Five
Maddox
2008
She said yes.
I’m standing in the pantry, looking for something that will pass as junk food, trying not to think too hard about it. What it means. What’s going to happen once I get to her room. Once we turn off all the lights and settle into her bed.
I can’t think about it because her mom is standing 10-feet behind me, loading the dishwasher and thinking about Kris has proved problematic to my dick.
So I focus on finding pre-packaged crap to shove in my face. Snacks were always my job. Kris’s mom was never really one to buy junk food. The closest I’ve come so far is a box of organic granola bars. Even though carob chips and what looks like bird seed doesn’t really do it for me, I tuck the box under my arm. It doesn’t matter what I bring. To be honest it’s just a prop. A way for me to keep pretending that this whole let’s have a movie night like we did when we were kids thing is about getting back on track with my best friend. About moving forward as a family, instead of what it really is.
A way for me to get my hands on her.
Get her under me
Heading upstairs, I cruise through the family room to say goodnight to her mom and my dad. She’s finished cleaning the kitchen and is settled onto the couch, reading and he’s watching CNN. I barely get more than a see you in the morning for my trouble.
Stopping at the top of the stairs, I stand here and stare at her closed bedroom door. I should just forget it. Forget her. I could. I could stand her up and she’d let me. She probably expects it. Would probably be relieved if I did. She didn’t exactly look excited at the prospect of spending two hours with me, alone in the dark. She looked like the thought of it scared the shit out of her.
That’s what does it. What makes up my mind. The thought that she might be afraid of me now that she knows how I feel about her. What having her under the same roof is doing to me.
Fuck.
Heading toward my own room, I leave hers behind, vowing to stop being such an asshole to her. Stop running so hot and cold. None of this is her fault. She hasn’t done a damn thing to deserve the way I’ve been treating—
Pushing my bedroom door open, I almost drop my pilfered box of granola bars.
Kris is sitting on my bed, waiting for me. She’s showered. Changed into loose sleep pants and an old T-shirt I recognize as one of mine. Her face is scrubbed clean and her thick, reddish-brown hair is pulled away from it in her standard ponytail.
I can’t even count how many times I’ve thought about wrapping the length of it around my fist so I can pull her head back. Use the grip of it to guide her pussy, back and forth, along the rigid length of my cock while I pound into her from behind. It’s a masturbatory standard. My dumb dick starts going apeshit, right on cue.
Over a fucking ponytail.
Even though we’re both technically adults and this is a parent-sanctioned activity, I still look over my shoulder to make sure no one is coming up the stairs behind me. Because standing here thinking dirty thoughts about her is wrong and I know it. When I look back at her, she’s still sitting there, a selection of movies in her hand, waiting for me.
“Whachya get?” she jerks her chin at the box in my hand and I hold it up like an idiot. When she sees my offering she curls her lip up at it and shakes her head. “Organic?” She sighs like I’m a monumental disappointment. “That’s the best you could do?”
After a second’s worth of debate, I decide to leave the door open because shutting it says something. It says, I want to fuck you. And even though that’s the absolute truth, saying it out loud, on any level would be a thousand times more wrong than thinking about. “Your mom still sucks at junk food.” I toss the box onto the bed and she laughs while I move away from the open door.
“I know.” She flops back on my bed and groans, holding up the movies for my inspection. “Your mom was the best. That woman could buy a box of Twinkies like nobody’s business. I miss her.”
I stop at the edge of the bed and pull the movies out of her hand, flipping through them like I actually give a shit about what we’re going to watch. Kris has a pretty impressive collection of horror flicks. She’s brought The Grudge, Halloween, and Saw. All three of them are on my top 5 list and she knows it. “She misses you too.” I used to spend every other weekend with her and my sisters, like clockwork, but now that I’m older, we’ve moved to monthly lunch dates and the occasional Skype session. “You should come with me the next time I have lunch with her.” It’s an impulsive invitation and I regret it the second it comes out of my mouth because as soon as it does, I look down to find Kris, still lying on my bed, looking up at me, her dark green eyes wide. Her bottom lip caught between her teeth again. She nods, releasing her lip to smile up at me. “I’d like that.”
I feel it all spin out of control in the blink of an eye. Suddenly I’m that guy again. The guy who can’t sit across the dinner table from her without thinking about bending her over it. The guy who lays awake in the dark and obsesses over the fact that she’s less than 20 feet away. That our bedrooms are connected by a shared bathroom. That she leaves her bathroom door open when she sleeps at night and if I turn my head just right, I can see her in her bed.
The crazy part is she has no fucking clue. She doesn’t know what she’s doing to me. And that makes this harder. It makes it goddamned impossible. Because if she knew, I could blame her. I could make this her fault. Her problem. But I can’t because it isn’t. This isn’t her problem.
It’s mine.
I’m about to tell her I changed my mind. That I don’t want to watch a movie anymore. To take her cheesy horror flicks, her shitty granola bars and get the fuck out of my room but then she sits up, the move bringing us face to dick so fast I forget how to breathe.
“I’m sorry, Mad.” She looks up at me when she says it, her gaze touching mine for an instant before skating away. “About earlier.”
What? Why is she apologizing to me? I feel my brow fold in on itself while I try to figure her out. “What about it?”
“I never really considered that having me underfoot all the time—in the room next-door, sharing a bathroom—would make it hard for you to…” she blushes, her cheeks tinted a soft, delicate pink.
“Make it hard for me to do what?” She still isn’t looking at me. As soon as I say it, the pink in her cheeks deepens and she licks her lips before sucking the lower one between her teeth for a second before letting it go.
“Be a guy.” She looks at me now, her gaze
rolling upward to find mine. “Do guy things.”
“Guy things?” I understand what she’s getting at. She thinks I was jerking off when she knocked on my door earlier. Still doesn’t get that my issue isn’t about my lack of privacy. That it’s about the fact that I want her and can’t fucking have her. I don’t know if I want to laugh or punch myself in the face.
Her brows slam down over her narrowed gaze and she stands up, so straight up and fast I have to take a quick step back so she doesn’t slam me in the chin with the top of her head. “You know what?” She jerks the trio of movie cases out of my hand and side-steps me. “Forget I said anything—enjoy your shitty granola bars.”
She’s leaving.
Shit.
“Wait.” Five minutes ago, I was ready to kick her out. Now, I’m shooting around her to block the doorway to keep her here. “I’m sorry too.”
She stops short, green gaze narrowing into little more than slits. “What are you sorry for?”
“For being a giant bag of dicks for the past three years.” I reach for the movies in her hand and feel a ridiculous amount of relief when she lets me take them from her. “For being a guy who does guy things.” I reach my free hand over her shoulder. Let myself wrap my fingers around her long, silky ponytail. Give it a playful tug the way I used to before I started fantasizing about all the ways I could use to make her do what I want. “Come on, Kriskross. Don’t make me eat those shitty granola bars by myself,” I say, fighting to keep my tone easy, friendly. To sound like Mad—her best friend—and not the guy who can’t stop thinking about bending her over the dining room table.
“Fine,” she says, giving me one of her epic eye rolls. “I’ll stay.” She takes the movies back and moves across the room to my television so she can load in a Blu-ray. “But I flat out refuse to eat those granola bars.”