We wind up in his bed again and doze off to sleep, me face down on the mattress, Liam half on top of me. He’s a good blanket, and I’m mostly warm and mostly cozy and definitely drunk as fuck.

The bottle of whiskey’s on the nightstand — he’s only got one, the other side of the bed shoved up against the wall — and I think about reaching for it when I wake up, head sloshy and furry-feeling.

“If I don’t watch out you’re likely to break my dick,” Liam mumbles into the back of my neck, slowly coming awake as well. I have no idea how long we dozed for, but it’s still light out and the whiskey bottle’s nearly empty.

God, that’s a lot of whiskey, I think. I didn’t think two people could drink that much.

It’s only been today, right? I didn’t get here yesterday, fall asleep, and get confused, right?

“I’ve been very nice to your dick,” I tell Liam.

“An overuse injury of some sort, then,” he says, still not moving. “Could just fall off. Who knows.”

“You’re awful at talking dirty,” I tease, finally propping myself up on one elbow, everything tilting dangerously.

He rolls off, sits up, reaches over me for the bottle, takes a swig, hands it to me.

“You’re not enticed by the idea of causing me a massive dick sprain?” he says, cocking an eyebrow.

“I don’t think you can sprain it,” I point out, also sitting up and taking a swig.

By this point in the bottle the whiskey tastes like nothing, even though all I’ve had today is that, some pretty bad French toast, and a cheese sandwich that I didn’t bother cooking.

“You can sprain anything.”

I pass off the bottle, flop backward.

“Not dicks,” I say, nestling my feet against him as he reaches over, puts the bottle on the nightstand.

We both just sit there for a moment. I feel a little like the bed is rocking back and forth, tilting, whirling, and it’s not unpleasant.

I never did this with Alistair. I’d never have just lain in his bed, naked after sex, talking about dick sprains. He wasn’t Puritan or anything, but it wasn’t this. I never felt like I could be like this with him, naked for hours, and feel normal.

I never wanted him again ten seconds after we finished. I thought this would be like scratching an itch, but Liam’s like a mosquito bite or poison ivy or something: the itch keeps coming back, keeps itching, and I just keep scratching it harder.

At this rate I’ll wind up scratching ’til it bleeds, I think, Liam’s hand running down my naked calf, his eyes at half-mast, watching me lazily.

Like that time I had poison ivy so bad at summer camp that I wound up with an infection after I...

...Seriously, that’s what you’re thinking about?

I yawn, stretch, turn onto my side, tell myself to stop thinking about summer camp.

“You really did leave him, right?” Liam suddenly says.

He’s leaned back against a ramshackle pile of pillows all the pillowcases mismatching. None of the sheets on this bed match, and the blanket is a faded plaid, ugly as hell but warm.

“Who?”

Liam just laughs.

“Who the fuck do you think?”

“You don’t want to be my secret, sexy side piece?”

I’m teasing, but Liam’s tapping his thumb in a rhythm against my shin bone, his face serious.

“I’d rather not,” he says, then arches an eyebrow. “Though by now it’s a bit late, isn’t it?”

“I really did,” I say, sitting up. “Promise. All my shit’s in the car outside that I kinda stole and I’ve got a fuckton of figuring out my life to do once I decide to stop ignoring it all and go face it.”

He looks at me for a long moment, and there’s a second where I think he’s going to say something like stay here for a while or don’t go back just yet or something like that.

Something infeasible and unimaginable, something I can’t possibly do. Not here, not now. I can stay in his bed for a couple of hours, drink his whiskey until I feel better about all this, but I can’t make any promises.

“You know what helps with that, don’t you?” Liam asks.

“I’ve got the feeling the answer is going to be either whiskey or sex,” I say.

“Well, you’ve drunk nearly all the whiskey,” he says, nodding at the nightstand.

“I’ve drunk all the whiskey?”

“It’s almost gone, isn’t it?”

I sit up, leaning back on both hands. A curl bounces directly in front of my face, bopping me right in the nose, and I shake my head.

It comes back. I shake again, try to blow it out of the way, but all that does is shake up Liam’s bedroom and Liam’s laughing face as he leans in toward me while I can’t figure out how to get my hair out of my face.

“Tell me again how you haven’t drunk all the whiskey,” he laughs, pushing it out of my face for me.