When the footsteps grow quieter the further away from the door his mum and brother get, I quickly push the sheets off me and frown in confusion when I notice that I am also naked except for the pyjama trousers that I have on. He lent them to me last night. Crawling to the edge of the bed, I glance down and spot my clothes messily sprawled on the floor.
Remembering how they ended up there, my face grows flushed and I shake my head to try and get the image playing in my head to disappear. It does not. It's vivid and memorable and has my body growing hot.
Just as I am about to reach for them, he turns his attention on me and I quickly push myself back, grasping the sheets high on my neck. My eyes enlarge awkwardly.
When he stares for too long, I ask, "What?"
He scratches the back of his neck nervously. "The bathroom is right over there if you want to change or anything. You can take a shower if you want to or a bath if you prefer baths over showers or you can just change into your clothes. It's not like you smell bad or anything. You smell nice. I mean… do you want me to get you something to eat?"
Even if I don't want to eat something so early in the morning, I just nod my head to get him out of the room before we both combust from the bashful energy radiating off the both of us. I cross my arms over the bed sheets, trying very hard to hide his view of my pectorals.
His eyes flickering around, he quickly walks over to the wardrobe to pull a shirt over his torso. I can't help but let my eyes linger on his soft abs just for a nanosecond before I catch myself looking and duck my head before his face emerges from the shirt. He doesn't have the body of a bodybuilder, but you can tell that he works out on occasion to remain fit.
"Okay, let me go and see what we have downstairs. Normally my mum has cooked breakfast by this time." After he finishes tying his shoes he stands up and turns around to look at me with an arched eyebrow. "Be right back, yeah?"
"Okay."
"Uh, I have a spare toothbrush in there too. It's in the cupboard underneath the basin."
I nod in confirmation.
He turns around to leave but something makes him turn back. For a moment, all he does is stare at me as if contemplating whether he should even say what he wants to say to me.
"What?" I ask.
"Did we—" he cuts himself off, pointing a finger at himself and then at me, his cheeks heating up even more at what he might be even suggesting we could've done. "You know?"
"You don't remember?"
"No, I remember, but I'm also hoping that I didn't forget something important like that since I was drinking last night. If we did do something I would want to remember that you know?"
"What do you remember?" I muse teasingly.
After blushing again, he says, "Well, I remember there was… some kissing and some… touching and clothes being discarded but I don't know if anything else happened."
My lips tilt up reassuringly. "Don't worry. We did some stuff, but we didn't go that far."
"Okay so, what I'm hearing is that we ultimately decided to just cuddle naked. That's cool."
I chuckle before slapping a hand over my mouth to silence my laughter just in case his brother hears me, with his hearing of an elephant.
"We did a little bit more than just cuddling naked, just saying," I mutter under my breath.
He pauses at the door, looking back at me over his shoulder. "What did you just say?"
"Nothing," I quickly say, biting down on my bottom lip to hide the sly grin tugging onto my lips.
With a little chuckle, he opens the door and slips out while shaking his head in disbelief. The second I hear the door clicking shut, I quickly reach over to grab my trousers, clumsily tugging them on.
Hopping out of bed, I stretch my arms over my head and groan at the way the joints click into place. When I feel my phone vibrating against my thigh, reality crashes all the way down on me and I fearfully fist the device out of my pocket, grimacing in mental pain when I see how many missed calls I have from my mum.
After hesitantly answering the phone, she instantly swallows a sigh of relief before yelling at me for not answering my phone, something about a missing person report and then she asks me where I slept.
I lie and say at Taylor's.
Once in his bathroom, I crouch down to scrounge around for the fresh toothbrush that he was speaking about and after both brushing my teeth and showering, I come back out into his bedroom with a towel ruffling the water out of my hair and take a seat on the edge of the bed.
When he emerges from behind the door, balancing a tray of assorted bowls on his one arm and holding a cup of what should be coffee in his free hand, I can't help it when my eyes linger on him to take in his form. He has changed into a pair of tracksuit trousers which are hanging as dangerously low on his waist as the jeans did. He is so fucking hot. His brown hair seems wetter and darker than usual, standing in messy disarrays, a few tangled tips brushing against the top of his forehead. He must have just gotten out of the shower too.
"Good morning," he chirps and smiles at me, eyes shining brightly when they look into mine. As usual, the corners of his eyes crinkle when he performs the action. "I brought you some fruit and coffee. Figured you might need it after the night we had."
Crimson splashes into my cheeks.
The night we had?
Once he has positioned the tray in between my legs in such a way that the bowls would not topple over, he climbs in after me. My eyes take in the red strawberries, the plump, cut peaches and blueberries. With a grin, he holds the coffee out at me. I look at the cup, the steam swirling above the rim and when he realises that my hands are occupied, he reaches for the towel.
I take a sip of the coffee and nod approvingly when he silently asks me if it tastes good.
As he dries my hair for me, his hand brushes against my shoulder causing a small shiver to run through me at how warm his hand feels on my bare skin. He pushes my hair away from my shoulder and when his warm breath fans my neck, I slowly turn to look at him. His blue-brown eyes connect with mine and when they darken with an emotion I have only ever seen once last night, I swallow a gulp.
A memory from last night paints across my mind's eye. I recall how feverishly our lips were moving against each other, barely detaching as he guided me all the way upstairs, his hands caressing me almost everywhere. I remember how hot my body felt, it felt like molten hot lava was boiling within me.
"Hey," he says softly, almost intimately.
"Hi."
We still stare at each other deeply. Until I grow too coy and avert my gaze. His lips tug into a smile and I slowly reach up to touch the tiny dimples on his cheeks. They make the playful, carefree, spontaneous persona I have noticed in him, diminish into an innocent boyishness. He grabs my hand in his free one and he softly pulls me forward.
"How do you feel?" he asks me, staring deeply into my eyes with a bit of concern.
"I am… I'm fine," I stutter out, my face turning an even hotter shade of red.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah," I answer quickly, ducking my gaze and shuffling in the sheets.
His lips twitch into a grin and I don't miss the humour in his eyes. "Yeah?"
I nod, affirmatively.
"Not regretting the choice you made?"
Even though I can tell he's not being serious, there is a small tinge of fear that I see in his gaze. In mock ponder, I glance up and release a thinking noise in the back of my throat. "I don't know. You are a bit of shit sometimes."
"Am I, now?" he muses.
I bob my head up and down. His eyes begin to shine with mischief and then he leans into me as if he's about to kiss me but at the last minute his hands spring out to tickle my sides and I flinch away unable to hold in my chuckle.
"Stop. Stop. I have a cup of scalding hot coffee."
Luckily, he does stop.
"Do you," he climbs out of the bed after placing the tray of fruit on the bedside table, opening the wardrobe and over his shoulder he throws, "want a change of clothes?"
"I'm okay. I can change at home."
"You sure?"
"Mm-hmm." I put the cup of coffee down on the bedside table and when a thought hits me, I ask him with my voice coloured with a curious lilt. "Did I kiss you on that night, the night of the party?"
He stills and when he turns around to look at him, our eyes meet with an unspoken tension. Almost in disbelief, he responds with a question of his own. "You remember?"
The night of the party is almost a blur in my memory, a hazy mix of laughter, music and drinks being splattered on a bald head. I can barely recall all the details. It feels as though my memory is fragmented like a shattered glass. But I do not remember kissing him and that has been nagging at me ever since his friend brought it up.
"Sabina told me," I admit, feeling a flutter of nervous anticipation in the pit of my stomach. Even though my memory is hazy, the possibility of our lips meeting even for a fleeting moment sends a spark through me.
His brow furrows slightly as if weighing his words carefully. With his gaze shifting away from mine, he finally says, "I… I don't know why she told you that. I wanted you to remember everything on your own."
"So I did kiss you?"
"Maybe…"
The air between us grows thick with a silent current that seems to hum with the weight of my unanswered question. I definitely kissed him that night if he is not willing to deny it. I find myself wishing I could dive back into that night and relive our first kiss. Will it simply remain a figment of my imagination, a ghost of a memory that will forever stay just out of reach? The more I think about it, I realise that if I did kiss him then he was actually my first second kiss and that makes a smile break out over my face.
After taking a look at the bowl of fruits, I reach for one of the peaches and plop it in my mouth whole before narrowing my eyes at the strawberries in disdain. "By the way, I really hate strawberries."
He spins around to look at me in shock, closing the wardrobe after retrieving some clothes from it. "What do you mean you hate strawberries?"
"I just don't like them."
"That is wild. I have never met anyone who didn't like strawberries." He comes to sit down beside me with a fresh pair of clothing and intuitively adds, "You smell like strawberries, by the way?"
"I do?" I muse, staring at him in surprise.
"Mm-hmm."
"You know my scent?" I playfully pinch his cheeks. "You are such a freak."
He retaliates by pinning me down to the bed, holding my arms above my head. I smile in amusement at the earnest expression he is trying to pull but the laughter in his eyes gives him away. Then he leans down to softly plant a quick peck on my lips.