Page 65 of Christmas Crisis
“Sorry.” I dragged my hands back to her shoulders.
With Miranda so open and pliant beneath me, the desire to kiss her intensified. I imagined brushing my lips against the back of her neck. It would be in bounds. I’d given her pecks like that before.
Except I couldn’t do that now. Knowing how I felt. Knowing she belonged to someone else.
I arrived at the same impasse I’d been at for days. With the same lack of good options.
One path was to tell Miranda how I felt and leave the ball in her court. But it wasn’t fair to do that when she was dating Stone. Putting aside our long history, deep friendship, and my evolving asexuality, it was uncool to tell another person’s partner that you were into them.
Which left me with only one option—keeping my mouth shut.
I knew I needed to tell her about my new understanding of my sexuality, because holding back something that huge from her simply wasn’t who Miranda and I were as friends. It could wait until after the New Year—based on the stiffness of her shoulders, she clearly had enough on her plate to worry about without me adding in any new wrinkles—but I couldn’t keep such a big revelation from my best friend indefinitely.
“Everything okay?” Miranda’s voice broke into my thoughts, and I realized I’d stopped moving my hands. I was basically just resting on my knees above her.
“Sorry, daydreaming.”
She rolled over underneath me and I ended up straddling her thighs.
I hadn’t anticipated the move. It had her grazing my dick, which thickened to half-mast.
She smiled, appearing oblivious to my distress, and I looked down at her. In all our times sharing a bed, we’d never been in this position. We’d lain next to each other, back-to-back, and spoon-style, but I’d never straddled her like this. Never felt so…dominant.
My instinct was to jump off, but I tamped it down. If she was going to act like this was perfectly above board and innocent, then it was.
“That was amazing,” she said, grinning up at me. “For someone who’s never given a massage before, you sure are good at it.” She placed her hands on my thighs. “Thank you.”
Her touch had my cock taking notice again, and I knew better than to keep playing with matches. I slid off her until I stood next to the bed. “Just wait until you taste my spaghetti.”
She chuckled. “Can’t wait… And Leo?”
“Hmm?”
“I’m sure you’re tense too, with everything, and doing all that work for the Hoopla. If you ever want a massage, I’m happy to return the favor.”
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Like that wouldn’t totally kill me.
“We’ll see.”
5 MONTHS AGO - JULY
Miranda knocked on my hotel room doorat two in the morning. Luckily for her, I hadn’t been able to drift off since getting back from the reception a few hours ago.
“Everything okay?” I asked, blinking at the fluorescent lighting in the hallway.
“Couldn’t sleep.” I shivered as she dragged her fingertips casually across my bare stomach as she slipped inside the room. “Figured I’d see if you were in the same boat.”
I chuckled. “Sure am. When days are this nice, it’s hard to put a period on them.”
She sat down on my rumpled sheets. Turning on the table lamp next to the bed, I sank down into the chair across from her.
“It was a beautiful day,” she agreed. “Everything went so well.”
“You were a very capable maid of honor.”
James and Marley had opted for a low-key ceremony in a quaint nondenominational chapel downtown. He’d worn a gray suit with no tie, and Marley’s white linen dress was equally unfussy. They laughed when James landed a few jokes during his vows and again when their overexcited dogs couldn’t handle the twenty feet required for ring-bearing duties and detoured down the wrong aisle.
They’d held the reception at the high school, in the room next to the auditorium where James had sung to Marley eighteen months ago. The space accommodated the sizable crowd who turned up to wish them well. I met several of my brother’s students, current and former, and was happy for the reminder that he’d found his true calling as a teacher.
