act like I’m gonna die or something.”

“You are, man. You’re dead.”

Ray grinned. “I know. Just fucking with you.”

“Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be in heaven or something?”