Page 53 of Want Me
I cut another look over at him. His dark hair was tousled. Not even artfully, just messy and haphazard bed head since he hadn’t taken a shower this morning. And somehow sexy as hell in conjunction with the thick stubble along his jaw. “Maybe.” And though I was sure he was teasing me, the open curiosity I read in his expression had me smiling instead of cracking another joke. “Yeah,” I relented, because it did feel fucking good. At least his version of it.
Eric gave my palm another firm squeeze, then let his fingers travel up the length of my arm to wrap around the nape of my neck, rubbing the tendons until a satisfied rumble left my chest. “That’s the winner right there, though,” I told him.
We’d gotten halfway backto campus before Eric brought up something that’d been on my mind all morning.
“Mark still pissed at you?”
I hadn’t thought of Mark at all over the break, but since we’d gotten in the car—my hiatus from university and frat life over—the prospect of returning to the chill that’d settled between our friendship loomed. We’d been tight since becoming pledge brothers as freshmen. He’d had my back any number of times over the last few years, had saved my ass on a few occasions when we were hazed during hell week, or when the occasional fight broke out, and beyond. I’d done the same for him without question.
I sighed, fiddling with a thread that’d come loose on the steering wheel stitching. “Yeah, I think so. I’m not sure how to make it right yet, though. I mean…” I stopped, thinking for a moment about how we’d left things. “Or maybe I do, but I’m just not ready to yet.”
Eric shrugged and shifted in the passenger seat, doing his best to stretch his long legs out. “It’s no skin off my back. Dude doesn’t even like me. But I know you’ve always been close.”
“Why do you think he doesn’t like you?” I racked my brain for any instance where Mark had been antagonistic toward Eric but came up empty.
Eric eyed me for a moment, then dismissed the question with a shake of his head. “Just a vibe I get from him. No concrete evidence.”
So of course Mark was the first one we encountered when we got back to the house. Kicked back on the couch with a slice of pizza in his hand, he scrolled through TV channels as Eric and I came through the front door. He glanced over and then did a muted double take when he spotted Eric behind me.
“Eric came home with me,” I said redundantly. “His Thanksgiving plans fell through.” It was sort of true.
Mark gave me a slow nod, his expression unreadable and detached as he looked between me and Eric. “Cool. Good times?”
I dropped my duffle by the stairs and ran a hand through my hair as Eric gave Mark a short upnod for a greeting and headed for the kitchen. “Yeah. We had fun. You?”
He shrugged. “It was all right. Lots of family, you know? Mostly chaos.” He clapped his thumb and fingers together to simulate a bunch of chattering, then stuffed the rest of a pizza crust in his mouth and dusted off his hands.
“There any of that pizza left?”
“Nope,” he said succinctly and started messing with the remote again.
“Okay.” I stood there for a second, and the silence that settled between us made me oddly aware of how I was standing there uselessly with one knee kind of bent out and my arms hanging at my sides like two loaves of bread. Like I didn’t know what to do with myself. “I’m gonna go unpack.”
Mark tipped me an absent wave as I shouldered my bag and headed up the stairs.
Once in my bedroom, I unzipped the duffle and the scent of fresh detergent wafted up. Why did clothes smell so much better when someone else washed them? I hung up my shirts and was in the process of stuffing my jeans back in a drawer, still mulling the whole Mark situation, when I got a prickle over the back of my neck, signaling I was being watched. I turned around to shoot a teasing accusation at Eric but found myself trying to hide a smile, instead. He leaned up against my doorframe, arms folded over his chest, and I thought that for probably as long as we lived here, I’d associate that stance with the first time we’d hooked up. I guess it wasn’t the most romantic thing in the world, but it still made my heart do a flip in my chest. A goofy smile broke free for a span of seconds, matched by Eric’s quirked lips, until the thought of Mark sobered me again. I shut the drawer. “So yeah, it’s weird, and I’m gonna have to fix it,” I said quietly, glancing out into the hall as I picked up the thread of conversation from the car ride.
Eric shouldered off the doorframe and wandered deeper inside. “You’ll figure it out.”
I bit my lip and nodded, locking eyes with him as he stopped in front of me and cuffed the back of my neck. I was suddenly nervous that Eric wouldn’t be patient with me, that he hadn’t meant what he’d said. It’d been easy while we were off campus, but now we’d be back to sneaking around. Of course, I thought the sneaking around held its own allure for Eric. And me, if I was being honest. The illicit thrill quotient was high and we were both suckers for it, which set off another wave anxiety inside me. What if once everything was out in the open, the mind-rattling, ball-tightening sense of urgency between us evaporated?
“Wow,” Eric chuckled on an exhale.
“Wow?”
He cocked his head at me. “I can almost make out the shape of your thoughts as they whirl through your mind.” His finger rose to trace a nonsensical pattern on my forehead, the touch cool and light.
“So what was that one?”
“Ambiguous worry, I think.”
I snorted as he dropped his hand away. His expression was patient and open and waiting, and I licked my lips—an instinctive reflex I seemed to have when I was close to him, like they’d suddenly gone dry. “Are you sure you’re in this? Maybe for a haul?”
Eric let go of the back of my neck with another sweep of his fingertips and dropped to the edge of my bed, shoving aside a stack of T-shirts. “Yep. You?” His green eyes searched mine as if he was trying to assemble a larger picture from my jumbled thoughts.
“A hundred percent.”
“You’re glaring again.”