Page 47 of The Goat in the Bedroom
The morning sun streaming through our kitchen windows was perfect, golden and warm, the kind of light that made everything look like a movie. Artie was sitting at the island in that one Dragons t-shirts of mine that she'd stolen and soft pajama pants, her hair in a messy bun, completely unaware of how the light was making her glow like some kind of breakfast angel.
“Hey.” She smiled at me and handed over a cup of coffee. “How do you feel this morning?”
About being this close to kissing her last night?
She popped the top off the fancy honeycomb creamer I liked and poured just the right amount into my cup. “I don't have even the slightest hangover. Do you?”
Oh, right. She meant after all those strawberry margaritas we'd had. “Nope. I think Tempest accidentally on purpose forgot to add the tequila.”
“So... that means everything I told you, everything we, well, we were a hundred percent sober.” She set her head down, forehead to the marble. “It wasn't the tequila talking, just me admitting all the things wrong with my sex life.”
She'd had the guts to admit that out loud, why couldn't I say what was in my heart?
Because what if it fucked up everything? I really fucking needed to figure out a plan. What worried me was what if that plan had to be how to live my life without her in it when I told her exactly how I felt and she didn't feel the same.
I already knew she didn't. She'd said as much last night.
“Artie, babe,” I stroked her hair. “I don't regret anything we talked about or did last night. You shouldn't ever be embarrassed to tell me anything.”
She kept her head down and shook it. “Why are you so good to me?”
“You're my girl.” That was a movie quote, and I'd been trying to lighten the mood a little, but it came out totally sincere. Probably because it was.
She finally sat back up, smiling. “Just like peas and carrots.”
I held up my mug to cheers, and she clinked her coffee to mine. After a few minutes she peered over the top of the mug at me. “Should we, do you want to, you know, maybe, try the eye contact thing again?”
My heart did that stupid stuttering thing it had been doing ever since last night.
“Sure,” I said, setting down my mug. “Practice makes perfect, right?”
“Exactly.” She shifted on her stool to face me properly. “Maybe it won't feel so intense this time? That's the point, right?”
Right. Friends aren't supposed to want to lean in and kiss their friends. Because that's what we were. Friends who stared into each other's eyes and practiced intimacy and definitely didn't almost kiss every single time.
“Ready?” she asked.
“Ready.”
Our eyes met, and immediately I knew this was going to be worse than yesterday. The morning light was turning her blue eyes almost silver, and she'd been biting her lip while reading something on her phone, so it was slightly swollen and pink and…
One breath in and her breathing had already changed. I could see her pulse jumping in her throat. Her hands were wrapped around her coffee mug, knuckles white from gripping it too hard.
A few seconds more and she leaned in slightly, probably unconsciously. I found myself matching the movement, drawn to her like gravity was personally invested in my torture.
Time slowed, and we might have been there for ten seconds or ten minutes or ten hours or ten years.
Her lips parted slightly. Her eyes darkened. The kitchen island between us felt like both a blessing and a curse, keeping us apart but not far enough to break this magnetic pull.
“Gryff,” she whispered, and the way she said my name made every nerve in my body light up.
Neither of us looked away. Again.
We sat there, frozen, breathing the same air, the moment stretching between us like taffy. I was about to do something monumentally stupid, like confess everything or kiss her senseless, when my phone buzzed on the counter feeling like a goddamned earthquake.
We jumped apart so fast Artie nearly fell off her stool.
“Nana” flashed on my screen with a photo of her holding a foam finger at one of my college games.
