Page 11 of Best Friend Burden

I shook my head. “You can't listen to music that loud,” I told her. “You're going to damage your hearing.”

“It wasn't that loud,” she said, again, much louder than she needed to be.

“Melody, you're practically screaming at me,” I told her. “It's too loud.”

She looked at her phone on the counter and lowered the volume.

“Thank you,” I said.

All the while, she seemed completely unaware that she was in my kitchen, just a few thin layers away from being completely nude. This was the second time in so many days that I'd seen her with her shirt off.

I didn't mind, but it also felt wrong. Just as it had back at the vintage store. Like I was staring at someone who I hadn't even taken out to earn that stare. And it was impossible not to stare.

“Do you want to put something on?” I asked.

“Not really,” she said. Here she'd found a bit more confidence. “Are you telling me to put something on?”

“Kind of,” I said.

She looked down at herself and back up at me. “They're just tits, Kiefer. You've seen them before.”

“Yeah, well, that was an accident, too. You fell out of the changing room.”

She laughed at that. “I wasn't talking about that.”

I pretended not to know what she was talking about. She and I had never dated, not actually, but the way high school parties worked, our bodies weren't exactly new territory for either of us.

There was the truth or dare game where we made out, and there was the other one where the boys got the girls to flash them so long as the boys returned the favor.

“How about instead of me putting something on, you get down to your undies with me?” she asked. “Free yourself from the tyranny of clothing!”

I couldn't tell if she was kidding or not. It sounded ridiculous, but there was no wink or anything to indicate that she understood how silly what she was saying was. And while Melody was a lot of things, subtle was not one of them. I didn't remember her humor being particularly dry.

“I dare you,” she said. “How about that? Or are you going to be chickenshit and take truth?”

So maybe she was exaggerating for effect, but she was seriously telling me to strip down to my underwear with her.

“I'm not playing a game,” I told her.

“The bad boy Kiefer I know would never say no to a dare,” she said. And she was right. Back in high school, the easiest way to get me to do anything was to dare me.

But we weren't in high school anymore.

“I'm a different Kiefer now.”

The smile dropped from her face.

“Here,” she said, “at least try some of this queso.”

She took a pot with a wooden spoon in it and walked right up to me, practically shoving it into my mouth, all the while pushing her body very close to mine.

“I don't want to taste whatever fake cardboard cheese you're making.”

“Oh, quit being a baby,” she said, pushing her body into mine and the spoon into my mouth.

I felt it in my loins. She was making me hard. Harder than I'd been in a long time.

I lightly pushed her away.

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