Page 21 of A Totally Platonic Thing
When I handed him the plate to put on the nightstand, he put it down and then settled back a little closer, tucked against my chest and with his head leaning on my shoulder.
I shifted to make him more comfortable. He let out a littlemmmof satisfaction, wriggling slightly like a cat getting ready for a nap.
My whole body went boneless. Jesus, this was nice. Just like I’d known it would be. I hadn’t relaxed in what felt like ever. His hair tickled my chin, and I closed my eyes for a second and savored the peace of it, despite the rapid gunfire coming from Chris’s laptop’s tinny speakers.
The movie’s idiot hero said something about how he wanted to find a woman who could love all of him, even his “dark soul.” Chris shook with laughter against me, and I smiled too, not bothering to open my eyes since I doubted I was missing much. I wouldn’t appreciate the hot shirtless action dude the way Chris would. Not my type if I were going to ogle a guy. Too bulky, not the right size. If I ever did take a walk on the wild side and fuck a guy, I’d want him to be small enough to manhandle a little. I always felt a little nervous getting rough with girls when they asked me to, but a smaller guy would be the perfect balance between sturdy and…manhandleable.
Chris let out another giggle. Yeah. Not too bad for a Friday night. Although maybe the hero was on to something. A girlfriend sounded good, with or without the crap about the whole dark soul thing. I could snuggle with her, and then also have sex.
Although Emma hadn’t been that into quiet movie time, and then she’d complained about how much time I spent with Chris, especially after I’d mentioned how we used my bed as a couch.
My eyes popped open.
Yeah. Okay. That had been our argument the day we broke up.
“He’s using you as a surrogate boyfriend, Lucas,” she’d told me—both wrongly and condescendingly, in my opinion. “You shouldn’t be giving him all your emotional intimacy and making yourself unavailable.”
I’d silently vowed never to date another psych major, especially one who apparently wasn’t very good at it, and then explained how wrong she was. I left out the condescending part since I was trying not to get in a huge fight.
That went poorly. I argued that he was gay and I was straight, and he knew that, and so obviously he didn’t think I was his boyfriend. She reiterated the word “surrogate” a few times, muttered something about how thinking and feeling weren’t the same thing, and then told me I was missing the point.
When I explained that he dated plenty of guys and had in fact just gotten out of a relationship with one, she told me that sex wasn’t intimacy and then, again, that I was missing the point.
By the end of the conversation, I gathered that the real point was that she was jealous of Chris and wanted me to start treating him like a roommate, and not a friend.
I pointed out that guys were allowed to have friends with “emotional intimacy,” and wasn’t she always going on about toxic masculinity and how men didn’t form intimate bonds, and would she rather have a closed-off homophobe for a boyfriend?
Anyway. We broke up about three minutes after that.
I stared at the screen without really seeing it, all my sleepiness washed away by remembered annoyance…and maybe by the sneaking suspicion that I had, indeed, been kind of missing her point. Not the part about Chris using me, because that was ridiculous. If he’d been using me then I’d been using him equally as much, and if it was even on both sides then no one had been getting used. But the part where she’d hinted that maybe Chris occupied a place in my life that a girlfriend would usually fill.
At the moment, that was sort of literally true. Chris was snuggled up to me in my bed, after all. If I had a girlfriend, she’d presumably be in that spot on a Friday night.
I tried to picture it: some hot girl cuddled up to me, the two of us watching a movie, while Chris…what? Went out to Aeon? Picked up a guy and got drunk and fucked? Sat on his own bed looking small and lonely, watching a movie of his own with headphones on?
That made me feel sick to my stomach. Guilt? Yeah, guilt. And Chris didn’t even know I was thinking about what it’d be like if I ditched him to spend time with someone else. I got my arm out from where it was stuck between us and slung it over his shoulders, pulling him even closer, turning my body a little so his head was tucked under my chin.
“I thought you were going to sleep.”
I peeked down at his face, and he tipped his head back to look at me. Our faces were only an inch apart. At this distance I could see every little fleck of gold in his eyes. And he smelled like mint from the shampoo we used. Also a little bit like wine, suggesting he’d had a glass at some point before I came home. But mostly he smelled like home.
“I think I can make it through the movie,” I said softly, and he smiled up at me, wide and sweet.
We settled back down. Yeah, this was worth losing a little bit of sleep, especially since it was still only ten-thirty. I had plenty of time to sleep in a bit tomorrow.
The movie unfolded with depressing predictability. The hero did in fact find a girlfriend who could accept him, dark soul, ripped abs, and all. Her giant tits and willingness to have sex in a helicopter balanced their relationship out. One of the terrorists blew up in the helicopter.
Chris and I had collapsed into a giggling heap by the time the swell of dramatic music announced the end.
He stopped it, and we stayed there without moving for a minute. I glanced at the time. Barely midnight. Still nottoolate. And I could use a little more stress relief.
I reached over and grabbed his laptop, pulling it more onto my leg, and started to navigate to his favorite porn site one-handed. My other arm wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon.
“You can pick,” he said, his voice a little rough. I could feel him breathing faster, his ribs rising and falling against my side. Yeah, I could empathize. I hadn’t gotten off in a few days myself. Too busy.
“Nah,” I said. “Too tired to be picky. Yours is fine. You got me a sandwich.”
Besides, I’d watched a few videos from his favorite site on my own now and then when I got bored with mine. His porn had started to be nearly as enjoyable as my porn after almost two years of getting turned on watching it.
