Page 17 of In the Light of the Moon

He stood for a while at the bar, waiting for his turn, and when I turned back forward, I caught Josie staring at me with a knowing glance. Dammit—had I groanedout loud? By the way she was looking at me, it seemed like I had.

I huffed and smoothed my dress. If he was buying, convinced there was a debt between us, I wasn’t going tosay no.

And, he was attractive.So fucking what?I dared myself and Josie, who was still looking at me with an amused and encouraging expression while Keith chatted away about some sports team. Yeah, okay, I could admit to myself that I liked the way he looked. The way his voice sounded. If the amount of times I’d thought about his face and voice in the dead of night was any indication, I liked it a lot.

Goddess, even the way he fuckingsmelled. What cologne did he use? It never ceased to hit my senses just right.Yes, I was correct, I thought when he came walking back with a full glass in tow, he was fucking haunting me.

But when he slid back in next to me, my lips pulled back into a full grin, the sweet nature my grandmother had always cooed over me for coming to the forefront, and I almost giggled when he reflected it with a hesitant smirk of his own.

The four of us spent the next hour or so in a pleasant rhythm. Though Keith was far more interested in talking to Josie than Orion or me, we had a few threads of common interest to discuss. Then between those, we would retreat to our two distinct sides. Josie laughed and leaned into Keith who looked like a damn giddy fool, surely feeling confident that he was going to get lucky, and Orion and I stumbled our way through decreasingly hesitant conversation.

“Oh, Faust isn’t so bad,” he assured me over his beer, which I had taken a reluctant sip of to taste before sputtering at the yeasty bitterness. That was the first time I’d heard him laugh. It was low and hoarse, and I realized that I liked it very much.

Though I knew my brazenness was due to the wine, I also knew that my desire to touch him, to test where our boundary now sat, was all me. I gave him a lighthearted shove, and he relented a bit under my touch as I snickered, “Oh, he’s an old cantankerous bore.”

Orion gave a shrug, “Sure.But, he is a wealth of knowledge. I respect him for that.” And, after he swept an assessing glance over me, his arm shot out, extending to rest on the back of the booth behind us.

There was a beat between us, where we both were unsure of the step in this direction, but my inhibitions had softened, and I leaned into my seat and closer to his arm. His face relaxed.

We sat and talked like that for a while, and though the alcohol had certainly lubricated the conversation, it felt easy. Once I got past my suspicion at him being funny and kind, it was nothing to lean into it. To let his inner arm bump up against my shoulder. For my hair to brush against the back of his hand. He asked me how I was liking my classes, and I asked about the ones he was teaching this semester and next.

Eventually, Josie ushered all of us across the bar again, this time to the pool tables. Though I assured Orion that I was an absolutely hopeless teammate for this sort of thing, he just shrugged and said he wasn’t any good either, so he didn’t mind.

We slipped into good-natured insults at each others’ skills, and at one point, I had to hold back my laughter when Josie waggled her brows suggestively at me while she requested for Keith to help her position to make a shot. He lightly grasped her waist from behind, and I couldn’t help but look conspiratorially to Orion, who looked like he was holding back his own snicker.

Three games later, when Keith and Josie barely claimed victory, I leaned against the pool table, tapping my foot to a nonsensical pattern in my mind and pulled my phone out to check the time. Orion and Keith had taken our cues to put themback up and close out their tabs, and Josie made her way over to throw her arm onto my shoulders.

“I’m going back to Keith’s place,” she whispered in my ear.

I chuckled, “Oh, yeah, I never would have figured.” I’d known from the moment she turned around in her barstool toward him that this was the most likely outcome of the night. When I pulled back and swept my eyes over her, I felt reassured that she seemed to have her wits about her. Her breath smelled only faintly of wine, as she’d switched to water after we left the booth.

I ran a hand over her shaved head, and she glanced at the men coming back toward us. “You’ll be okay,” she said, and I nodded. We both had an unflinching habit of checking the other’s locations at the end of the night. Though he seemed a bit boring, Keith wasn’t presenting any major concerns in the few hours we’d spent with him.

“Just call me if you need me to come get you,” I muttered before we separated. She gave my arm one last squeeze, assuring me that she’d text throughout the evening and when she’d eventually make her way back home, before she followed him to start walking toward his apartment a few blocks away.

I was left with Orion. Again. We both watched Josie and Keith leave, and some of the awkwardness seeped back between us. Granna’s house wasn’t far, but my car was at Josie’s. I was about to open up my phone to get a car to come pick me up, but before I could pull up the app, Orion mumbled beside me, “I’m going outside to smoke.”

My nose wrinkled in mild detest, but I found myself following after him, requesting a car while we walked through the bar and outside. The humid warmth of the crowded place cleared almost immediately when he opened the door. The evening chill of late September was in full swing, and the telltale taste of autumn made my eyelids droop. It wasn’t just risingcoldness, but a sleepy spice that was only going to grow as the days passed.

I tapped my finger on the back of my phone, holding it down at my side, and Orion pulled a white pack of cigarettes from his back pocket, along with a Zippo lighter. He plucked one from the pack and held it between his lips, and the tinkling flick of the lighter hit my brain in just the right spot. Watching him balance the cigarette at one side of his lips while he held the flame to it was, begrudgingly, one of the most mesmerizing things I’d seen in my life.

“Smoking kills, you know,” I said as he made his first exhale toward the moon overhead. But my words didn’t break whatever spell I was under like I’d intended them to.

Orion lowered his head, and he looked at me, expression blank and in a way that made the fidgets get the better of me. I pulled at the overly long sleeve of my dress. “And?” He took another drag of his cigarette, cherry on the end flaring for a brief moment that seemed to make his eyes appear even brighter.

A few people stood around us, enjoying their drinks outside in the balmy air or having their own smoke, but they all seemed muffled, not really there, while Orion and I watched each other. We somehow stood in silence the entire time it took for him to finish his cigarette, and my eyes followed as he dropped it to the sidewalk below and crushed it under his boot. My throat clicked with a dry swallow.

I could’ve blamed the two glasses of wine I’d had this evening, but in reality, I felt as sober as I’d ever been when I dropped my bag to the ground, leaned in, and gripped the front of Orion’s sweatshirt. Even through the fabric, I felt the warmth of his skin, and before I could sink all the way into him, he brought his hands to my face.

When his lips pressed to mine, I inhaled the burning scent of cigarette smoke still on his breath, on his fingers. I’d neverthought of myself as small, but as we kissed, I felt completely covered and protected by his solid body. My palms rested over his chest, one feeling the beating of his heart, and his hands cupped my jaw in such a way that I felt the tickling of his fingertips at the base of my neck. His thumb softly caressed the tip of my earlobe, and when his tongue gently pressed against my lips, I immediately opened them.

My fingers and toes curled while our tongues slid against each other, learned each other, and I could taste the bitterness from the beer and cigarette he’d had. I’d never thought such a thing could taste so good or make me want to back up against a dirty brick wall and wish I could undress, if only to be as close as possible.

But that was exactly what I was doing. At some point, we’d pushed up against the wall in front of everyone. And now he had a grip on my back, one that I wanted him to trail lower and lower.

My hair was getting caught in the roughness of the brick, my ponytail an uncomfortable knot pushing into the back of my head, but I wanted more.

Orion gentled the kiss and pulled his head back, just enough to be able to suck in deep, calming breaths. I lunged forward while he did and planted a quick kiss on his lips before leaning back fully onto the wall once again. My eyes met his, and I saw that the green was deep, the darkest I’d ever seen it. Probably due to his pupils being blown much wider than they’d been before.

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