Page 59 of Try Me
“Fuck, it’s weird being here.” Mark dropped his backpack next to my desk and glanced around the bedroom as I flipped on a task lamp and the twinkle lights Amanda had strung around the ceiling in a fit of aesthetic horror.
My bed was a bedlam of tangled sheets, and there were piles of books and papers scattered haphazardly over most surfaces.
Mark nudged my desk chair out of the way and bent over, studying a photo of me, my mom, and my sis that my dad had taken on graduation day.
Then he kicked off his shoes and flopped on the bed, making himself right at home—not that I minded at all.
It was such a distantly familiar image, Mark sprawled on my bed. Back in the day, he’d usually had a game controller in one hand.
A glance at his muted expression suggested he was thinking along similar lines.
“Remember that head tingler thing you used to have?” he asked.
“Think it’s around here somewhere, actually.” It was a simple device I’d gotten as a stocking stuffer one year, a pencil-thick handle with thin, plastic-tipped wire prongs spider-legging off of it. It was about as close to heaven on earth as you could get—or at least had been before we knew much about orgasms. Sometimes Mark and I would trade off pushing it through each other’s hair or over each other’s back, because somehow it felt better when someone else did it. “I’ll look for it in a second. Stay here.” I left the room and went down the hall to wet a washcloth with warm water, wiping myself down before I rinsed it and returned to the bedroom with it.
The cloth landed on Mark’s chest with a wet plop, and he laughed softly as he picked it up, stuck it inside his shorts, and cleaned himself off. I shut the door and locked it behind me, then took my shoes off, too, and lay down next to him.
We stared at the pattern of twinkle lights, and when his fingers gently brushed over the top of my head, combing through my hair, I didn’t stop him. He rolled onto his side to face me, and I did the same. Mirror images.
Just for a second, it was like we were in my old room again. Like nothing had changed.
Sometimes I wondered what would’ve happened if my father had never cheated people out of their money, never gone to prison. If he and Mark’s dad had never gone separate ways to start with.
Would I have crawled into Mark’s bed one night anyway and let him touch me? Would he have even wanted to touch me in the first place? Would I have asked for it the way I had that night?
“What’re you thinking about?”
“Your old room.”
Mark swept his thumb across my temple, then rubbed lightly back and forth over the scar in my brow where my ring used to be, features set in concentration, his mouth pulled stern.
I traced the line of his throat, then spread my fingers over it, feeling him swallow beneath, stubble scratching my skin with the movement. “We can’t be anything.” Saying the words aloud caused a physical reaction inside me, like someone tugging on the muscles in my chest or squeezing my lungs in a vice grip.
But someone had to.
How long had I wanted him? It was longer than the length of time I’d known with absolute certainty I couldn’t have him. Not for the long term, anyway.
“I know.” Mark’s throat bobbed again. He slid his palm along my jaw and traced his thumb over the curve of my chin and my lower lip. “I’ll go in a minute.”
The agreement was sealed with a heavy silence, and then Mark shifted onto his back. “Your room’s kinda cozy actually. Has a good feeling. Feels like you.”
“It’s a shithole.”
“Does it make you sad?”
The question stole my next breath, and my heart wound tighter. “Not much anymore.” The things I missed the most were intangible. Possibilities and opportunities that had vanished into thin air. The negligible potential with the guy lying next to me. “I bitch about it, but yeah, I dunno. All of this…it’s mine.” I swept a hand through the air. “No one else’s. I mean aside from my scholarship, everything I’ve done has been on my own, and it’s liberating in a way, I guess.”
Mark pressed a gentle touch against my hip. “Turn over.”
When I did, he pulled my back against his chest, and I sucked in a breath as he stroked the side of my neck. “My dick is dead to the world right now, just FYI.”
His laughter heated my skin. “Mine, too.” But it didn’t stop him from resting his hand on my hip or from brushing his thumb over the skin above my waistband, just as he had so long ago.
“This doesn’t change anything at the firm. Fucking around doesn’t mean I’m not your competition.”
“I know that, dumbass,” he said, then kissed the top of my spine.
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