Page 7 of Man On

I can't sleep.

The darkness is closing in on me, magnifying everything in the small cabin that has become painfully claustrophobic. I'm lying here with just a sheet, missing the weight of the blanket, but it's too hot. It's too hot for even the sheet, but not having some kind of cover makes me feel exposed.

I'm too exposed as it is. Always too exposed.

The silence in the cabin is loud. I've been trying to focus on Noah's soft, even breaths. But instead of lulling me to sleep like it normally does, it just makes me more aware of him. His presence is like an itch crawling beneath my skin, one I can't reach without peeling back layers of myself, probably bleeding out in the process.

The sounds of his breaths fill the room, drowning out everything else. I strain my ears to hear anything other than him, anything but the memories of his harsh pants and the way he cried out in the shower. I could hear him through the door.

I wish I hadn't come back when I did. I should have stayed with Maci. Let her kiss me some more. But I lost my nerve after Noah left.

All I could do was compare them, anyway. They're my only two experiences with kissing, and so drastically different from each other. Maci's kiss was gentle and hopeful, but her lips were both too soft and too sticky with lip gloss that tasted like candy. It reminded me of the taste of Skittles on Noah's mouth, the harsher push and pull of his lips coaxing mine to open. Maci didn't slip me any tongue the way Noah did, and I'm both grateful and disappointed.

I felt nothing when she kissed me. Yet, when Noah kissed me, I felt everything. And that…terrifies me.

It's too quiet. Too hot. Too everything. The cabin doesn't so much as creak or settle; the wind doesn't blow. Even the crickets and owls and other nighttime sounds of being in a cabin in the woods have abandoned me to my torment. All I can hear is him. With each heavy breath, he draws out more of the air in the room. He breathes it in, makes it his own before breathing out again, sending it over to me, forcing me to exist on something else he's recycled. I try to breathe less, to hold my breath, until I have to take in a deeper lungful when I can't hold it any longer.

I'm hyper aware of his presence, his smell. My lungs ache, and that persistent itch of awareness infiltrates my airflow. He's under my skin and in my lungs. It's too much.

Even asleep, he's ruining my life. Making me think things I don't want to think about.

The problem I've been trying to ignore for the past hour isn't helping. The more I try to focus on anything else, the worse it gets. Even remembering my grandfather and what he would say does nothing to make it better. It only gets worse.

It's normal. It's natural. It's a part of growing. That's what my mom says, but what does she know?

It’s not what Grandfather said. He said it's the devil trying to get inside me. And the more I think of that, the more it makes sense. I can feel Noah's tainted air trying to suffocate me, trying to get inside my brain, scrambling it and making me dizzy. Each exhale of the stupid boy on the other side of the room passes more toxicity into my system. It's infecting my bloodstream that seems only able to travel in one direction tonight.

It's starting to hurt.

I press my palm against the bulge that's tenting my boxers and the sheet, nearly groaning with relief at the slight touch. I move my hand quickly away, unwilling to tempt myself further.

"Don't stop on my account."

I nearly lurch off my bed, hitting my head so hard on the metal headboard there will probably be a lump. My hand flies farther away from my erection to touch the tender spot.

"I said, don't stop."

His voice is gravelly with sleep, sounding irritated to have been woken. My eyes fly across the room, finding Noah propped up on one arm, staring at me intensely. A beam of moonlight lays across the bed, perfectly highlighting his usually smiling features. The eerie way the shadows fall across his face makes his hooded eyes look darker than ever. Sinister. Evil. Like the devil that will most certainly swallow my blackened soul.

After over an hour of listening to his even breaths and overthinking every exhale, I somehow missed that he woke up. Or was he awake this entire time, watching me squirm and panic internally over sharing space with him?

My voice sounds rough and strangled even to my ears as I stutter and struggle to ignore his words. "I th-thought you w-were asleep."

"How can I sleep when you're over there tossing and turning, breathing all weird? Just fucking jerk it already so we can both get some sleep."

I wince at his language and the force in his tone, biting back without thinking. "Like you were in the shower?"

I regret the words the moment they leave my mouth. Now he knows I heard him. It incriminates me more than it does him. I was listening and now he knows it.

Noah chuckles darkly. "You liked that, didn't you? Knowing I was in there touch?—"

"No!" I spit out the words before he can go any further. "I didn't."

Really, I didn't. I tried not to listen, tried not to hear. Because I didn't want to hear. I didn't want to think of him like that.

They're the wrong thoughts. The wrong thing. The wrong feelings.

It's all wrong.

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