Page 31

31

Liam

T here was a hand playing with my waistband. When I blinked my eyes open, Lenny was laughing to herself and when I looked down, I saw that she had placed a bow on my morning wood.

“Merry Christmas to you, I guess,” I said, my voice groggy. Lenny turned her head, her mouth still turned up in a smile. The sunlight made her eyes look like the colour of burnt honey. I could stare into them for hours.

“Are you calling your dick a gift?” She sounded wide awake, and I remembered that for some reason, Lenny’s body was incapable of sleeping in on Christmas Day.

“I think you called it the Goldilocks of dicks.”

“Technically I called it the Goldilocks of penises,” she said, lifting the bow up and throwing it onto her bedside table. “I also think gifts are supposed to be a surprise, so it would be a pretty shit gift.”

“Why are you putting bows on my dick anyway?”

“You kicked the duvet off, and I got distracted by the bulge and couldn’t carry on reading my book. I was going to do something else but then remembered we haven’t had a conversation about that. Then I found the bow on the floor and here I am. Putting bows on your dick and finding it hilarious.”

“How long have you been awake?”

“A couple of hours. I tried to get back to sleep, but you know me. An over-excited kid in a giant’s body on Christmas morning.” She shrugged.

“You can, by the way. The whole ‘while I’m asleep’ thing. You don’t just have to place a bow on it.”

“Same. Well, three weeks out of four in a month. Merry Christmas, by the way,” she said, her eyes flicking above my head. I followed her eye line to find that while I had been sleeping, some mistletoe had appeared on the headboard.

“Where did you get this?”

“It was in the bag with the dress you had to buy. I hung it up before I started playing with bows. We seem incapable of kissing without mistletoe being present.”

“I didn’t have to buy that dress. I bought it because you wanted it. I would have bought it even if the dressing room thing hadn’t happened.”

She didn’t say anything. Instead, she swung a leg over me and placed her hands on either side of my head before dipping down and sealing her lips against mine.

I wanted all Christmas Days to start like this. Heck, I wanted every day to start like this. Lenny pulled away just before I could press her flush against me and move things further.

“Come on, Seventeen, I’m gonna make cookies,” she said as she got off the bed.

I reached for my phone and tapped the screen to bring up the time. “It’s seven-thirty in the morning.”

“It’s seven-thirty on Christmas morning. There are no rules. Besides, what is better than oven-fresh cookies on Christmas morning?” I opened my mouth to say something, but she stopped me before I could. “If you make a vagina joke right now, you aren’t getting shit. I’m shutting it down and cutting you off,” she warned.

I closed my mouth. Then pressed my lips together tightly because I wanted to say something I shouldn’t. This thing between us was too new. Too fragile. We’d fallen apart once before and had only just come back together. I didn’t want to be the one to tip the balance. I had no way of knowing if it would tip in my favour.

In our favour.

But the thought came to me loud and clear as she walked out our bedroom with a bounce in her step.

I love you.

“ Where do you want me?” I asked as I walked into the kitchen.

“Not in this kitchen,” Lenny replied, not looking up from her mixing bowl. She had flour on her cheek.

“You told me to come here,” I pointed out as I stopped beside her and swiped the flour off her. She leant into the touch.

“Yeah, but that was before you got here, and I remembered that you are quite distracting.”

“You can make cookies in your sleep. Anyway, if you really didn’t want me here, you wouldn’t have waited until I woke up before you came down to make cookies.”

The idea that she wanted me around in her domain made me feel warmer than any fresh baked good could.

“A great mistake on my part. You are welcome to leave now,” she said as she cracked an egg into the bowl.

“What kind of cookies are you making?” I asked instead.

“A burnt butter pecan thing,” she replied. “Actually, I have a task for you, make those pecans smaller pieces for me, please.” She gestured to a half-filled Ziploc bag. It would never cease to amaze me how quickly she could pull together ingredients for a bake. I’d been less than two minutes behind her, and she already seemed halfway done.

I picked up the Ziploc and whacked it on the counter.

“Wake up the whole neighbourhood, why don’t you?” she muttered as she added butter to her mix.

“How else am I supposed to break them up?”

“You could’ve used a knife,” she suggested.

“And give you both a chopping board and a knife to wash up? Because I know how much you love that shit.” I whacked the bag down again. “I’m done now, anyway. Very brittle pecans, quick to break up.” I handed her the bag of smashed pecans.

“Get out right now,” she said. Lenny sounded almost angry, and I couldn’t help but find it amusing.

“What have I done now?”

“You smashed some pecans to perfection with two firm slaps against a kitchen counter and you can literally hold me up against a bookshelf like we’re not basically the same height. I’m finding the strength of it all, of you , quite overwhelming and this is a kitchen. And not only is it a kitchen, but it is also the kitchen in my parents’ house. Who are here. Upstairs. And I know my parents don’t think I’m some virginal woman nor do I care that they know I’m getting railed by the boy next door, but I do not need them to catch me having sex. In a kitchen. Which I am very close to giving in to unless you leave right now.” She tipped the crushed pecans into the bowl and started beating everything together.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say no to slipping…” I was cut off by a tea towel getting thrown at my face.

“I cannot stress enough how much I hate you.”

It sounded an awful lot like I love you.

“You were the one who said they were close to wanting to get railed on a kitchen counter,” I pointed out, putting the tea towel back on the counter.

“Would you be less annoying now if I could have woken you with a blowjob?”

“I’d be high on endorphins, so I’d probably be more annoying.”

“That’s what you can do. Go for a run. That would also get you high on endorphins and, more importantly, would get you out of my kitchen.”

I knew that she was aware that I was moving towards her, but she kept her eyes focused on the bowl in her hands as I stepped behind her and rested my hands on the counter on either side of her hips. There was a couple of inches of space between our bodies and I could see the way she was resisting sinking back into me.

“Oh yeah, you want me to go out and get all sweaty. Come back in need of a shower. You want to see my T-shirt plastered to the contours of my body, my thigh muscles stretching against my running leggings. My chest heaving as I try to get my breath back. My skin flushed pink. Would you help me out of my clothes? Would you join me in the shower and make sure that my tired muscles are soothed?” As I’d been talking, Lenny had stopped mixing her cookie batter and her back was now pressed against my chest, her neck tilted to the side letting me speak against the sensitive skin by her ear. I could see goose bumps erupting on her skin. I moved one of my hands to rest on her lower stomach and she sank further into me.

“No, don’t do that,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. I kissed the juncture of her jaw, and she twisted her head to meet my lips with hers. Before it could get too heated, we heard the click of the lock in the kitchen door behind us. I knew before they made themselves known who was walking in on us. It could only be my parents.

“Well don’t you two look cosy?” my mom said. Lenny seemed to shake off the cloak of lust that had settled on us and returned her focus to her mixing bowl. I stayed behind her, my arm still holding her close, because as much as I also knew that my parents were aware that I had sex, I did not need them to see me sporting an erection.

“Merry Christmas Mel, Bobby,” Lenny said, sounding just the wrong side of normal for her. Not that my parents would notice.

“Morning,” I said.

“What are you making?” Mom asked.

“She tells me they are burnt butter pecan things,” I answered for her because I could sense that Lenny had entered that zone she only reached when she was at the portioning stage of baking. Nothing else existed when she entered that zone.

“Very nice. Are your parents up, Alana?”

There was a moment of silence as Lenny finished rolling her last two cookies in a ball and placing them on the baking tray.

“They might be, but I haven’t seen them. I guess you’re over here early for a reason, so you can just do whatever you came here to do. These are about to go in the oven and Liam is about to clean up. So we’ll be out of your way shortly.”

“I am?”

She turned around in my arms and pressed against my erection with her hip.

“It’s another counter and the task might be numbing enough that it gets Goldilocks to calm down,” she said, her voice low enough that only I could hear her.

“You just don’t want to wash up,” I teased, rolling my hips into her just to watch her try to suppress a moan.

“That too,” she thrust the empty mixing bowl into my hands and walked out of the kitchen. I strategically placed it near my crotch as I walked to the sink and started washing up.

“Dad is going to prep the turkey. We thought that would be nice, as you missed coming home for Thanksgiving. I’m going to get started on the veg before Stassie and Rob come down,” Mom said, now standing next to me. It wasn’t all that different to the way that Christmas had been when we were younger.

“Yeah, sure, I’ll get out of your way. Although I imagine Len will be back to take the cookies out of the oven soon.”

“Things going well with her?” Dad asked. I got the feeling this week, within my minimal interactions with him, that part of him believed that it was her fault I no longer played. How he had reached that conclusion, I didn’t know, but he was treating everything around me as a reason instead of just accepting the fact that I was done, and nothing anyone could say was changing my mind on that one.

“Yeah, we’re fine.”

Better than fine. Official and everything. It was the best Christmas present I could have hoped for.

Aaron was standing outside the bathroom he shared with Lenny when I went back upstairs.

“She in there?” I asked. He nodded.

“She’s probably been awake for hours, but she chose the moment I needed to pee to go have a shower.”

“She has cookies in the oven so she will probably be quick, if that’s any consolation.”

“Was that a two-person job?” There was a teasing tone to his question.

“I just smashed some pecans, so no, it definitely wasn’t, but she seemed to want me there,” I replied.

“Ally always wants you there. The problem was always that she was scared you would stop being there, so she got ahead of it.” His eyes widened in surprise. Almost as if he hadn’t quite meant to reveal that much.

It had, stupidly, never occurred to me that Aaron would know the whole story, but clearly, he did. The only person closer to Lenny than me back then was her brother, but even if I had thought to ask, he would have kept the vault locked no matter how much I pleaded for answers.

“You know the whole story?”

Aaron looked down at his parents’ bedroom door. It was still closed.

“Yeah, I know why she left. And I know how mildly annoying she found it when she started dating Kai, who was basically your number one fan. I also know that she was kind of irritated that you moved to Detroit and the only thing that softened that blow was the fact that she was happy that you and Teddy got to play together again. You have probably guessed that I also know that while she did make your birthday cake, you didn’t go thank her for it in person six weeks ago, and decided it was a smart choice to fake date each other the day you both flew back for the holidays. And I think this whole thing was fake for all of two days and is now an actual relationship, and if that is the case, then I am happy for you both.”

None of what he knew was surprising.

“It’s not. Fake that is. Don’t suppose you’re going to tell me any more?” It was worth a shot asking. He had managed to tell me things without telling me the thing he knew I wanted to know most.

Aaron laughed as the bathroom door unlocked and opened to a billow of vanilla-scented steam.

“You know I’m not,” he said as Lenny walked out in a towel.

“All yours, A-A-Ron.”

Aaron slipped into the bathroom and closed the door with one final nod in my direction. Lenny looked at me.

“Put the sex eyes away. I have to take those cookies out of the oven, so we quite literally do not have time.” She walked to her room.

“Really? Not even for one tiny, quick little orgasm?” I asked as I closed the bedroom door behind me and backed her up against the nearest wall.

She gasped as her back met the wall and then rolled her darkening eyes. “Yours or mine?”

I smiled.

“Always yours,” I said as I pulled the towel from her body.