Page 54 of A Totally Platonic Thing
My cock had started to soften enough to withdraw on its own, so I carefully pulled my hips back, kissing him when he grimaced. Yeah, it felt weird from my end, and I couldn’t even imagine how it would feel to have a cock sliding out of you.
I rolled onto my side a little, tucking him against me, soothing him with another kiss and trying to get my thoughts in order.
I’d acted like a dick. No denying it. And Chris was giving me more grace than I deserved, probably.
But I still didn’t have an answer for him, or for myself. Earlier tonight, when he’d brought up moving away from Santa Rafaela or getting a new apartment, all of that, it’d hit me that I’d been assuming all along that we were a unit. Inseparable. We’d live in this apartment in this town, or we’d live somewhere else—but the key word waswe.
And now I’d thrown any caution to the wind and fucked him. We were still the same us, but more. Different. Changed.
“I won’t do that again,” I said, because that at least I could promise. I wouldn’t shut him out again. “And I’m incredibly sorry, Chris. I shouldn’t have gone all radio silent on you.”
And there was that smile I wanted to see. Small and tentative, but there, his eyes lighting up with it. “I totally forgive you, but you’re right, you shouldn’t have.” I gave him a kiss for that, and when I pulled back his smile had grown. “Especially since I was so good for the last three days. I didn’t go out. I didn’t get drunk. I went to all my classes. I thought you’d be proud of me. But you didn’t even seem to notice.”
My whole body went cold and my heart gave a stutter.
Fuck.
And there it fucking was, the thing I’d been most afraid of while I brooded and dwelled on this over the last few days.
I knew Chris cared about me. And after the way he’d responded to me tonight, I couldn’t doubt that he wanted me, no matter what he’d said in anger the other night. But if he pinned his own life, his own equilibrium, on doing this? On being with me, having sex, depending on me to keep him on the straight and narrow?
That would be a fucking disaster.
And it sounded like that was exactly what he’d been thinking—or maybe not thinking consciously at all, but still counting on.
“Lucas? What did I say? What’s wrong?”
Chris’s voice held an edge of panic now, but I didn’t know how to respond. How to reassure him.
Because I’d been afraid from the beginning that Chris didn’t want this for the right reasons. If I was going to change my whole plan for my life and take a leap of faith—and fucking him was a big step in that direction—I needed to know we were both on that path together. That he wanted me forme, and not as a crutch.
I pulled away from him and sat up, needing a little distance before my head exploded. I couldn’t think rationally when I had a naked Chris pressed up against me. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be able to explain what was going on in my mixed-up head.
He propped himself up on his elbows, brow furrowed, eyes gone wide.
“Lucas, you’re scaring me!”
“Don’t,” I said through numb lips. “I mean, don’t be scared. It’s not—look. I am proud of you. You’re amazing. You’re smart and you work really hard when you’re not fucking off, but you can’t—it can’t be about me. If you only want to be with—” Fuck, fuck, I couldn’t finish that. Be with me. Like a relationship, and a serious one, because what other kind of relationship could there be between two people who lived together, had already fucked without a condom, were best friends, shared most of the same other friends, and had their lives so completely intertwined they couldn’t be pulled apart without everything else falling apart?
I had to try again, only with lower stakes this time. “If you only want to sleep together because it’s keeping you from fucking up at school, like motivating you, I can’t do that. I can’t be that for you. It’s bad for me, and it’s terrible for you. If you can’t make yourself do what you need to do on your own, then neither can I. You have to see that.”
I had the heart-wrenching displeasure of watching Chris’s face crumple as I talked, going from fear to misery so quickly it made me feel sick. His eyes glimmered. A few tears, there, and I had no idea what to do to keep them from falling. All I wanted was to make him happy.
All I wanted at that moment, and maybe all I wanted out of life, period.
And wasn’t that a fucked-up epiphany to have right then.
“It’s not for you,” he said, sounding a little desperate. “I mean, yes, I want you to be proud of me, and I want to—but Iamgoing to class for me. And I swore off clubbing because I needed to, for a lot of reasons. Not just because of you.”
I wanted to pull him into my arms and hold him, tell him I believed him and everything would be fine, and we should take a shower and sleep all wrapped up in each other, tonight and every night after.
I couldn’t.
“Notjustbecause of me,” I repeated. “But partly. And it can’t be for me at all. That’s what I’m saying.”
“It’s not! I mean, like, what’s so wrong with it being a little bit about you anyway? Aren’t we supposed to do things for the people we l—live with? Or sleep with?”
“Sure, but—”
