Page 72 of Darn Knit All

You’ve been watching Bridgerton again without me

Theo

I renounce your slanderous language! Good day, sir!

Mai

YOUR ACCOUNT SAYS YOU’VE ALREADY WATCHED THE WHOLE SEASON!!!!

Theo

I SAID, GOOD DAY!

Mai

This betrayal will not go unpunished

Waking up beside Mai had become a unique pleasure. I normally lived to sleep in, snuggled in the blankets, desperate to catch as many minutes as possible.

Not these days. These days, I woke early and just lay beside her, listening to her snore. Oh, the girl snored like a lumberjack. When we got home, I was totally enrolling her in a sleep study, it really couldn’t be healthy.

But damn if it wasn’t reassuring as fuck to hear.

In sleep, all the tension left her face, smoothing the little frown that had begun to carve out space between her eyebrows.

Slowly coming awake, I could feel that at some point during the night Mai had thrown a leg over my hip and snuggled into my chest. She’d migrated across the unwritten divide between our sides of the bed to cuddle into me.

And judging by how hard my cock felt right now, it appeared I didn’t mind one bit.

She sighed, shifting in the bed as her mouth curved into a cute little smile. Her lashes fluttered, then settled, her soft snores resuming their reassuring rhythm. Unable to resist, I brushed hair away from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear.

Holding her like this felt like an intimacy that should be reserved for her lover.

Which I am not.

I sighed internally.

I wanted to deny that we were more than friends… but the reality was, Mai had begun to sneak her way out of the friendzone years ago.

I wanted to blame our kiss, or the kinky glass, or last night’s confessional, but the truth was much harder to admit.

If I was brutally honest—which I always was in the few minutes before she woke—she may have been a large contributing factor in my dating downfall.

My dating history had a familiar pattern to it—meet person and charm them into a date, go on said date, and proceed to regale them with stories of Mai before pretending to be disappointed when they a) disappeared mid-meal, b) offered to be friends, or c) never called me again.

Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

If Mai turned to me tomorrow and asked me out, I’d be all in. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly when our friendship had grown to mean more to me, it simply had become so. But I needed to respect the relationship boundaries we’d established, and making shit awkward when she’d shown exactly zero sign of encouragement wasn’t my style.

I’d had years of learning how to tuck my feelings away. Then we’d come here, where there was only one bed and the lines had become blurred. Not to mention that she’d begun showing a few signs of maybe beginning to see me as something other than a friend.

I just couldn’t fucking tell if that was a result of the show or her growing to care for me.

Which led me back to the quiet of the mornings when I could torture myself with the fantasy that this fake relationship had become real.

Don’t worry, I fucking hated myself for it.

As if hearing my thoughts, Mai stirred, her snoring cutting off as she yawned and snuggled closer into me, murmuring something nonsensical.

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