IT’S BEEN A FEW DAYS since the amazing kiss. The mileage I’ve gotten out of those few minutes is startling even to me. My fantasies are off the charts. Any time I’m alone, I pretty much have my hand in my panties. I get my orgasm, study, get another orgasm, study some more. Today, I force myself to work in the campus library after class so I can’t masturbate and actually have to get some work done. My mind still wanders. First to the kiss. Then to the sounds I heard coming from Shane’s room last night when I went to the kitchen to refill my water.

I thought maybe he had a girl in there with him. But no. He was alone. The sound of his flesh slapping in his hand accompanied by the, “Yeah. That’s it. Take all that cock in your pretty mouth,” followed by a growling hum was so sexy. I stood outside his door trying to imagine what his cock looked like. Who he was thinking about. I tried not to let myself believe it could be me he was imagining. My mouth. His cock. I ended up back in my room before getting to the kitchen. It was too much. My libido is stronger than even my biological need of water.

When I get home from the library today, I decide to refill my water bottle now so I won’t have to make any late-night trips to the kitchen. When I get in there, Fletch is searching the fridge for a snack. His round, biteable ass framed perfectly in the refrigerator door.

This is the first time we’ve been alone together since the kiss.

“Hey,” I say.

He turns, looking at me with a total deer in the headlights expression on his face. Then a slow smile builds across his face. “Hey, yourself.”

Awkward silence: check.

He pulls the water pitcher out of the fridge when he sees my bottle. “I’m sorry, Pen. I’ve been acting weird, and I made you promise not to. I...are you okay. With what happened?”

“Yes. I’m fine. I feel better now, actually. Like I won’t freeze up and freak out when I go to kiss a guy I really like.”

The quick tension freezes up his body for a second. “Right. A guy you really like.” He takes my bottle from me and pours the fridge water into it. “I just don’t want you to think you aren’t safe here.”

“I feel safe. The kissing was perfect.”

“Yeah. It was good kissing.” He shakes his head and laughs. “God, that sounds lame. The kissing was amazing. Really. I don’t know why I’m acting like a stick in the mud. Shane is so good about keeping things casual. I’m sort of a control freak.”

“You and Shane are very different. But I see how your friendship works. You’re good for each other. It’s a good balance.”

“Well, anyway, I’m sorry. Hey, I’m starving. Let’s make cookies,” Fletch suggests.

“Cookies?” That is a strange and unexpected segue.

“Yeah. You know, round disks of dough with chocolate in them?”

“Fletch, I have no idea how to bake cookies.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“What? Just because I’m a girl I should know how to bake?”

“No.” Fletch moves me out of the way so he can grab a bowl from the cabinet behind me. “Because you are a scientist.”

I push my glasses up the bridge of my nose. “You lost me, Fletcher.”

“Cooking is science. Don’t you ever watch the Food Network?”

“No. Do you?” Jeez. It’s pretty much ESPN at all times from what I’ve seen.

He begins pulling things out of the cupboards. I can’t believe the kitchen of these college dudes contains cookie-making ingredients.

“Can you get two eggs and a stick of butter out?”

There is no book visible, nor is he consulting his phone. “You know the recipe by heart?”

“I bake cookies all the time. It’s very relaxing.”

I set down the ingredients he asked for. “I don’t suppose you crochet too?”

He picks me up like I weigh less than the canister of flour and sets me on the counter next his workspace. “Pay attention. I’m going to wow you now.”

I pretend to be skeptical, but my pulse tells another story. I’m in a constant state of wow, actually. I can’t stop feeling his hands on me. His tongue in my mouth.

He puts the wet ingredients together and begins mixing them when he asks me the scientific formula for the baking soda.

“NaHCO3.” Duh. That’s like junior high chemistry.

He adds the other ingredients. Asking me “chemistry speak” for each one. Like, the sugar is sucrose, the flour is gluten, and the butter is fat. When he gets to the chocolate chips, he doesn’t give me a chance to answer—he just puts two in my mouth.

As the chocolate melts in my mouth, I can’t help but think about those kisses. The ones we are not talking about. But we talk about other things. Jenna comes up, and her name douses my libido for a bit. I can’t imagine she would be on board with me kissing her older brother and his best friend. Especially not together. At the same time.

Fletch jokes around some more as he places dollops of the dough onto the sheet and then pops it in the oven while I set the timer on my phone. He comes back and stands directly in front of me.

“Now, tell me what’s going on in there,” he says.

“In where?”

“The oven.”

Are all boys this weird? “Well, if all goes according to plan, it’s getting hot in there.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Chemistry speak it to me, sweetheart.”

I roll my eyes and start thinking about the dough ingredients. “When the dough heats up, the sodium bicarbonate will react, and things will change.”

“I bet you know a chemical equation for that.”

“A chemical reaction about the sodium bicarbonate and the cookies?” Seriously? All right. If he wants super nerd, he can have super nerd. “2NaHCO3 -> Na2CO3 + H2O + CO2.”

He smudges flour on my nose. “I’ll have to take your word for it.”

His easy smile charms me. His hands rest on the counter on either side of my hips, and he leans against my knees.

Since I’m feeling so full of confidence, I figure I should stretch my wings a bit. “I can tell you about the eggs if you like,” I venture.

“Okay.” His voice lowers to a baritone that reminds me of the scent of scotch and tobacco. “Tell me about the eggs.”

If I were a different kind of girl, I would hook my legs behind him and bring him closer to me so I could rub against him where I’m feeling empty. Instead, my flirting consists of tilting my head and looking up at him through my lashes while telling him that the eggs are a fat and protein that hold the structure of the batter, but also the egg whites are water soluble and support the carbon dioxide bubbles caused by the reaction of the sodium bicarbonate.

“That’s fascinating,” he says.

“No, it’s not.”

I try to look down, embarrassed, but Fletch raises my chin with his finger until I meet his eyes again.

“You’re fascinating,” he tells me.

Caught in the undertow of his gaze, the quiet moment stretches into what feels like infinity. Everything inside me just...untangles...

He brushes a wisp of my hair away from my eyes but doesn’t take his hand away. I lean my cheek into his palm. I want to memorize the moment, but I’ll never be able to recapture the sweetness that fills me from the inside out.

Fletch swallows hard and uses his other hand to wipe off the flour he’d put on my nose moments before. I wish I could read his mind.

He whispers my name. The sound settles over me like a spring breeze, and then the phone timer beeps loudly, breaking the spell and he pulls away.

After that, we stick to a no-touching policy. Shane comes home and follows his nose to the kitchen. “Cookies!” He hooks his arms around both our necks. “You guys are the best roommates ever. Group hug.”

The mood is light and jokey again. Shane asks me to proofread his assignment, so we sit around the table and work while we eat cookies.

“Oh, little bit, I almost forgot.” Shane pulls a lockbox out of his backpack and sets it in front of me on the table. Then he hands me two keys.

“What is this for?” I ask.

“I notice that you don’t let that notebook out of your sight, bringing it with you even to the bathroom, and I feel bad. You can lock it up in your room if you want, and you won’t have to worry that I’m messing with it.”

I run my hand over the box. “You didn’t have to do this.”

“I want to read that damn notebook more than almost anything...but I’d rather have you feel safe here at home. So, this way, we’re both safe.”

For all his trying to convince me otherwise, Shane is a really nice person. I’m touched that he thinks about my feelings so much. “Thank you. But you know what? I’m just going to trust you.”

“Bad idea,” Fletch says.

“Super bad,” Shane agrees. “I’m not the guy you should trust with your feelings. I’m shit at that kind of stuff. I’d never mean to hurt you, but I would.”

“I don’t think you will.” I don’t know why I feel so strongly about it. “I trust you, Shane. I don’t think you will invade my privacy now that you know how much it means to me. I trust that you care more about me than that.”

It may be that nobody has ever said something like that to him before. He doesn’t invite this kind of conversation for sure.

It feels like a big moment, but also one that we don’t want to draw to much attention to. So, Fletch makes a joke, they both belch, and I roll my eyes. Things feel solid.

I almost feel like a real girl.