_______
Benjamin
1 month, 1 week, and 4 days prior…
I was becoming increasingly more pathetic. I couldn’t even massage her leg without getting hard and having to go hide with it in my room so that I didn’t freak her out with it.
I’d get carpal tunnel at the rate I was going. I rolled my wrist around as I thought about it. Maybe I should date. Being with someone else always helped cure my Emily illness for a while, but now that I was older and here living with her, the idea was terrible. I would still be thinking about her. I knew, for a fact, that would be the case because it happened with Tammy, and I had hurt her. I didn’t want to hurt somebody else.
I just had to face the facts. I was recklessly in love with Emily, and there was nothing I could do about it. I could tell her… Then I might lose her…but then she might realize she loved me back.
Why the fuck couldn’t I just man up and say something?
I lifted my eyes from my phone and watched her from the couch as she put her hair up, her shirt riding up in the process. I glanced back down at my phone and focused heavily on the screen, then my eyes somehow ended up staring at her exposed skin again.
“Where are you going?” I asked her.
“Going to go wash some clothes at Dad’s,” she answered. “Do you think your mom will come visit me when she sees me pull in with your truck next door?”
I thought about it. “Maybe, but there’s a chance she’s not home.”
“I wish I could just clear the air with her,” she grumbled, and that made me smile.
“Since when did you care so much about what my mom thought, anyway?”
“I’ve always cared. I just acted like it didn’t bother me.” She slipped on her flip-flops. “I’m off today, wanna go somewhere when you get off?”
I perked up. “Yeah. Won’t get off until probably six, is that all right?”
She nodded. “See ya this evening.”
_______
“Benjamin!” Emily screeched as she tried to latch onto my shirt. I purposely skated away so that she couldn’t. She wobbled, and her legs were close to doing splits as she tried to keep from falling.
It was the funniest thing I’d ever seen.
We opted for skating—well, I pestered Emily until she gave in. Our town wasn’t big. Our choices had been the movie theater, bowling, skating, or Crash’s for drinking.
“Benjamin, come here!” She looked so desperate, I kind of felt bad that I was enjoying this so much. “Don’t let me fall.” She saw my face and glared. “Stop laughing.”
Right when she was about to fall, I grabbed her arms and righted her. “How hard is it to skate?” I asked her. I skated backwards, pulling her along with me. “One foot at a time.”
She huffed. “I’m sorry. I suck at every sport.”
I slid my hands down into hers as we slowly made our way around the circle. Her eyes darted to everyone around us like she was afraid we were going to hit someone, then she looked back and saw me smirking. “Why do you have to be good at everything?”
She had to say that. Now I felt the need to show off. I led her to the wall and placed her hand against it. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Don’t just leave me.”
“Just watch.” I skated backward then spun around and started moving around the circle passing everyone. I even caught a young lady’s hand and spun her around with me before letting her go and tossing my hands up in the air towards Emily.
Only she wasn’t at the wall anymore. She was wobbling out in front of everyone. They were all having to move around her as she tried to do it herself. She started tipping backward, her skates clacking over and over as her arms flayed all over the place. I was behind her before she fell, letting my hands roam over her hips as I pushed her forward. She grabbed my hands, looking back at me to make sure it was me.
She relaxed and started actually trying. Finally. She started guiding one leg out in front of her at a time. Her hips swayed underneath my palms and this was somehow sensual. It felt intimate. My hands would probably never get a chance to be all over her hips like this any other time.
She sighed, then leaned back with a smile. “Like this?”
I nodded, eyeing her lips, her smile, her happiness.
“Here, let go. I want to try by myself,” she said.
I didn’t want to, but she was already pushing my hands aside. I fell back and watched her stumble along by herself. I stayed beside her as she circled a time or two until she got brave and decided to go faster. I already knew that would be a big mistake because she didn’t have a clue as to how to slow herself down when she came to a curve. She started looking for me and trying to slow down. She had no other choice but to smack into the wall. I bent down and started laughing so hard. I just let my skates roll me to where she was because I couldn’t hold myself up. She looked down at me rolling toward her laughing too.
“Thanks for helping,” she said.
“Just wanted to see you tongue the wall.”
“Can you not be annoying?” she asked me.
“You’d hate it if I wasn’t.” I stood up and offered my hand to her. “Wanna stick together?”
She grabbed my hand. “Yeah.”
_____
That night, we sat on the couch and watched a horror movie together. Emily lived for them. Throughout the movie, her head had somehow ended up in my lap where I ran my fingers through her hair.
This evening, this entire night had been amazing. Just being with Emily all the time was amazing. I didn’t ever want it to change.
Her phone lit up in front of her face with a call. She ignored it like she had been doing for the entire movie. I didn’t want to be nosy but every time it lit up in the dark room while she was laying her head on my lap, the possessiveness that ran through me was getting harder and harder to ignore.
So I finally asked casually, “Who keeps calling?”
She sighed. “Roger.”
I shouldn’t have asked. “You still talk to him?”
As if she could sense the change in my mood, she tilted her head back and looked up at me. “No, I don’t. That doesn’t mean he stops calling though.”
“What does he want?”
“For me to come back.”
I really shouldn’t have asked. “You don’t plan to, do you?”
She snorted. “What? No! I do feel bad that I couldn’t love him though, not in the way he deserved.”
I found myself relaxing and nodded. “I know exactly what you mean.”
Her eyes stayed on me. “We seek love, but we don’t know how to return it.”
“You’re still looking in all the wrong places.”
I was right under your nose.
“Then what’s your problem?”
“Maybe it was stolen.” I shrugged.
She laughed softly. “How does love get stolen?”
“It wasn’t mine to give? I don’t know. Maybe my girl stole it and forgot that she took it.”
Her eyes held a strange force lately that had my blood running hot. More fiery than usual. I couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but it was shaking me to the core.
Resisting my best friend used to be easier because it felt safe. Now, not so much.
I felt like we were so far from safe. Did I really want to keep protecting her from myself?