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Alana

I didn’t hate being at this party as much as I thought I would, but when we hit the two-hour mark, my social battery bottomed out, and suddenly, I needed to be back in my house in my sweatpants and one of Liam’s t-shirts.

So, of course, I couldn’t find him and ended up cornered by Eddie. I had liked Eddie just fine when we were in high school. He was the star quarterback, but he never cared about football the way people wanted him to. He was just good at it. He’d had a calming energy about him whenever we hung out, which had typically only happened in situations very similar to this one.

What I had forgotten about Eddie was that he used to have a crush on me. One that he clearly hadn’t gotten over in the last thirteen years. Or maybe he had, but then the proximity made it come back with a vengeance.

“I’d heard you were around for the holidays,” he said as a greeting, his eyes tracking up and down my body.

“Here I am,” I said weakly.

“How have you been?” he asked. I was bored of this question at this point. The answer was complicated. Did they mean over the last thirteen years since I missed our high school graduation, in which case the answer was fine? Or did they mean recently, where I felt like I was on an emotional rollercoaster that I very much wanted to get off? Not even six months ago, I’d been with the person that on some level, I believed I was going to marry, and yet now I felt more at home than I ever had with someone else.

I couldn’t even call it falling in love because it wasn’t that. It was a phoenix finally rising from the ashes of a love that had long burned up but was getting ready to fly again.

“Yeah, I’ve been fine,” is what I said instead. It’s what I had been saying every time I was asked.

“You around for long?”

“Through to New Year,” I said. I had a feeling I knew where this was going, and I felt anxious goose bumps prickle on my skin.

“That’s plenty of time for us to hang out then,” he said, his eyes still looking at my body, never my face. I think he was going for flirty, but it wasn’t working. Maybe if there wasn’t someone else, I would say sure, we could hang out. Eddie was as good a rebound as anybody. But there was someone else. And Eddie either hadn’t been told or he didn’t care and thought he could compete with Liam.

I knew the second Liam arrived. Sea salt and vanilla entered my radar because he now carried a piece of me around with him always. His hand snaked around my waist, and I sank into his warmth.

“Do you know what you’re standing under, Len?” he asked. It was almost a whisper, but I was still looking at Eddie. I could tell that he had heard because he looked up. I tipped my head, which Liam took as an invitation to press kisses along my neck. Given that I was now slightly taller than him, he had much easier access. I laughed softly as my gaze reached the mistletoe hanging from the ceiling.

“Well, would you look at that,” I said, shifting a little to get him away from my neck, then pressed a kiss to his cheek. I felt his cheek move as he smiled and when I removed my lips, he moved to stand in front of me, blocking my view of Eddie.

“Not getting with that this time, babe,” he said. He gently grabbed my chin and angled my head down before he sealed his lips on mine. Part of me wanted to be embarrassed about this public display of affection but I couldn’t think about anything but Liam.

The width of his palm on the middle of my back, holding me close, while his other hand curled around my neck to hold me at the right angle. The sweep of his tongue in my mouth and the pressure of his lips against mine. The slow build of heat that was gathering south of centre. The feel of his sweater in my hands, and the press of his thigh between my legs. I could feel him harden against my hip, and I broke the kiss before I really did forget where we were, and escalated things.

“That’s better,” he said against my ear. I shivered.

“Jealousy sure is an interesting colour on you, Muller,” I whispered back.

“Chantelle mentioned something about seeing you two together the other day. You finally locked that one down, Liam?” Eddie asked somewhere over Liam’s shoulder. Liam turned around in such a way that put him in between me and Eddie. In theory, the overprotective act should have annoyed me, but I found myself liking it.

“Wasn’t screwing it up for a second time, Eddie,” he said before looking back at me. “You ready to get out of here?”

“I’m fine if you still have people you want to catch up with,” I replied on autopilot because it had only been a couple of hours and Liam was a social person. There was no way he was already done with this party. Even if I was.

“You wanna come with me while I catch up with people or am I just leaving you to disappear into a corner and think about the book that you could be reading at home?” There was a teasing smile on his face, and I wanted to hate him. For knowing me so well. For having the nerve to be so smug about the fact that he knew me so well. I hated myself a little bit for ever running away from someone who just made things easier for me. Always had and apparently always would.

“There are only so many times I can hear variations of, ‘That’s so cool’ when I tell them what I’m doing with my life, and have the conversation not so subtly steered back to talk of you. So, I am fine in my corner.”

Liam turned his head. “Thanks for the party, Eddie. It’s been great to see everyone. We’re gonna head out,” he said as he laced his fingers with mine and started leading us to the door.

“Yeah, good to see you both too,” Eddie called after us, only sounding a little disappointed.

“I really was fine to stay there for longer,” I said as we walked home, cold fingers linked together, providing a faux kind of warmth.

“You’re always fine to stay at places you don’t want to be in anymore. I really wish that the part of you that is scared of asking for what you want in social situations, like leaving because you’re tired or bored or just over it, was one of the things that had changed about you over the years.”

There was no malice in his words, but his accurate representation of me still slipped through a rib and cut me almost fatally. I tried to change the subject.

“Are you sure you didn’t just want me out of there to stop Eddie from trying to make a move once you had gone on to mingle?”

“I think that kiss would have turned him off from making a move, so no. And if it hadn’t, you would have shut him down anyway.”

“What makes you so sure about that?” I don’t know why I asked. I would have shut him down. Even if I wasn’t in this situation with Liam, I would have shut him down. For the same reason I never gave him the time of day in high school. I just wasn’t into him.

“You’ve never been into Eddie,” he said. I waited for him to say something else, but that was all he said. We lapsed into silence.

“Want to tell me why you’re annoyed?” Liam asked quietly when we were five minutes from home.

“I’m not annoyed,” I answered truthfully.

“Then what’s wrong? ”

“I’m just thinking,” I replied.

“You gonna enlighten me on what you’re thinking about?”

“It’s nice having you back in my corner, is all,” I said. It was all I could say without everything spilling over. I felt Liam’s gaze settle on the side of my face and I kept my eyes forward. I knew that if he saw my whole face he’d be able to read it, and I wasn’t ready for that.

“I never stopped being in your corner,” he eventually said, turning his eyes forward again.

I blinked back tears.

“How was everyone, anyway? You talked to more people than I did.”

“Do you find it funny how people seem to revert to an old version of themselves when you put them back in certain situations?”

“Is that an answer to my question?”

“Yeah, kind of. Everyone behaved the exact way they did when we were eighteen. Some of them flirted with me because that was what they always did. Some of the guys only knew how to talk to me about sports. A couple were still a little bit scared of me because they remembered how I used to be on the ice. You tried to disappear into a wall,” he teased at the end.

“I wasn’t trying to disappear. I was talking to people. You saw me talking to people.”

“I saw you talking to Eddie,” he grumbled.

“Which you then promptly shut down in a bout of jealousy.”

“I wasn’t jealous,” he shot back quickly.

“I was in that spot for ages before you came over and you only made your appearance when I was talking to Eddie. What is that if not jealousy?”

“It was me seeing you and knowing that you were ready to leave. It just so happened to be that you were under some mistletoe while you were talking to Eddie, and it’s bad luck to ignore it. Or whatever that superstition is.”

“You have so many superstitions and you don’t know what’s up with mistletoe?” I didn’t either, if I was being honest.

“I have a lot of sports-related superstitions. They don’t tend to carry outside of that.”

“I see what you’re doing here. It’s interesting that you’ve shifted the conversation to superstitions so we can stop talking about you being jealous.”

“I wasn’t jealous. I’m…what was it that you said? Chill?”

“Oh my gosh, you’re ridiculous. Fine, after whatever incident I said I was chill, I was not chill. I was maybe a little bit jealous.” Or a lot jealous.

He smiled. “I really did go over because I could tell you were ready to go, but I also wasn’t a huge fan of how Eddie was looking at you. Like he wanted to take you up to his room.”

“Because only you can do that?”

“I’d fucking hope so, as your boyfriend.”

I stopped. We were outside his parents’ house.

“This isn’t fake anymore, is it? We’re actually dating, aren’t we? You are getting a proper thrill out of saying that you’re my boyfriend.” I had said I was his girlfriend before we left, and I’d meant it. I was his girlfriend; there was nothing fake about it.

“This hasn’t felt fake since I wrapped my arm around you in that bakery queue and Chantelle started talking to me. Actually, that might be a small lie. This hasn’t felt fake since I left you in bed that first morning and came back just in time to hear you say my name when you came,” he said.

“What…no…that’s…you didn’t…why didn’t—” I’d been so sure I was quiet that morning.

“Why didn’t I say anything? What was I supposed to say?”

“Is that why you started talking about how we should go on dates? So you could test drive a real relationship?”

“Yes and no. I did think we probably shouldn’t stay holed up in the house because that would be odd. But yes, I wanted to date you and figured if you were thinking about me like that, it might not be beyond the realm of possibility that you could think about me as an actual boyfriend. I wouldn’t call it a test drive. I very much want to keep you, but the dates were kind of a test drive.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh. Now come on, let’s get you a whiskey from the back of the cupboard and under a blanket. If you’re lucky, I’ll go down on you.” He gently pulled on my arm and walked us the seventeen steps home.

“What do I have to do to get lucky?” I asked as I unlocked the front door.

“Exist on a day that ends in y.”